Manage accounts receivable communications in Outlook
Important
This content is archived and is not being updated. For the latest documentation, go to What's new or changed in Copilot for Finance. For the latest release plans, go to Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and Cloud for Industry release plans.
Important
Some of the functionality described in this release plan has not been released. Delivery timelines may change and projected functionality may not be released (see Microsoft policy). Learn more: What's new and planned
| Enabled for | Public preview | General availability |
|---|---|---|
| Users by admins, makers, or analysts | 
Feb 29, 2024 |
Jun 2024 |
Business value
Microsoft Copilot for Finance is revolutionizing the collections experience for accounts receivable (AR) personnel. By integrating with Outlook, it enhances customer communications through several key features:
- Provides a summary of customer information directly from the source ERP, eliminating the need for manual data retrieval.
- Offers a summarization of inbound emails in Outlook, streamlining the communication process.
- Assists in crafting customer communication emails, ensuring clarity and professionalism.
- Serves as a single source of truth storage in the ERP for critical updates such as transactions, contact information, action items, and relevant customer communication.
This holistic approach not only optimizes the collections experience but also fosters efficiency and accuracy in AR operations.
Steady and predictable cash flow is the lifeblood of a healthy business, providing the necessary liquidity for day-to-day operations and facilitating strategic investment for growth. An effective collections process in accounts receivable plays a critical role in this context, ensuring timely inflow of revenue and thereby driving the predictability essential for financial planning and stability.
Accounts receivable professionals spend a lot of time in Microsoft Outlook responding to customer balance inquiries. They are switching between Outlook and ERP to gather the required details to perform their work and updating information back to ERP such as follow-up actions, updated contact information, and promise-to-pay dates.
Professionals in the accounts receivable department frequently toggle between Microsoft Outlook and their ERP system to respond to customer balance inquiries, gather necessary details, and update information such as follow-up actions, contact updates, and promised payment dates.
However, Microsoft Copilot for Finance aims to streamline this process significantly. It enables employees to connect directly to their ERP system from within Outlook. While communicating with customers, accounts receivable personnel can access valuable ERP customer data, receive assistance in crafting email responses, and conveniently save communication summaries and action items back in the ERP system all while avoiding the toll of switching.
Feature details
Copilot for Finance is a game-changer for collections coordinators, offering a suite of capabilities that streamline and enhance the collections process. Integrated with Microsoft Outlook, Copilot for Finance provides an immersive experience that allows coordinators to avoid context switching while remaining in the tool they often spend most of their time in.
Here are the key capabilities of Copilot for Finance:
- Customer insights: Understand customer’s payment behavior and preferences through a Copilot sidecar experience in Outlook.
- Content generation for emails: Dynamically generate business-focused email to address common inquiries or specific customer correspondence including attachments of customer invoices and customer balance summaries.
- Save communications and notes: Maintain a history of searchable customer communications and notes that can be related to each customer.
- Customer contact maintenance: Create and update contacts related to a customer directly from the copilot experience.
- Invoice updates: Update the payment due date and dispute status of any outstanding invoice.
Geographic areas
This feature will be released into the following Microsoft Azure geographic area:
- United States