Sage has listed its Finance Intelligence Agent as generally available in six markets in the Sage Intacct R4 release notes dated November 6. The agent lets finance teams query their financial data through Sage Copilot, while connected Excel reporting and new approval workflows for customer invoices and Order Entry transactions remain in Early Adopter programs.

The availability changes give customers different routes to adoption. The agent requires administrator enablement and appropriate data permissions. Access to Connected Reporting for Excel is subject to selection for an Early Adopter program, with availability limited to Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Sage Intacct R4 lists Finance Intelligence Agent as generally available in six markets, while Excel reporting and custom approvals remain in Early Adopter.

Financial questions through Sage Copilot

The Finance Intelligence Agent is listed as generally available in Australia, Canada, Singapore, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Sage says it now works across all Sage Intacct applications, retrieving and aggregating information in response to natural-language questions.

A finance user could ask which suppliers have overdue bills, then open an analysis panel for more detail about the response and how Copilot reached it. Sage also describes capabilities for analyzing figures, identifying potential trends, and providing predictions and recommendations.

Access follows the user’s underlying permissions. Someone asking about unpaid supplier bills, for example, needs permission to list and view Accounts Payable bills. General availability therefore does not give every user unrestricted access to the company’s financial records.

Administrators must enable the agent and assign permissions before staff can use it. The release documentation identifies Finance Intelligence Agent Administration as the required subscription.

Excel reporting stays connected to Intacct

Connected Reporting for Excel lets users build reports in Microsoft Excel with financial data that remains linked to Sage Intacct. They can refresh the report when they need updated figures, with Intacct permissions applied to the linked data.

Sage describes two ways to create and refresh reports: a guided process and natural-language AI prompts. Users can initiate report writing from Intacct, allowing finance teams to continue working in spreadsheets while drawing on connected financial records.

The R4 notes list General Ledger as the required subscription and Business and Employee as supported user types. Customers in the three eligible markets can apply for Early Adopter access. Selected participants receive program details and are expected to provide feedback to the product team.

Excel reporting was already part of Sage’s August update, which described Smart Reporting for Excel as an Early Adopter offering in the United States and United Kingdom. The R4 documentation uses the Connected Reporting for Excel name and includes Canada in its availability list.

Custom approvals target customer invoices and sales transactions

The new custom approval workflows cover Accounts Receivable invoices and Order Entry transactions. Sage lists the Early Adopter program as available across all regions.

Administrators can define rules and policies in a centralized Custom approvals application, route transactions to individual users or groups, and review pending approvals and transaction approval history. Rules use supported transaction fields and run sequentially in the order specified by the policy.

These workflows address a different process from the accounts payable AI Workspace that ERP News previously covered. That planned workspace focuses on supplier invoices and exceptions flagged by the AP Agent. The R4 custom approval feature concerns customer invoices and Order Entry records.

The Early Adopter version also has configuration limits. Rule sets support header-level transaction fields, and Sage says custom approval rules cannot currently be edited after creation. Finance teams evaluating the feature will need to account for those limits when designing their approval policies.

Sources

ERP News Editorial Team

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