Copilot for Finance Teams
€ 600
What you'll learn
This course shows finance professionals how to use Copilot for Microsoft 365 to compare, reconcile and explain commercial data without manual cross-checking. You direct in plain English. Copilot pulls the threads together.
Practical and hands-on, built around invoice-to-PO matching, payroll reconciliation, supplier checks and exec-ready reporting. You leave with prompt patterns and simple Agents you can apply to live work the same week.
- Stop wrestling with Copilot and start getting output you can actually use
- Catch mismatches across invoices, POs, timesheets and payroll before they reach a client or auditor
- Turn scattered policies, supplier terms and project files into a single searchable source of truth
- Automate the repetitive reconciliation, reporting and review tasks that eat your month-end
- Know where to trust the output and where to check it, so audit and governance never slip
Who it's for
Finance professionals who want Copilot taking the manual work out of multi-source reconciliation, reporting and reviews. No technical AI background needed.
Course structure
Hands-on throughout with live demos, guided exercises and practical examples drawn from real finance roles and scenarios.
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Module 1 · 29 September, 2pm-3pm
Tech check
We confirm you have the right Copilot licence, check access to Copilot in Office Apps, Chat plus all the latest features, and make sure everything runs smoothly from the first minute.
Module 2 · 6 October, 2pm - 4pm
Personalisation, privacy and prompting
You configure Copilot for your working context and learn where finance data can and cannot safely go. Build structured prompts that compare invoices against POs, match timesheets to payroll and produce variance explanations in plain English. Work inside Copilot Chat and across M365 Apps. Concepts are taught by doing, not by watching slides.
Module 3 · 13 October, 2pm - 4pm
Agents, knowledge bases and workflows
You create simple, single-purpose Copilot Chat Agents for repeatable finance work.
You assemble searchable knowledge bases from project files and policies so Copilot works only with your sources, not the open web.
You delegate multi-step finance tasks to Cowork and get back full draft outputs, not fragments to assemble.
Module 4 · 20 October, 2pm - 3pm
Hackathon
Bring a live problem from your own desk.
You apply what you built across both sessions to your own work, with support in the room, and leave with a working output you can use the next day.
Agent build
This course is where it starts, not where it ends. For teams ready to go further, the AI Institute works directly with finance functions to build automations: month-end reconciliation workflows, variance commentary pipelines, reporting sequences. We hand them back through targeted training so your team can run and maintain them without depending on outside support.
AI Institute delivered tailored AI literacy for our finance department through Copilot and they brought expertise to the engagement, with course material that addressed our specific workplace needs. They have a clear understanding of how practices like ours are navigating this territory, and the feedback has been strong. We have found their approach knowledgeable and adaptable, responding to where we are as a practice rather than prescribing standard solutions. Highly practical literacy training.
About the instructor
Rebecca Lyons
Lean Business Consultant & Chartered Management Accountant
Rebecca Lyons is a Fellow Chartered Management Accountant (FCMA) and Lean Business Consultant with 25+ years of experience helping Irish SMEs improve operational performance. As Managing Director of BEXL Connect, she delivers practical Lean implementation, financial management, and digital transformation solutions — consistently achieving measurable results including cost savings and capacity improvements. She is also a part-time lecturer, active mentor, and creator of The Momentum Map, a structured business planning framework for SME growth.
Frequently asked questions
None at all. Our courses are specifically designed for working professionals, executives, and design teams who want practical AI skills, not a computer science lecture.
- If you are taking a Copilot course, basic familiarity with standard Microsoft 365 apps (Word, Excel, Outlook) is all you need.
- For Claude Code, Claude handles the actual coding while you direct it using plain English.
- For visual or industry-specific paths like Nano Banana or Built Environment, we focus entirely on practical workflows, layout options, and project management—never complex programming.
Yes, absolutely. Security and confidentiality are our highest priorities, especially for our AEC and Finance cohorts:
- Data Privacy: Microsoft Copilot and Claude enterprise plans respect your existing corporate IT permissions. The AI only sees data you are already authorized to access, and your inputs are never used to train public models.
- Course Work: Live workshop sessions use anonymized dummy data so you can focus entirely on mastering techniques in a safe environment. You will then be given clear frameworks to confidently apply those exact same prompts to your live, proprietary project files between modules.
The market is flooded with generic "how to write prompts" videos. Our edge is entirely different:
- Live, Expert Facilitation: You are learning in real-time alongside an executive-level peer group, guided by practitioners from companies actively deploying AI in the real world.
- Always Up-to-Date: The second an AI model drops a new feature, we rebuild our exercises. You are getting a cutting-edge playground, not stale theory.
- Workflow Integration: We don't just teach tools in a vacuum; we show you exactly how they talk to your existing ecosystem - whether that’s integrating Claude with Microsoft 365 or feeding Nano Banana concepts downstream into Revit, Rhino, and Photoshop.
