AI pricing can get confusing fast. There are licenses, Copilot credits, consumption, and tokens. Depending on which Microsoft product or AI tool you’re talking about, the pricing model can look completely different.
But if you’re already running your business on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, there may be a much easier way to think about it: start with the ERP transaction.
For Business Central users, though, the new agents are starting to make that conversation a little more concrete. You can now put an actual consumption cost against specific ERP work: processing an invoice, handling a sales request, or processing an expense receipt.
That gives BC users something useful to work with when evaluating AI: a real cost per transaction.
Business Central AI Agents Give Us Real Numbers to Work With
Microsoft now offers AI agents that take on specific pieces of ERP work rather than simply answering questions or helping a user draft something.
The Sales Order Agent can monitor incoming customer requests and help create quotes and sales orders.
The Payables Agent processes incoming vendor invoices and prepares draft purchase invoices for review. Learn more about the .
The Expense Agent extracts and categorizes receipts and helps create expense reports. Learn more about the .
And unlike the vague “How many tokens is this going to use?” question, Microsoft publishes the Copilot Credit consumption behind these agents. At current pay-as-you-go pricing, Copilot Credits cost $0.01 each ().
That means the economics can look like this:
- Sales Order Agent: Microsoft’s example works out to roughly $0.17 per typical customer request
- Payables Agent: about $0.65 for an example three-line invoice
- Expense Agent: $0.50 per receipt
Microsoft specifically prices Expense Agent at 50 Copilot Credits per receipt, covering the workflow from extraction through categorization, itemization, expense report creation and approval processing ().
Those numbers make one thing clear: the AI itself may have a surprisingly low hurdle to clear.
At roughly $0.65 for Microsoft's example three-line invoice, for example, Payables Agent doesn't need to save much employee time before the consumption cost starts to look reasonable.
Of course, consumption isn't the only cost involved. And that's where calculating ROI gets more complicated.
What Else Goes into the ROI Calculation?
Looking only at Copilot Credit consumption would be a little like evaluating a Business Central implementation based only on the software license. There are other costs and other benefits to account for.
For repetitive, high-volume work, even modest time savings can make the consumption cost easier to justify. But that does not mean every Business Central customer should immediately turn every available agent on.
The cost of the AI transaction is only one part of the equation. You also have to think about:
- Is the process fairly consistent, or does every transaction require an exception?
- Is the data in BC reliable enough for the agent to work with?
- How much employee time does the process take today?
- What still needs human review?
- Is there configuration or implementation work required before the agent is useful?
- Who needs training?
- What controls or governance need to be put around it?
- At what volume does the time savings become meaningful?
Volume matters, too. An AP team processing hundreds of fairly predictable invoices each month has more repetitive work for the Payables Agent to take on than a company that processes a handful of unusual invoices requiring significant review. The same $0.65 consumption cost can have very different value in those two environments.
The same is true for sales orders and expenses.
The agent can be inexpensive. The process around it still has to make sense.
Microsoft is even adding more visibility into this equation inside Business Central itself. Payables Agent includes consumption monitoring so teams can see the Copilot Credits being used, rather than waiting until the end of the month and guessing what happened. ()
That visibility makes it easier to see what the agent is actually costing you as volume grows.
So, Is the ROI There?
There is no universal answer and the Copilot Credit price alone won't tell you.
What the current Business Central agents do give us is a much better starting point. If you know roughly what an agent costs per transaction, you can compare it to what that same transaction requires from your team today.
For Payables Agent, that might mean looking at invoice volume, average processing time, exception rates, and review time. For Sales Order Agent, it could be the amount of time spent reading incoming requests and creating quotes or orders. For Expense Agent, look at the administrative work that goes into getting a receipt from submission through an expense report.
And if you're building an AI budget, don't stop at Copilot Credits. Include the configuration or implementation work, employee time, training, data preparation, governance, and ongoing review needed to actually use the agent.
The consumption costs for these first Business Central agents are pretty encouraging. Whether the ROI works depends on the process you’re using them for.
Want to Dig into the Budget Side?
Jackie Gant and Kristen Hosman are talking about exactly that on September 29 during Is AI in Your Budget Yet?
They'll cover what they're accounting for beyond licenses and consumption, including implementation, data readiness, training, governance, and internal time.
