AI ROI calculator: does the saving survive the credit bill?
Enter what the exception cost before the AI agent, what it costs now, your Copilot Credit use and your rework. The calculator nets them, then grades whether your finance team would accept the claim.
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- Results are indicative. They are computed only from the figures you enter.
- Reference points below are published third-party figures with their own scope, sample and date. They are not predictions about your business.
- Run your own due diligence before you put any output in a budget, a board paper or a vendor decision.
- Microsoft changes prices and billing rates. Check the current Copilot Studio licensing guide.
- Prices are in US dollars. If you work in another currency, edit the price per credit and keep every other figure in one currency.
- IntelliConnectQ does not store or receive what you enter.
Reference points (not used in your result)
Published figures to sanity-check your own numbers against. Each has its own scope. None of them describes your business, and the calculator never feeds them into your result.
| Measure | Figure | Scope and source |
|---|---|---|
| Expedited costs as a percentage of freight cost | Median 12.0% | APQC Open Standards Benchmarking, measure 108919, 5,211 companies, cross-industry. Freight cost is the total annual outside-carrier freight bill, and the measure also includes private-fleet cost components. The page publishes the median only. Source: APQC |
| Premium freight charges as a percentage of total freight charges | Median 8.0% | APQC Open Standards Benchmarking, measure 103083, 1,964 companies, cross-industry. Premium freight means shipments typically booked between four hours and five days before pickup. The page publishes the median only. Source: APQC |
| Respondents attributing any EBIT impact to AI | 37% | McKinsey Global Survey on the state of AI, 1,719 participants, 97 nations, 4 May to 8 June 2026. About the same share as the prior year. Source: McKinsey, The state of AI in 2026: On the road to ROI, August 2026 |
| AI high performers (at least 5% of EBIT from AI and "significant" impact) | About 6% | Same McKinsey survey; high performers (n = 92) are about twice as likely as others to report defined processes to measure the impact of AI initiatives. Source: McKinsey, as above, pages 3 and 19 |
| Organizations whose AI use was constrained by operating costs, including tokens | 20% | Same McKinsey survey, respondents whose organizations regularly use AI in at least one function. Source: McKinsey, as above, page 15 |
| CIOs who say their enterprise realized significant or transformational value from AI | 13% | Gartner survey of 2,002 CIOs and technology executives, May to July 2026. Gartner release, 19 October 2026. Source: Gartner |
| CEOs who struggle to demonstrate AI financial returns | 44% | Gartner 2027 CEO Survey, 203 global CEOs and senior business executives, April and May 2026. Gartner release, 20 October 2026. Source: Gartner |
| Non-technology S&P 1200 companies reporting AI-enabled cost reduction material enough for company-level disclosure | 4% | Gartner research on 1,010 non-technology companies in the S&P 1200, first half of 2026, presented by Nate Suda at IT Symposium/Xpo 2026. Large public companies, not mid-market operations. Source: Gartner, Day 3 Highlights, 21 October 2026 |
| Organizations deploying AI that will have a dedicated function mapping AI total cost to value or profit by 2029 | 60% (prediction) | Gartner prediction presented by Daryl Plummer at IT Symposium/Xpo 2026. A forecast, not survey data. Source: Gartner, Day 3 Highlights, 21 October 2026 |
Copilot Credit billing rates used in the estimator
| Agent feature | Billing rate |
|---|---|
| Classic answer | 1 Copilot Credit |
| Generative answer | 2 Copilot Credits |
| Agent action | 5 Copilot Credits |
| Tenant graph grounding for messages | 10 Copilot Credits |
| Agent flow actions | 13 Copilot Credits per 100 actions |
| Text and generative AI tools, basic / standard / premium | 0.1 / 1.5 / 10 Copilot Credits per 1K tokens |
| Content processing tools | 8 Copilot Credits per page |
| Pay-as-you-go price | $0.01 per Copilot Credit, billed monthly in arrears |
| Prepaid pack | $200 per month for 25,000 Copilot Credits |
Prepaid capacity is enforced monthly, and Microsoft disables custom agents when a tenant reaches 125% of prepaid capacity, so a runaway agent shows up as a hard stop, not only a bill.
Formulas used
Baseline monthly cost = baseline events x baseline cost per event Monthly cost after AI = events after x cost per event after Gross monthly saving = baseline monthly cost - monthly cost after AI Credit cost = credits per month x price per credit AI spend = credit cost + other monthly AI cost Rework cost = AI decisions x share reversed x cost to undo one Net monthly benefit = gross saving - AI spend - rework cost Saving that survives = net monthly benefit / gross saving Credits per approved = credits / (AI decisions x (1 - share reversed)) Payback (months) = one-time cost / net monthly benefit (if net is positive) Claim grade: 6 or 7 of 7 checks with a baseline recorded before launch = Defensible. 4 or 5 checks, or 6-7 without a pre-launch baseline = Partly defensible. 3 or fewer = Not yet defensible.
Questions finance asks about AI ROI
How do you calculate AI ROI for a Business Central agent?
Take the monthly cost of the exception before the agent: events times cost per event. Subtract the monthly cost after. Subtract Copilot Credit spend, other AI cost, and the cost of AI decisions your team overrode or reversed. What remains is the net monthly benefit. Record the baseline before launch, or finance has nothing to measure against.
How many Copilot Credits does an agent action use?
Microsoft's published rates: a classic answer is 1 credit, a generative answer 2, an agent action 5, tenant graph grounding 10, and agent flow actions 13 per 100 actions. Pay-as-you-go is $0.01 per credit. A prepaid pack is $200 for 25,000 credits per month. Your count depends on how the agent is built, so check the consumption report in the Power Platform admin center.
What makes an AI cost saving defensible to finance?
A baseline recorded before launch, a full business cycle of measurement, a named owner for each AI decision, and rework counted against the saving. Gartner's Nate Suda adds three tests: what makes the cost necessary and can AI change it, what must happen for the economic base to change, and what financial result the organization can credibly claim.
Does the calculator store or send my numbers?
No. It runs in your browser. Nothing you enter is saved or sent to IntelliConnectQ. The copy button puts text on your own clipboard.
ROI proves the spend. The Diagnostic shows where decisions stall before it.
The saving you just calculated came from a decision that closed faster. The Decision Latency Diagnostic scores five stages of your own decision path, Signal, Route, Approve, Execute and Audit, in 12 questions. It measures decision latency. It does not measure AI ROI.
For the argument behind the checks, read AI pilot stop criteria, why rework, not tokens, is the AI agent cost and the emergency freight decision latency tax. The thesis behind all three is decision infrastructure: named owners, approval thresholds and an audit trail on every decision.
Run the Decision Latency DiagnosticSources and credits
This calculator compiles published information from the sources below. Figures belong to their publishers and are reproduced with attribution. Last checked 23 October 2026.
- Microsoft, Copilot Studio: Billing rates and management, Microsoft Learn (updated 3 August 2026; page revised 15 October 2026).
- Microsoft, Licensing and Copilot Credits, Microsoft Learn (last updated 16 June 2026).
- Microsoft, Copilot Studio standard harness licensing, Microsoft Learn (updated 3 August 2026).
- Microsoft, Microsoft Copilot Studio Licensing Guide, October 2026 (pay-as-you-go price of $0.01 per Copilot Credit), via Microsoft's licensing guide link.
- Microsoft, Copilot Credits Guide, October 2026 (pay-as-you-go pricing of $0.01 per Copilot Credit; credits pooled at the tenant level).
- Microsoft, Microsoft Copilot Studio product page (prepaid pack of 25,000 Copilot Credits at $200 per month).
- McKinsey & Company (QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey), Dan Tinkoff, Lieven Van der Veken and Michael Chui, with Tara Balakrishnan, The state of AI in 2026: On the road to ROI, August 2026.
- APQC (American Productivity & Quality Center), Open Standards Benchmarking: Expedited costs as a percentage of freight cost (measure 108919) and Premium freight charges as a percentage of total freight charges (measure 103083).
- Gartner, Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo 2026 Orlando: Day 3 Highlights, 21 October 2026 (Nate Suda, How AI (Actually) Cuts Costs; Daryl Plummer, Top Strategic Predictions for 2027 and Beyond).
- Gartner, Survey finds only 13% of CIOs say their enterprise has realized significant or transformational value from AI, 19 October 2026.
- Gartner, Says 44% of CEOs struggle to demonstrate AI financial returns as technology becomes central to growth, 20 October 2026.
Microsoft, Copilot Studio and Microsoft 365 are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. McKinsey, APQC and Gartner are trademarks of their respective owners. IntelliConnectQ is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them. The claim-test wording adapts Gartner's three tests; the 7-check grade is IntelliConnectQ's own scoring rule.