Tecala
From 1 December 2026, new Microsoft 365 Copilot Business licences bought through a Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) will have usage-based billing switched on by default. Copilot has been a fixed fee per person for access to AI. The agentic work in Microsoft’s 25 September update is charged by what it does.
Australia is not in the first group of countries, which gives local organisations time to work out which of their processes are worth paying an AI agent to do. The licence count stops being the number that matters. The question that replaces it is which work is worth paying for.
What Microsoft announced: Home, Code and Autopilot
On 25 September 2026, Microsoft rebuilt Copilot around three capabilities, each designed to let AI carry longer stretches of work with less prompting.
- Home brings Copilot Chat and Cowork into one place. Cowork takes on multi-step tasks, such as a tender response or a customer briefing, and produces finished Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. A “Today” view covering email, calendar, Teams and tasks enters private preview in October.
- Code builds apps, dashboards and automations from a plain-English description and hosts them inside your own Microsoft 365 tenant. It’s designed for small internal tools.
- Autopilot is an agent with its own identity, memory and workspace in your tenant. You give it a role, an objective and limits, and it keeps working: following up in Teams channels, running recurring tasks and picking projects back up without a fresh prompt.
Home and Code are rolling out first through Microsoft’s Frontier early-access program. Autopilot is in private preview, with no general availability date yet.
How Copilot Business billing is changing
The per-user licence still covers Copilot Chat and Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams. The new agentic work, including Cowork, Code, Autopilot, long-running agents and access to frontier models, is charged by consumption through Copilot Credits.
For new Microsoft 365 Copilot Business subscriptions bought through a CSP, Microsoft will switch usage-based billing on by default.
- The date has moved. Microsoft first said 2 November 2026. The default switch-on is now 1 December 2026, with partner test environments opening on 2 November.
- Australia isn’t in the first wave. Microsoft’s partner announcement of 1 October lists Australia among the markets where it will initially not be available, and says it will share more as availability expands.
- Every user gets a monthly limit. Partner guidance puts the default at 4,000 Copilot Credits per user, and administrators can change it or set it to zero.
- Existing licences are not switched over. The default applies to new purchases only.
Copilot spend now follows the work
A seat licence is easy to approve because its cost is known in advance: people multiplied by price. Agentic work has no such number. What an agent costs depends on what it is asked to do and how often.
Shaun Leisegang, Chief Automation, Data and AI Officer at Tecala, says businesses “need to start thinking less about how many people have Copilot licences and more about the value of the work their AI Agents are delivering.”
Copilot Credits meter what an agent consumes, which leaves the organisation to measure what the work is worth. The default limit Microsoft sets is the same for every user and has no view of which processes the credits are spent on. That makes the credit limit an investment decision. Each process that receives credits needs an owner, a measure of how it performs today and a date to review the result.
Leisegang advises against a blanket approach in either direction.
“Setting everyone’s limit to zero stifles innovation, while leaving everyone on the default risks uncontrolled consumption. Instead, identify the business processes where AI can deliver measurable value, allocate credits accordingly and monitor the return on investment.”
Shaun Leisegang
Chief Automation, Data and AI Officer, Tecala
What to decide before usage-based billing reaches Australia
The period before the default reaches Australian tenants is the time to build the case process by process.
- Name the two or three processes where agentic Copilot could earn its cost, such as monthly reporting packs or tender responses, and the person who owns each.
- Record how each performs today, in hours taken, turnaround time or error rate, so the first month’s results have something to be compared against.
- Allocate credits to the people running those processes and keep everyone else’s limit low until a process earns more.
- Review credits spent against the measure each month, and move credits towards the work that returns the most.
Not sure how ready your organisation is for this shift? Check your AI readiness with Tecala’s AI Readiness Scorecard →
Agent access belongs in the same conversation. An Autopilot agent works with the access it’s given, so review SharePoint and Microsoft 365 permissions before agents arrive. Oversharing that went unnoticed for years becomes visible to a tool that reads everything it can.
“Organisations need to treat agents as part of their workforce, with clearly defined identities, permissions, accountability and oversight. Giving an agent unrestricted access to poorly governed information is a risk that needs to be addressed before deployment, not afterwards.”
Shaun Leisegang · Chief Automation, Data and AI Officer, Tecala
For an organisation of 100 to 250 people, this is one working session with IT, finance and the heads of the teams that will use Copilot most. It needs no new hires, and it means the first Copilot Credits invoice reflects choices your leadership made.
Tecala works with Australian organisations at exactly this stage, where Copilot moves from licences and pilots into everyday work. Leisegang sees the larger opportunity in bringing Robots (Automations), AI Agents and People together, with people focused on judgement, creativity and relationships while agents and robots take on a growing share of the execution.
An AI Readiness Workshop starts with the processes you want AI to take on and finishes with the credits, permissions and governance to match, so the first process you fund has a measure from day one.
If your organisation is preparing for usage-based Copilot billing and wants to understand which processes are worth funding first, complete the form on this page to discuss an AI Readiness Assessment, and our team will be in touch.
Frequently asked questions
When does usage-based billing start for Microsoft 365 Copilot Business?
For new Microsoft 365 Copilot Business subscriptions bought through a Cloud Solution Provider, Microsoft says usage-based billing will be switched on by default from 1 December 2026. Australia is not included in the first rollout group.
What are Copilot Credits used for?
Copilot Credits are used to meter consumption for agentic work, including experiences such as Cowork, Code, Autopilot, long-running agents and access to frontier models. The standard per-user licence still covers Copilot Chat and Copilot in Microsoft 365 apps.
How should organisations set Copilot Credit limits?
Start with the business processes where AI can deliver measurable value. Give each process an owner, record how it performs today, allocate credits accordingly and review the result regularly rather than applying the same limit to everyone.
What should Australian organisations do before usage-based billing arrives?
Identify the first processes worth funding, establish baseline measures such as time, turnaround or error rates, and review Microsoft 365 and SharePoint permissions before agents are given access. Governance, ownership and oversight should be agreed before deployment.
