Sage announced the plan on 5 November at Sage Future for Partners, its partner event in Atlanta. Sage sells finance, HR and payroll software to small and medium-sized businesses. Sage Intacct is its financial management software.

In the workspaces, finance teams would work with AI agents from Sage and its partners. An AI agent is a program that uses an AI model to carry out tasks. Each workspace would bring the agents together in one view with the related financial data, tasks and approval steps.

Jon Fasoli, the executive responsible for Sage Intacct, said the agents do the routine work. Finance staff review and approve it according to the controls the company has defined in the Sage AI platform. ‘Finance teams shouldn’t have to choose between AI-native ways of working and the controls, governance and trust they rely on to run their business’, Fasoli said in a Sage press release.

Compare the Cloud reported that Sage describes everything except the accounts payable workspace as an upcoming feature, not a finished product.

Accounts payable workspace builds on AP Agent

Sage’s press release said the first workspace is intended for accounts payable and is due to enter limited rollout with selected customers in November. ERP News reported that Sage has not given a timetable for broader access.

The workspace relies on Sage’s AP Agent. The agent helps process supplier invoices, match them to purchase orders, identify exceptions and route invoices for approval. ERP News said the workspace would bring supplier invoices, the exceptions the agent finds and the approval steps together in one place.

Citing Sage’s release notes, ERP News points out that Intacct already performs three-way matching: it compares lines on the purchase order, the receipt and the invoice, and flags quantity and price variances. The publication said that in Sage’s documentation, invoices entered in accounts payable and transactions in the Purchasing module have separate approval routes. Sage’s press release did not say how the workspace handles these two routes.

Agents from Sage and partners

Sage’s existing agents include Finance Intelligence Agent, which lets users ask about Intacct data in plain language. Other agents help with the period close, identifying risks and control gaps, timesheets and benchmarking the finances of non-profit organisations. Compare the Cloud reported that a Cash Agent and an AR Agent for accounts receivable are also planned.

Sage’s documentation says Finance Intelligence Agent is still in the Early Adopter programme and customers are getting access through a phased rollout. The agent works only in US English. It is offered in Australia, Canada, Singapore, South Africa, the US and the UK. Users need access to the agent and permissions for the data they ask about. Sage advises checking any totals the agent calculates before acting on them.

Partner-built agents are already available in the Sage Agent Marketplace. Customers subscribe to an agent, activate it in Intacct and assign its permissions in the agent management console. The agent is used through the Sage Copilot assistant. Sage plans to bring partner agents into the workspaces as it develops them.