Microsoft Makes New Additions to Copilot in Excel for Finance

Microsoft makes new additions to Copilot in Excel for finance, expanding the platform's ability to help finance professionals analyze data, build formulas, automate repetitive tasks, and generate financial insights directly within Excel. The latest enhancements focus on improving productivity for FP&A teams, accountants, and analysts by combining AI-powered assistance with familiar spreadsheet workflows.

The new additions are designed to help finance professionals turn repetitive, spreadsheet-heavy processes into repeatable, AI-assisted routines rather than starting each task from a blank sheet. The announcement lands at a moment when finance software vendors are competing hard to embed generative AI into everyday planning, reporting, and analysis work, and it signals that Microsoft intends Excel to remain the anchor point for that shift rather than a tool that gets replaced by newer platforms.

What are the New Additions to Copilot in Excel for Finance?

At the center of the update is the idea of a "skill": a saved set of instructions that tells Copilot exactly how to carry out a particular finance task. Brian Jones, who leads Microsoft's Excel Product Group, explained in a company blog post that these skills let a team codify how it wants a model built, how the books get closed, how monthly reports are updated, or how variance analysis is run, so Copilot can repeat the process the same way every time.

Rather than re-explaining a task to the AI assistant each time, a finance team can define the workflow once. From that point forward, Copilot follows the saved steps, applies consistent structure and formatting, and produces output that is easier for reviewers to trust because it looks and behaves the same way each time it runs.

How Copilot Improves Excel Productivity Through Repeatable Workflows

This is really the productivity story behind the release. Instead of treating every model refresh or reporting cycle as a one-off request, finance staff can lean on saved skills to remove the setup work that normally eats into a close cycle or a planning sprint. That, in turn, is how Copilot improves Excel productivity in practice:

• Fewer manual;

• Repetitive steps;

• More consistent output;

• And less time spent re-teaching the tool the same instructions month after month.

Why Microsoft Copilot in Excel Matters for the Office of the CFO

The update arrives as finance software providers push to place AI deeper into CFO-facing tools. Earlier, Workday introduced its own AI feature meant to speed up financial planning and analysis by letting users spin up model scenarios in minutes, cutting down on the manual data wrangling that typically spans multiple spreadsheets.

Notably, even Workday framed that launch as a complement to spreadsheets rather than a replacement for them. Ben Pierce, who runs Workday Adaptive Planning, noted in an interview around that release that predictions of Excel's demise have circulated for years without ever really playing out, and that Excel continues to hold a place in finance workflows even as more of the underlying analysis and data prep gets automated.

Spreadsheets Still Anchor FP&A Work

That staying power shows up in the data, too. An early-2025 survey from the Association for Financial Professionals found spreadsheets remained the tool FP&A teams rely on most, with the vast majority of respondents using them daily or weekly for planning and reporting, and essentially all respondents using them at least once a quarter. Betting on Excel, rather than trying to displace it, is a reasonable strategy given how entrenched spreadsheet-based work still is across finance functions.

How Microsoft's Own Finance Team Uses Copilot in Excel

Microsoft's internal finance organization already relies on Copilot in Excel across FP&A, accounting, tax, compliance, and treasury work. He framed this internal use as a proving ground: by the time these Copilot features reach outside customers, they have already been tested inside a finance organization that operates at a demanding scale, which he suggested gives the tool a level of real-world readiness before it ever reaches the public.

How to Use Copilot in Excel for Finance: Skills Library and Custom Builds

To make adoption easier, Microsoft is launching a library of ready-made finance skills that teams can put to work right away, alongside the option to build their own custom skills tailored to a specific process or reporting standard. For finance teams wondering how to use Copilot in Excel for finance in a practical sense, this combination of pre-built and custom skills is the starting point: pick a sample skill from the library to handle a common task, or configure a custom one around an internal workflow that a generic template wouldn't cover.

Microsoft is also opening the door for outside developers and partner companies to build and sell their own skills through the Microsoft Marketplace and the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. An initial roster of partners already working on this includes LSEG, Ramp, Rogo, Samaya AI, Velixo, and Vena, giving finance teams a growing ecosystem of purpose-built skills beyond what Microsoft creates on its own.

Expanding Data Access Through Microsoft 365 Copilot

Alongside the skills update, Microsoft is broadening the pool of financial data sources that Copilot in Excel can tap into directly. The expanded list of third-party data providers now includes CB Insights, Daloopa, FactSet, Morningstar, PitchBook, and S&P Global. For finance teams, that means less time spent manually pulling data from outside platforms and more of that information available right where the analysis happens inside Excel, reinforcing how the broader Microsoft 365 Copilot ecosystem is extending its reach into day-to-day finance work.

What the New Microsoft Copilot Features for Excel Mean Going Forward

Taken together, the skills framework, the growing partner ecosystem, and the wider data access point to a clear direction: Microsoft wants Copilot in Excel to become the layer where finance teams standardize how repetitive work gets done, not just a chatbot bolted onto a spreadsheet. As more vendors race to bring AI into the office of the CFO, this update suggests Microsoft's strategy is to make Excel itself smarter, rather than betting that finance teams will abandon it in favor of a separate platform.

For finance leaders evaluating where to invest their AI budget next, these new additions to Copilot in Excel for finance are worth a closer look, especially for teams that already run their close, reporting, and variance analysis largely inside spreadsheets.