Microsoft adds accounting skills to Copilot in Excel and Cowork

Microsoft has added more than 25 finance skills and partner plugins across Copilot. Accounting features, available through Microsoft's Frontier programme for Copilot in Excel and Cowork, compare balances to prepare reconciling items, draft journal entries such as accruals and reclassifications with checks that entries balance, and explain results against plan, with an optional audit trail of what Copilot changed and why. Capital Markets and Finance plugins for Cowork are generally available, and partner plugins including Intuit QuickBooks, Xero and Zoho Books are beginning to roll out. Microsoft says more than 8,000 users invoked the accounting skills over 44,000 times in seven days of limited Insiders availability.