Testing Copilot in Excel on a sample P&L: questions with known answers
The quickest way to learn how well Copilot reads financial data is to ask it questions you already know the answers to. The free Executive Review workbook keeps its monthly P&L in an Excel Table, and the correct answers are below. Ask one at a time and compare.
Set up the file
Download the Executive Review workbook in Thai or English and open it in an Excel with Copilot. The data is on the PL_Data sheet (ข้อมูลกำไรขาดทุน in the Thai file), in a table named T_PL_Data. Each row is one month of one version: Actual, Budget, Latest Estimate and Prior Forecast, and months from 2025 are in there too. Those two features are the traps the test is meant to expose.
The figures are fictional and in baht; the answers below are rounded to millions. This article does not show Copilot’s own answers, because they change with the model. It gives the correct answers from the file to compare against.
Question 1: August 2026 revenue
Correct answer: Actual THB 10.921m, Budget 11.437m, so actual is 4.51% below budget.
An answer several times larger means Copilot added every version for that month. Ask again, naming the version column.
Question 2: Net profit against budget
Correct answer: Actual THB 1.648m, Budget 1.945m.
This checks whether Copilot uses the Net profit column already in the table or rebuilds profit from a partial list of costs. If it rebuilds and misses, point it at the Net profit column.
Question 3: Gross margin
Correct answer: Actual 34.22%, Budget 35.81%, a gap of -1.59 percentage points.
A change in a ratio should be reported in percentage points, not as a percentage of a percentage. If Copilot gives a relative change, ask for points. More in budget variance.
Question 4: Year-to-date revenue
Correct answer: Actual THB 81.1m, Budget 85.2m.
The table also holds 2025 months. An answer that is too high has crossed into last year. Ask Copilot to write the result as a formula and check that the date condition has both a start and an end. YTD versus full-year forecast is covered in YTD and the full-year forecast.
When an answer is wrong
Put everything in one prompt: table name, column, version and date range, and ask Copilot to place the result as a formula in a nearby cell. A correct formula filters on both version and date. The Executive Review sheet in the same file already computes these figures with formulas, so it is a second reference.
The test tells you how precise your prompts need to be before you use Copilot on your company’s own files. For the wider picture, see Copilot for financial reporting.
Common questions
Should I use the Thai or the English file?
Either. The figures are identical; the sheet names and column headers differ, so type the names from the file you have open.
Why does the article not show Copilot’s answers?
Copilot’s answers change with the model and settings. What does not change is the correct answer from the file, which checks any version of Copilot.
Read next
Figures in the articles are synthetic sample data, used to show the method. They are not a real company's results.
