DeskMate vs Microsoft 365 Copilot

Can Microsoft 365 Copilot work with Xero or MYOB?

Not out of the box. Copilot works over what Microsoft 365 holds: mail, files, chats and meetings. We found no official Microsoft or Xero connector for Copilot, and nothing at all for MYOB, Xero Practice Manager, FYI or the ATO. A practice can add a third-party Xero connector to a Copilot Studio agent and build the flow itself. Xero said on 17 September 2026 that its Microsoft 365 connections will soon include Copilot Cowork. It is worth watching.

DeskMate starts from the other end. It connects to the ledger, the practice manager, FYI and the ATO’s record of what is due first, and uses Microsoft 365 for delivery: skills run from Teams, and drafts go to Outlook for a person to send.

Where is the data processed?

The Tax Practitioners Board’s guidance, TPB(GS) 55/2026, issued on 22 July 2026, says putting client information into an AI tool can be a disclosure to a third party. That needs the client’s permission first, and the Board recommends telling the client where the data will be stored. It also expects a person to check the output at each step, and to document that check.

Microsoft announced in November 2025 that Copilot prompts and responses would be processed in Australia. An editor’s note on 3 April 2026 moved that to the end of 2026. Until it lands, the honest line in a client disclosure is that Copilot processing may happen outside Australia. DeskMate processes in Sydney today: the application, database, storage and the model endpoint. See the data path.

How do approvals and the audit trail compare?

Copilot keeps a strong record. Prompts and responses are retained and searchable through Microsoft Purview, which suits an eDiscovery request. For approvals, Copilot Studio lets you build a step into an agent flow where a person approves before it continues. It is a step your team designs and maintains, flow by flow.

In DeskMate, every write to the ledger and every message to a client waits for a person, and that step cannot be moved or switched off. Each run records what it read, what it produced and who approved it, which is the documented check TPB(GS) 55/2026 asks for.

What does Copilot really cost?

The seat is the part Microsoft advertises. Copilot Business is AU$31.40 a user a month on an existing plan, or a Microsoft 365 plan with Copilot starts at AU$35.20, both paid yearly and before GST. For someone drafting in Word and summarising meetings, that is close to the whole bill.

The work that looks most like DeskMate’s is charged separately. Since 16 June 2026, Microsoft bills by use, in Copilot Credits, for Copilot Cowork, and says no Cowork use is included with a Copilot licence. A Copilot Studio agent that starts on a schedule or an event, rather than when a licensed person asks it something, uses credits too, even in a fully licensed firm. Microsoft’s own rates put an agent action at 5 credits and a search of the firm’s own data at 10. Credits come in packs of 25,000 for AU$299.30 a month, they do not roll over, and when prepaid credits run out the agent stops unless pay-as-you-go billing is switched on.

For a small firm running one daily agent, the credits are modest. Running the same check once for every client is where it grows. At 27 credits a run (the trigger, four reads from connected systems and one written summary), a daily check across 200 clients comes to about 119,000 credits a month, or five packs (about AU$1,500 a month) on top of the seats. That is our arithmetic from Microsoft’s published rates, not a Microsoft quote. Get one for your own workload before you commit.

DeskMate is priced per seat, from $149 a month, and runs are part of the plan rather than billed one by one. Only the people who run or approve the work need a seat.