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Finance Critical Guardrails - Read First

CRITICAL: Read before any finance use of Copilot. Numbers it produces are drafts to verify, never authoritative.

The prompt
## When NEVER to Use Copilot for Finance

**Copilot output is a draft to verify, never an authoritative figure or approval. NEVER use it for:**

- Authoritative financial calculations or the numbers in filed/published results
- Budget, spend, or payment approval or authorization
- Finalizing forecasts, accruals, or provisions
- Signing off accounts, reconciliations, or controls
- Tax, audit, or accounting-treatment determinations
- Investment or credit decisions

**Always verify every figure against the system of record (ERP/GL).** Copilot does not connect to your ERP, consolidation, or treasury systems; numbers it summarizes from emails or documents may be stale or wrong.

**Golden Rule:**
> "Copilot gathers and drafts. Finance verifies and decides."

No AI output replaces professional review and the controls in your close.

Copy this exactly as it appears, including the # and * characters. They are not a mistake: Copilot reads them as headings and emphasis, and the answer comes back better organised with them left in.

How to use it

  1. 1Select Copy the prompt above.
  2. 2Paste it into Microsoft 365 Copilot.
  3. 3Replace anything in brackets with your own detail, then send it.

Copilot gathers and drafts. You verify and decide. Check every figure, name and date against the system it came from before you act on it.

Written for

CFO, Finance Manager, Controller, FP&A Lead, Treasury Manager

More for Finance

See all 16 prompts

From the source collection in awesome-microsoft-copilot-prompts, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.