Quick Overview

  • Microsoft announced on Thursdaynew Copilot featuresaimed at enhancing the AI tool's ability to handle a range of financial tasks in Excel.
  • These updates allow teams to create reusable "skills" for Copilot by defining instructions for routine tasks such as building financial models, closing books, updating monthly reports, and performing variance analysis. Brian Jones, Vice President of the Microsoft Excel product group, said in a blog post.
  • "Instead of starting from scratch every time, skills guide Copilot through the steps, apply the right structure and formatting, and help generate outputs that are easier to review, reuse, and trust," Jones wrote.

Deep Insights

This move comes amid increasingly fierce competition in the CFO office software market, as vendors race to bring new AI innovations to corporate finance.

Last month, Workday announced a new AI capability designed to streamline financial planning and analysis, allowing usersto generate model scenarios in minuteswithout needing to "wrangle data" in spreadsheets.

In an interview at the time, Ben Pierce, General Manager of Workday Adaptive Planning, said the company was not positioning the new capability as a complete replacement for spreadsheets, and he believed tools like Microsoft Excel would likely remain part of financial workflows even as businesses automate more analysis and data preparation tasks.

"Over the years, people have said many times 'we're going to get people off Excel,' and I don't think that will ever happen," he said. "Excel has its place. I use Excel all the time. But I think this will allow people to not have to use Excel for the complex analysis they need to do and to move work forward faster."

In early 2025, the Association for Financial Professionals released a report stating that spreadsheets remainthe dominant tool for FP&A professionalswith 96% of respondents using them for planning, 93% using them daily or weekly for reporting, and all respondents using them at least quarterly.

Jones said Microsoft's own finance organization uses Copilot in Excel across FP&A, accounting, tax, compliance, and treasury functions.

"By the time it reaches the public, it has been stress-tested by finance organizations at the forefront," he wrote in the blog post.

Jones said a library of sample financial "skills" for Copilot in Excel is now available, and users can also build custom versions.

The software giant also plans to enable developers and partners to create and distribute skills through Microsoft Marketplace and the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. According to the announcement, it is working with an initial group of partners including LSEG, Ramp, Rogo, Samaya AI, Velixo, and Vena.

The company has also expanded Copilot's access to financial data in Excel, adding a broader range of third-party providers including CB Insights, Daloopa, FactSet, Morningstar, PitchBook, and S&P Global, the blog post said.