Short answer: Copilot for Business Central can already match bank transactions, draft purchase invoices from vendor emails, prepare sales quotes from customer emails, check expense receipts, suggest replacement items, and help people find and analyze data in plain English. Almost all of it follows the same pattern: the AI does the prep work, and a person approves the result. If you're deciding where to begin, pick the most repetitive, highest-volume task your team has.
Plenty of AI articles promise "smarter operations" and stop there. If you run a business or an IT team, that doesn't help. What you want to know is which parts work today, what your people still have to do, and where the catches are.
So here are ten tasks Microsoft documents for Dynamics 365 Business Central. For each one, I've noted what the AI handles, what stays with a human, and one thing worth watching.
Copilot vs. agents: a quick note
Business Central has two kinds of AI help, and the difference matters when you plan a rollout.
- Copilot features sit beside the user. You start something, and Copilot suggests, drafts or analyzes.
- Agents run more on their own in the background. Think of one watching a shared mailbox and preparing documents. Their work is built to stay visible so someone can review it.
Two things to know up front:
- According to Microsoft, Copilot in Business Central comes with your Business Central license at no extra cost. The agents (Payables and Sales Order) run on Copilot Credits, so billing needs to be set up before you use them.
- This is not the same as Microsoft 365 Copilot. Microsoft says the two aren't directly connected today.
Several features are still marked as preview, and availability depends on your country and language. Check Microsoft's documentation for your region before you commit to a plan.
1. Bank reconciliation
Few finance jobs pile up as quietly as reconciliation. Copilot looks at your bank statement lines and suggests which ledger entries they belong to. For lines with no match, it proposes which account to post to.
Your team still: reviews each suggestion and accepts or corrects it.
Watch for: lines with odd or vague descriptions. Those are the ones where a quick second look pays off.
2. Entering vendor invoices (Payables Agent)
For many finance teams, this is where the biggest time savings are. The Payables Agent watches a mailbox, reads invoices that arrive as PDFs, works out which vendor sent them, and prepares a draft purchase invoice. Where it isn't sure about a field, it tells you why.
Your team still: reviews the draft before it turns into a real purchase invoice. If the agent creates a brand-new vendor, that vendor stays blocked until someone unblocks it. That gives you a natural checkpoint for vendor approvals.
Watch for the documented limits:
- Only emails with PDF attachments are processed, up to 10 per email.
- PDFs longer than 10 pages or larger than 5 MB are skipped.
- The daily ceiling is 100 emails and 500 invoices.
- Approval workflows and anomaly detection aren't supported in the agent.
- It's currently validated for English only.
Microsoft also suggests using an internal mailbox rather than one vendors email directly. That way your team sees anything suspicious before the agent does.
3. Matching e-invoices to purchase orders
If you receive invoices electronically, Copilot can line up the invoice lines with your purchase order lines and flag anything that doesn't fit.
Your team still: deals with the flagged exceptions.
Watch for: Microsoft lists this as a preview feature, so test it on real data before you depend on it.
4. Turning customer emails into quotes (Sales Order Agent)
A customer emails asking for a price. The Sales Order Agent reads the message, finds the customer in Business Central, checks which items are available, and prepares a quote as a PDF. If something's missing, it can write back to ask.
Your team still: a named reviewer approves every outgoing message before it reaches the customer.
Watch for:
- The agent recognizes customers by matching the sender's email address to a contact record. Missing or outdated contact emails will break that match.
- It always starts with a quote, not an order. Microsoft treats this as the safe first step because quotes don't affect planning or stock availability.
- Clear item descriptions help it pick the right products.
- If your Copilot Credits run out, it stops handling new emails until more are available.
5. Adding sales lines from messy requests
Customers don't always send item numbers. They send a paragraph, a screenshot, or a spreadsheet. You can paste or upload that into a quote or order, and Copilot suggests matching items from your catalog.
Your team still: checks the items and quantities.
Watch for: the same rule as above. The better your catalog is described, the better the matches.
6. Employee expense capture (Expense Agent)
An employee uploads a receipt photo. The agent picks out the merchant, amount, date and category, and checks the expense against your policy before it's submitted. Microsoft says employees can use it by email, in the web app or through chat, without needing a Business Central license.
Your team still: approves expense reports as usual.
Watch for: the agent can only enforce a policy that's clearly written down. Vague rules give vague results.
7. Suggesting item substitutes
When an item is out of stock or discontinued, Copilot looks through your product data and proposes alternatives. Sales and service staff don't have to hunt through the catalog by hand.
Your team still: picks the replacement. Whether it suits the customer, the price and the use case is still a business call.
8. Analyzing lists in plain language
Instead of building a report or exporting to Excel, you describe what you want: grouped by customer, filtered to this quarter, totaled by region. Copilot sets up the analysis view inside Business Central.
Your team still: decides what the numbers actually mean.
Watch for: Microsoft marks this as a preview feature.
9. Autofill and record summaries
These two are small but they add up over a week.
- Autofill suggests values for fields on cards and documents, such as items or sales orders. You decide what to keep.
- Summarize boils a record down to the key points for your role, with links back to the details.
Your team still: confirms the suggestions. Some autofill values can come from AI generation or web search, so treat them as drafts, not verified facts.
10. Asking Copilot in chat
You can ask Copilot to find a record or explain how to do something. It answers with text, a link to the right page in Business Central, or a relevant help article. Microsoft says how-to answers draw on Business Central's official documentation and the documentation of apps you've installed.
Your team still: double-checks before acting, especially on anything involving money.
Watch for: this is listed as preview, and the chat history clears when you close it or sign out.
A few smaller extras: Copilot can draft product descriptions (and push them to Shopify through the add-on), suggest number series during setup, and estimate greenhouse gas emissions in sustainability journals. Business Central also has older, non-generative AI tools for late payment prediction, cash flow and inventory forecasting. Those are separate from Copilot.
How to start without overcomplicating it
Don't switch everything on at once. This order works for most teams:
- Choose one high-volume task. For finance, that's usually vendor invoices or bank reconciliation. For sales-led companies, it's quote requests by email.
- Tidy the data it relies on. Item descriptions, contact emails and vendor records directly affect the results.
- Name a reviewer. Decide who checks the AI's work and how fast.
- Sort out billing and permissions. Agents use Copilot Credits and work within the permissions your admin gives them.
Measure your own before and after. Track the time per invoice or quote in your own business, not someone else's numbers.
If you'd like help deciding which of these fit your processes, DynovateTech's AI and Copilot services cover Copilot adoption on Microsoft platforms. When the built-in features fall short, Power Platform consulting can extend workflows around Business Central. And if you're still choosing an ERP, the ERP solutions overview is a good place to look.
What Copilot doesn't replace
Set the right expectations with your leadership team:
- It doesn't remove the need for approvals, audit trails or vendor checks.
- It works best with clean master data.
- Some limits, like file size, daily volume and language, won't suit every business.
- Agent costs depend on usage, so estimate your volume before rolling out.
If your process falls outside those limits, a custom workflow or a partner-built extension may be the better route.
FAQs
Is Copilot included in Business Central?
Microsoft says Copilot in Business Central is included with your license at no additional cost. Agents like the Payables Agent and Sales Order Agent use Copilot Credits, which can add charges, so check your billing setup.
Can Copilot post invoices without approval?
No. The Payables Agent prepares a draft, and a person reviews it before it becomes a purchase invoice. Microsoft's documentation also notes that approval workflows aren't currently supported in the agent.
Does Copilot in Business Central use my Microsoft 365 data?
According to Microsoft, Copilot features in Business Central don't see your Microsoft 365 data, and there's no direct link to Microsoft 365 Copilot. In some cases it works the other way: Copilot in Microsoft 365 apps can use Business Central data.
What's the difference between Copilot and an agent?
Copilot helps a person who starts the task. An agent works more independently in the background, such as monitoring a mailbox, while keeping its work open to review.
Can we turn Copilot features off?
Yes. Microsoft's admin documentation explains how to switch off specific Copilot and agent capabilities and how to control who has access through permissions.
Which task should we automate first?
Pick the one with the highest volume and the clearest rules. Vendor invoices and bank reconciliation are common choices, but the quality of your data matters more than which feature you start with.
Sign in to leave a comment.