RSMUS.comOur ongoing series exploring how Sage Intacct is integrating AI into its financial management platform now covers one of the most exciting additions yet: the Close Workspace powered by Copilot. It promises to transform the close as we know it, making it faster, easier, and more accurate for all involved. Let’s take a closer look!
Fix the Financial Close With AI
It still takes 50% of finance teams over a week to complete the monthly close. And even for those who do it in less time, it’s an all-consuming process that turns the end of each month into a mad dash.
The close is ripe for improvement. AI is the perfect solution.
The process of collecting, recording, reconciling, and reporting financial transactions runs systematically. When people handle each step, it’s inefficient and prone to error, which is why the close takes so many days or weeks. But when AI coordinates the process while a human provides oversight, the close takes a fraction of the time and produces superior data.
The close feels organized and optimized instead of overwhelming with the addition of AI. It’s better for the managers and accountants responsible for closing each month. It’s also better for the executives who rely on the data to make decisions.
Closing the books will never be the same. The transformation is already underway.
Introducing the Close Workspace With Copilot
The Close Workspace is a new feature in Sage Intacct that centralizes all the people, processes, and data involved with the monthly close. Uniting everything in one location keeps things coordinated and consistent, but the addition of AI is the real game-changer.
Copilot, the AI assistant built into Sage Intacct, works throughout the Close Workspace to automate tasks, prevent errors, and add insight. It’s the assistant that accountants have always wanted, working in an environment purpose-built for the financial close. Here are the highlights:
- Track Tasks With Checklists: The Close Workspace builds checklists out of each task in the close process. Many of these tasks can be managed by Copilot right out of the box. Custom tasks can be created, and start and end dates are entered automatically based on the template.
- Send Alerts and Notifications: Users receive updates in their email or Copilot panel when tasks are added, deadlines are approaching, or something else requires their attention. They have full control over the cadence and content of the notifications, and they can opt for a daily summary.
- Generate Emails Automatically: Copilot will draft emails to alert or remind people, preventing accountants from having to write a bunch of messages manually. The tone and length can be adjusted to ensure the emails relay the information effectively.
- Assign Roles and Privileges: The Close Workspace assigns each user one of three roles—Checklist Owner, Task Owner, Task Asignee—so that each person receives the notifications they need but doesn’t have more privileges than necessary.
- Monitor Close Progress: Check one dashboard to see the progress of the entire close, including overdue, at-risk, and upcoming tasks. Filter for different checklists, states, and reporting periods, drill into fields for more details, or download the data as a CSV file.
Even though the Close Workspace with Copilot makes this monthly process radically better than before, it doesn’t look drastically different. The mechanics are still the same, just without the friction, bottlenecks, stress, and confusion. And even though Copilot does much of the heavy lifting, humans maintain visibility and control throughout.
After years of incremental improvements, the close process is making a great leap forward thanks to AI. The Close Workspace with Copilot makes that innovation accessible to all beginning now.
Get Started With Help From RSM
Everyone who closes the books each month stands to benefit from the Close Workspace. Everyone who uses Sage Intacct can start taking advantage of this feature after it was rolled out in the 2025 R4 update.
Ready to make your next close your best ever? Rely on RSM for all the help you need getting your team and technology ready—Contact us.
Samantha Dupcak
Samantha is an Associate within the Technology Consulting practice and is a Certified Sage Intacct Implementation Consultant. With a background in accounting and a focus in the nonprofit industry, she helps clients improve operational efficiency by ensuring a smooth system transition from planning through go-live.
