AI in your ERP: what Exact, AFAS, Business Central and SAP offer themselves

What does AI in your ERP mean?

Two different things. The vendor's own AI works inside the ERP, on the ERP's data, for the users of that ERP. An AI agent across systems works on top of your ERP, CRM, service desk and channels, and talks to customers, dealers and colleagues. They do not exclude each other; most companies use both.

The vendor's AI is the obvious first step for finance and back-office work. An agent across systems is a separate choice, for questions and processes that start outside the ERP. Below, per vendor, what is available as of October 2026.

What does the AI in Exact Online do?

As of September 2026, Exact Online Boekhouden has AI agents for finance tasks inside Exact Online: recognising purchase invoices, matching payments, answering how-to questions and predicting payment dates. A Financial Agent for KPI analysis was announced on 3 September 2026 and is in beta. Exact's MCP server is announced on its roadmap, without a date.

• Purchase Agent: recognises purchase invoices and suggests a ledger account.
• Bank Agent: matches payments. Support Agent: answers how-to questions.
• Debtor Agent: predicts payment dates and sends reminders, from the Plus edition.
• MCP server: announced on Exact's roadmap page, no release date published.

• Exact Online AI agent integration, with Exact's own AI in detail

What does Jonas, the AI in AFAS Profit, do?

Jonas is the collective name for AI in AFAS. It analyses data in a workflow and fills fields, runs a prompt at a step in a workflow through a Jonas assistant, and in Profit 8 lets you chat with Jonas inside a workflow. It is available to all customers at no extra cost, under a fair use policy, once activated per environment.

• Profit 8, planned for mid July 2026, adds chat with Jonas in workflows, automatic mapping of import fields and expense claims with AI in InSite.
• Scan & herken reads the header of purchase invoices, not the lines, and recognises invoices in other languages than Dutch or English less well.
• According to AFAS, Jonas in workflows and replies runs in AFAS's own Microsoft tenant with the model within the European Economic Area, and customer data is not used for training.
• MCP: AFAS is investigating an official MCP server. As of June 2026 no AI integration is certified, and AFAS strongly advises against uncertified MCP servers and AI agents.

• AFAS Profit AI agent integration

What do Copilot and the agents in Business Central do?

Copilot in Business Central is included in the licence at no extra cost, online only, with features such as bank reconciliation assist, record summaries and suggestions on sales documents. The Sales Order Agent and the Payables Agent go further: they work from a mailbox and prepare quotes or purchase invoice drafts. Those agents are billed per use in Copilot Credits.

• Sales Order Agent: analyses customer requests by email, always creates a sales quote first, and lets designated users review every outgoing message. The mailbox must be a Microsoft 365 mailbox.
• Payables Agent: turns vendor invoices from a mailbox into purchase invoice drafts, which supervisors review depending on the settings; it does not post the invoice and does not approve vendors.
• Credits per action, for example 5 Copilot Credits to create or update a sales order, and 50 per purchase invoice plus 5 per line for the Payables Agent. When the quota is used up, the capability stops until capacity is added.
• List prices in the Netherlands, per user per month, annual billing, excluding VAT: Essentials €69.30, Premium €95.30.
• MCP server: generally available since April 2026, read-only by default; writing is configured per API.
• Dutch: Microsoft's availability table lists Dutch for both agents, but the agents' own pages say English only or leave Dutch out. Test in Dutch before you rely on it.

What does SAP Business One offer?

In the SAP Business One Web client, Ask AI answers questions about data you select in a list or record, using general knowledge and public information, and an AI assistant writes SQL queries from a description. Both run through SAP AI Core on a pay-as-you-go SAP BTP account; the AI cannot query or change Business One data itself. SAP also publishes sample code for an MCP server.

• Invoice scanning: an automation template uploads supplier invoices to SAP's Document Information Extraction service, after which the Electronic Document Import Wizard creates a draft invoice.
• MCP: since 10.0 FP 2608, SAP provides MCP server sample code on top of the Service Layer. It reads and writes, and pauses before writes to ask the user for approval. It is sample code, not a packaged product.

The four side by side

AI in the ERP, per vendor (as of October 2026)

What does the AI in your ERP not do?

It works inside the ERP. The vendors' own documentation points the same way: Copilot in Business Central is unaware of your Microsoft 365 data, its chat can only view data, and Ask AI in SAP Business One cannot query or change Business One data itself. None of the four has an agent built into the ERP that answers customers on your website or WhatsApp with data from your ERP and CRM together. With Microsoft you can build one yourself in Copilot Studio, a separate product.

That is not a shortcoming but a choice of scope. The vendor optimises its own processes. Questions that start with a customer, a dealer or a colleague, and that need the ERP, the CRM, a WMS or the service desk at the same time, fall outside it.

When do you need an agent across systems?

When the question comes from outside the ERP or the answer needs more than one system. A dealer asks on WhatsApp whether 40 pieces can ship this week; the answer needs stock from the ERP, an open deal from the CRM and the delivery status from the warehouse. A managed agent combines those, with rights per role and approval for actions that change records.

1. 01

   Use what your ERP offers

   Switch on the vendor's AI for finance and back-office tasks. It is often included or billed per use.

2. 02

   List the questions outside the ERP

   Which questions from customers, dealers and colleagues need data from several systems? Those are the candidates for an agent.

3. 03

   Choose one process

   Start with one process, such as order status or quote requests, read-only, and add write actions with approval later.

• What an MCP server is and what it does not arrange
• Internal AI agent that asks your own systems