Sage, provider of accounting, financial, HR, and payroll technology for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), recently announced that Sage Copilot is available to early adopters initially in the US and UK on Sage Intacct. As part of a raft of new enhancements and updates for Sage Intacct customers globally, the introduction of this generative AI tool will support customers with actionable insights and intuitive support to help drive productivity and growth.
Sage Copilot is one of the first AI-driven tools designed to transform how accounting and finance teams tackle their daily challenges, from quickly highlighting budget variances for proactive management to providing clear, trustworthy answers to critical how-to questions. Sage Copilot empowers users to work smarter and faster, streamlining tasks and uncovering insights that drive meaningful business results. Sage is working closely with customers to deliver on its vision to help organizations drive productivity, accuracy, and compliance, helping SMBs to focus on growth and profitability.
Sage Copilot launches at a pivotal moment, with Sage research revealing that 80% of CFOs are embracing AI to reclaim time for high-value tasks. The Sage report, The Secrets of Successful CFOs, highlights that this shift allows CFOs to build critical leadership skills as finance roles evolve; 89% report significantly expanded responsibilities due to technology and global complexities.
“We know that finance leaders are looking for ways to save time, drive strategic initiatives, and support business growth,” said Dan Miller, EVP Financials and ERP Division at Sage. “With the introduction of Sage Copilot, alongside our other enhancements, we are helping them take a major step towards that goal. By empowering users with tools that help assist with time-consuming tasks, we are enabling them to be more proactive and focus on delivering long-term growth for their organizations.”
Sage Intacct Release 4 enhancements include the following:
- Sage Copilot Variance Analysis: Helping to streamline financial oversight for budget managers, Sage Copilot variance analysis provides real-time insights and automatic alerts on budget variances, enabling faster, informed decision-making across the organization. It enables budget managers to quickly identify errors and variances by comparing budgeted with actuals or period-over-period data, providing real-time insights and reducing manual analysis for faster, better financial decisions. Availability: Early Adopters in the US & UK.
- Sage Copilot Search Help: Providing users with direct, conversational answers, Sage Copilot Search Help users save time, enables them to focus on more valuable work and boost overall productivity. Availability: Early Adopters in the US.
- Sage Intelligent Time Enhancements: With enhanced new features such as time clocks and rate cards, Sage Intelligent Time meets the needs of professional services, retail, and manufacturing industries. These improvements help ensure compliance with labor regulations, provide accurate time tracking, and simplify billing processes. Streamlined operations in these industries directly contribute to improved profitability and business growth. Availability: US, CAN, UK, AUS, ZA.
- New Industry Solutions with Continental Utility Integration: Sage Intacct’s new connector for Continental Utility Solutions, Inc. (CUSI) streamlines data flow between utility billing and financial management. This integration provides utility companies with a complete financial overview, reducing manual data entry, improving accuracy in billing and payments, and ultimately freeing up resources to focus on growth. Availability: US.
- Language Accessibility Improvements: To eliminate barriers for non-English-speaking users, Sage Intacct now supports French-Canadian and Spanish (Spain) languages in an open beta available to all users, making the platform accessible to a broader audience and addressing linguistic nuances. This expanded language support helps ensure that finance teams can work efficiently in their preferred language, reducing potential miscommunication and supporting smoother growth in diverse markets. Availability: In all regions.
- Expanded Developer Capabilities with REST API: Sage Intacct’s REST API, built with Open API Specification 3.0, offers developers enhanced flexibility to create custom integrations, enabling businesses to expand their capabilities and grow with tailored solutions. With interactive documentation and versioned updates, it minimizes integration challenges and allows developers to quickly build solutions that meet specific business needs. Availability: Early adopter in all regions.
- Localized Features for France: Sage Intacct manual lettrage allows for tracking the evolution of general ledger accounts and production of accurate entries. It helps French organizations to save time by facilitating the control of accounting entries through a chronological and systematic order of all transactions, promoting automatic verification and matching of each entry. Additionally, the bank transaction assistant helps simplify financial reconciliation, reduce manual workloads, and ensure compliance with local financial regulations, allowing businesses to focus more on growth and less on administrative tasks. Availability: France
What this means for ERP insiders
AI copilots becoming standard part of modern ERP user experience. AI copilots are increasingly embedded into ERP systems or offered as extensions, seamlessly integrating with workflows. In the upcoming months and years, enterprises should expect Sage and other ERP providers to extend initial copilot offerings to encompass autonomous ERP systems, which are self-learning ERPs that adapt workflows and decisions autonomously, and industry-specific AI copilots, tailoring AI copilots to address unique challenges in industries like manufacturing, healthcare, and retail. Also, innovative ERP providers will bring low-code/no-code accessibility, enabling businesses to customize AI copilots without technical expertise. And we should expect to see more collaboration features in copilots, integrating AI copilots with team collaboration tools to enhance productivity. The evolution of these copilots will continue to shape the ERP landscape, making systems more intelligent, user-friendly, and indispensable.
Learn from Sage customer experiences with other AI capabilities. In the financial technology space, Zest AI was challenged with managing complex financial consolidations across multiple entities and lengthy and manual monthly close processes. The company implemented Sage Intacct to automate revenue recognition and reconciliation and enhance data integrity through AI-driven analytics. Zest AI reduced the monthly close cycle by one-third and established a single source of truth for financial information, improving decision-making. A Sage customer in the retail space was struggling with manual updates of customer data leading to inefficiencies and time-consuming order creation processes. This company leveraged an AI-driven assistant integrated with Sage to automate customer data updates and order management, automating the extraction and updating of customer data from support tickets and streamlining order creation by auto-filling necessary fields in Sage. This company achieved an 80% improvement in efficiency for customer data updates and enhanced data accuracy and customer service through reduced manual errors. A Sage customer that provides accounting software wanted to enhance user experience by reducing manual data entry and improve accuracy in financial document creation. So Sage integrated AI technology into its accounting platform to automate the creation of sales estimates, purchase orders, and invoices. This customer now has AI-driven document analysis to generate customer segment profiles, as well as automated formatting and data extraction for financial documents. As a result, the company has streamlined administrative tasks, allowing users to focus on strategic activities and improved accuracy and consistency in financial document management.
Sage should remain on the short-list for SMBs. Sage tailors its products specifically to meet the needs of small and medium-sized businesses, offering cost-effective solutions that scale as businesses grow, and specializes in industries such as accounting, construction, manufacturing, distribution, and retail. Sage solutions integrate with third-party applications such as Salesforce, Microsoft 365, and payment gateways, ensuring a seamless workflow across platforms. And the company sticks to a modular design, offering flexibility to add functionalities like payroll, CRM, or e-commerce as business needs evolve. To ease administrative burden for its SMB customers, Sage offers built-in compliance features for tax, payroll, and financial reporting that align with regional and global standards. In line with SMB purchasing patterns, Sage offers flexible pricing plans that cater to businesses of all sizes, avoiding large upfront costs.
