News from Microsoft: Microsoft Copilot for Finance is now available
Microsoft is now launching next-generation AI in Microsoft 365 for Finance. The solution will help finance teams focus on more strategic work by automating parts of simpler operational tasks that are often repetitive and manually intensive. It also helps keep track of critical decisions that can impact the business.
Copilot for Finance provides AI-driven assistance when working in Microsoft 365 applications and can streamline and automate financial processes. Users can interact with Copilot for Finance in multiple ways. The solution suggests actions in the workflow and also enables users to ask questions by typing a prompt in natural language. For example, prompting Copilot to “help me understand variance data from forecast to actual values.” Copilot for Finance will quickly generate insights and retrieve data directly from entire ERP and financial systems. Suggest actions to take and provide a head start by generating contextualized text.
Some key areas where Copilot for Finance can already make a difference today:
Audits: Traditionally, accounts receivable managers have needed to manually retrieve account data from various ERP records, reconcile them in Excel, and look for errors. Today, users with Copilot for Finance can perform all these steps with a single prompt. This allows them to quickly act on inconsistencies that Copilot both identifies and explains with suggested text and relevant invoices.
Error and variance management: Copilot for Finance can also help reduce the risk of reporting errors and missing unidentified variances. Instead of manually reviewing large financial datasets for unusual patterns, users can prompt Copilot to identify outliers and flag variances for investigation.
Accounts receivable: Ensuring payment can be time-consuming when reviewing outstanding accounts and trying to reconcile them on time. This often involves phone calls, emails, and negotiating payment plans. Copilot for Finance supports the process from start to finish by suggesting priority accounts, summarizing conversations to record back to the ERP, and providing customized payment plans for customers.
Two New Features in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management
a. Offset for inventory visibility adjustments
It’s common for omnichannel retailers to update inventory using an inventory adjustment API in the inventory visibility service for real-time inventory tracking. They then create sales orders or inventory journals in Supply Chain Management modules, such as inventory management, sales, and marketing. Therefore, it’s necessary to reconcile or offset the update in Supply Chain Management to the inventory visibility service. This ensures that inventory visibility isn’t duplicated when data is synchronized between systems. A new feature is now available that provides offset configuration and synchronization in Supply Chain Management for transactions that can use inventory adjustments in the inventory visibility service.
b. Optimize customer return processes
Customer returns can be very difficult and time-consuming to process because users must create return order lines and manually generate return merchandise authorization (RMA) numbers before they can return goods to inventory. Supply Chain Management has now improved the process so companies can handle customer returns much more easily.
New feature in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance
Accrual schedules with inventoried material
The inventory value for inventory items can be recalculated periodically based on the inventory valuation method. The feature therefore offers accounting for cost deferrals based on the most recently calculated inventory value, so users don’t have to perform manual work to track changes or adjust deferrals.
