BUILT BY SEGMENTUM · COWORK COST GUIDE
What Copilot Cowork costs an accountancy firm
For a typical 15-person accountancy practice - nine desk staff, two client-facing, four partners and managers - Copilot Cowork comes to roughly £1,890 a month all in: licences and usage together, about £126 per person. Below is what the everyday jobs cost, and the calculator set up with practice defaults so you can put your own numbers in.
What the everyday tasks cost
Month-end management pack for a client - 800-2,000 credits - £6.32 to £15.80 per run
VAT quarter file summary - 400-800 credits - £3.16 to £6.32
Fee proposal first draft - 500-1,200 credits - £3.95 to £9.48
Client onboarding letters - 100-300 credits - £0.79 to £2.37
A partner producing management packs for eight clients a month is spending roughly £50 to £126 on that job alone - against the day or two of assembly it used to take. That trade, per task, is how to judge this.
Your team
Starting numbers match the example on this page - change them to fit your business.
Your estimate
Uses Microsoft's default usage mix and list pricing ($0.01 per Copilot Credit, billed in US dollars), ex-VAT. Licences assume Microsoft 365 Business Standard plus a Copilot licence per person. For the full step-by-step version, use the calculator on the home page. Pricing last verified 13 July 2026.
Where the usage actually goes
Accountancy work is spiky. Month-end, VAT quarters and January self-assessment season will push usage well above the average months - the management pack is exactly the multi-step work Cowork charges most for, and January can double a senior team's heavy tasks. The flip side: routine correspondence is light-tier work costing pennies.
The practical move for a practice this size is to start with the partners and managers who build client packs - four or five licences, not fifteen - and watch a full month-end cycle before rolling wider. Spending caps per person mean the January spike is a number you chose, not a surprise.
One boundary before you budget: Cowork sees what's inside Microsoft 365. Practice management, tax and bookkeeping software stay out of reach without connectors - so the packs it can help assemble are built from your Excel, email and files, not from inside your tax platform. If most of the firm's day happens outside Outlook and Excel, your real usage sits below these defaults.
Common questions
Is Cowork worth it for a small practice?
It can be - the strongest cases are client reporting, meeting preparation and research, where a task genuinely replaces an hour. The weakest case is licensing all fifteen people and hoping. Start with the pack-builders, measure a month-end cycle, then decide.
Can we cap what each person spends?
Yes - firm, team or individual level in the Microsoft 365 admin centre, with alerts before caps are hit. Per-person caps on the partner group is the sensible start.
Does Cowork work with our practice software?
Out of the box, no - it works across Microsoft 365. Practice management and tax platforms need connectors, where they exist at all. Budget on what it can actually reach.
What happens to the cost in January?
It rises with usage - that's pay-as-you-go. If self-assessment season doubles the heavy tasks, expect the usage line (not the licence line) to climb. Caps and alerts keep it deliberate.
BEFORE YOU COMMIT
That's the cost. The harder question is whether it's the answer.
A new tool sitting on top of an estate that nobody fully understands usually adds cost, not clarity. So before you commit the budget, it's worth asking a simpler question: is Cowork actually your constraint, or is it something underneath it? We help established UK businesses get a clear view of what they're running - and whether the next bit of spend earns its place.
Pricing and defaults last verified
13 July 2026
against Microsoft's published documentation.
Figures use Microsoft list pricing ($0.01 per Copilot Credit, billed in US dollars) converted at roughly £1 = $1.27, ex-VAT. Usage defaults come from Microsoft's Cowork Frontier programme data. This is a budgeting aid, not a quote - confirm current pricing with Microsoft. This is an independent tool built by Segmentum and is not produced or endorsed by Microsoft. "Microsoft 365", "Copilot" and "Cowork" are trademarks of Microsoft, used for identification only.