Joule is SAP's AI across its cloud applications. Joule Work answers questions, navigates and handles simple tasks in natural language. Joule Assistants coordinate Joule Agents that carry out multistep business processes, such as accruals or dispute handling. Joule Studio lets customers build their own agents.

The base version is. SAP says Base AI, including Joule Work, base, comes with SAP cloud subscriptions at no additional cost, and lists Joule Base at USD 0.00 for customers with an SAP cloud solution that integrates with Joule. Assistants, agents and other Premium AI features are charged in AI Units.

How much do SAP Joule agents cost?

SAP charges per agent action in AI Units: 0.02 AI Units per action for standard agents and 0.05 for advanced agents. AI Units are bought annually and expire after 12 months if unused. SAP doesn't publish a dollar price per AI Unit; it's set in your contract.

What finance agents does SAP Joule have?

SAP lists finance assistants for the financial close, accounts payable, accounts receivable, cash and treasury, consolidation, planning, revenue recognition, tax and others. The Financial Closing Assistant, for example, uses agents for accounting accruals, journal entries, journal entry verification, clearing, intercompany matching and asset accounting anomaly detection.

Does SAP use my data to train AI models?

SAP says customer data isn't used for training or retraining by the external model providers it uses. Some SAP AI services have optional learning features that use customer data; SAP says customers decide whether to turn them on, service by service.

Are SAP Joule agents generally available?

It varies by agent and product. SAP's own finance training labels at least one of the agents it demonstrates as a beta release that may not be generally available, and directs customers to the SAP Discovery Center for current availability.

SAP Joule for finance: what the agents do and how SAP charges for them

Joule started as SAP's chat assistant. SAP now uses the name for three things: a conversational layer that comes free with SAP cloud subscriptions, assistants and agents that carry out finance work such as accruals, clearing and dispute handling, and a studio for building your own. This guide covers what SAP documents about each for finance teams, which parts are free, and how SAP prices the rest, from SAP's own pages read on November 5, 2026.

Guide. Updated November 5, 2026. By AI Accounting Vendors. 8-minute read.

Key points

What it is: SAP's AI across its cloud applications: Joule Work for questions, navigation and simple tasks, Joule Assistants that coordinate Joule Agents on multistep work, and Joule Studio for custom agents.
What's free: SAP says Base AI, including Joule Work, base, comes with SAP cloud subscriptions at no additional cost. Joule Base is listed at USD 0.00 and needs a subscription to an SAP cloud solution that integrates with Joule.
What costs AI Units: Premium AI: agentic Joule Work, assistants and agents, and services such as Document AI. SAP charges 0.02 AI Units per action for standard agents and 0.05 for advanced agents. It doesn't publish a dollar price per AI Unit.
For finance: SAP lists finance assistants for the close, payables, receivables, cash and treasury, consolidation, planning, tax and more, each made up of named agents. Some are labeled beta in SAP's training, so check availability before you plan around one.

What SAP Joule is now

SAP's terms for the parts of Joule have changed several times. As SAP describes them today:

Joule Work, base: Natural-language help inside SAP applications: ask questions, move to the right screen, find information, get guidance from SAP Help, and create, read, update or delete business object data through a conversation.
Joule Agents: "AI agents with business process expertise that reliably execute multistep tasks across SAP and non-SAP systems," in SAP's words. SAP says they use the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Agent2Agent (A2A) protocols to work across systems (SAP (opens in a new tab)).
Joule Assistants: Role-based coordinators. Each one knows a business process, such as the financial close, and calls the agents that do the work. SAP doesn't sell or price assistants separately.
Joule Work, Agentic Thinking: What SAP calls an intent-based workspace for more complex orchestration across web, desktop, mobile and in-app experiences. It's part of Premium AI.
Joule Studio and SAP AI Agent Hub: Joule Studio builds custom agents, apps and n8n workflows, in low-code or pro-code, with frameworks such as LangChain and LlamaIndex. SAP AI Agent Hub inventories and governs agents across your landscape, including ones from other vendors.

Joule agents for finance teams

SAP groups its finance AI under what it calls Autonomous Finance, across six domains: financial planning and analysis, treasury and working capital, accounting and financial close, revenue management, governance, risk and compliance, and tax and trade (SAP Learning (opens in a new tab)). The assistants SAP lists for the accounting side, and the agents each one uses:

Four SAP finance assistants and their agents, as listed on SAP's assistant pages (published October 6, 2026; read November 5, 2026)
Assistant	Agents SAP lists	What SAP says it does
Financial Closing Assistant (opens in a new tab)	Accounting Accruals; Journal Entry; Journal Entry Verification; Journal Attachment Validation; Receivables and Payables Clearing; Intercompany Matching and Reconciliation; Asset Accounting Anomaly Detection; Financial Consistency Analysis; Analytical Business Insights; Financial Closing Orchestration	Coordinates the agents that run the period close: calculating and posting accruals, posting journal entries, clearing receivables, payables and GL balances, reconciling goods receipts with invoice receipts and matching intercompany transactions. SAP says users control the agents' level of engagement for journal postings, clearing and analysis
Accounts Payable Assistant (opens in a new tab)	Payment Inquiry Handling; Bank Account Validation; Payment Exception and Resolution; Payment Risk Insights; Accounts Payable Analytics; Receivables and Payables Clearing; Accounts Payable Orchestration	Takes payment requests from documents and emails, validates supplier bank accounts during enrollment, explains and routes payment exceptions, checks payment risk against internal and external signals, and reconciles vendor statements
Accounts Receivable Assistant (opens in a new tab)	Collection Account Preparation; Collections Email Outreach; Dispute Creation; Dispute Resolution; Dunning Insights; Receivable Account Analysis; Receivables and Payables Clearing; Accounts Receivable Orchestration	Prepares collectors for customer calls, sends collection emails, creates dispute cases from emails, and recommends the next action on open disputes
Cash and Treasury Assistant (opens in a new tab)	Cash Positioning; Cash Forecasting; Bank Relationship; FX Risk Hedging; Market Data Validation; Treasury Financing; Treasury Operations; Cash and Treasury Orchestration	Watches cash positions for concentration risk, overdrafts and idle cash, forecasts liquidity by currency and entity, and monitors treasury processes for exceptions

SAP's finance assistant list (opens in a new tab) also includes Billing, Expense Management, Financial Consolidation, Financial Planning, Governance, Overhead Accounting, Revenue Recognition, Recurring Receivables, Tax and Compliance, International Trade, Pricing, Project Management, Quoting, Sales Operations, Travel, and Access Governance and Security.

An example: the Dispute Resolution Agent

SAP's training course describes the Dispute Resolution Agent scanning invoices and contracts for pricing mismatches, quantity differences and missed terms, then suggesting fixes such as a credit memo or an adjustment to a future invoice. The same lesson carries a caution that the agent shown "is a BETA release and may not be generally available," and points to the SAP Discovery Center as the authoritative source for availability (SAP Learning (opens in a new tab)).

What Joule costs: Base AI, AI Units and Joule Studio

SAP's commercial model (opens in a new tab) has three tiers:

SAP AI commercial model, from SAP's pricing page (read November 5, 2026)
Tier	What's in it	How it's charged
Base AI	Joule Work, base, and the embedded AI built into SAP applications (which varies by solution)	Included with SAP cloud subscriptions, with no AI Units or extra license. Joule Base is listed at USD 0.00 a month, on a 1 to 3 year contract (SAP Store (opens in a new tab))
Premium AI	Joule Work, Agentic Thinking; Joule Assistants and Joule Agents; SAP Joule for Consultants; Document AI, Document Grounding and other AI services	AI Units, consumed when the AI performs work
Custom-built AI	Agents, apps and n8n workflows you build in Joule Studio	Authoring is free within fair-use limits. Production runs are billed on consumption (compute, storage, agent memory, workflow runs and AI tokens) through an SAP BTP or Cloud Platform Enterprise Agreement, or pay-as-you-go

How AI Units work

AI Units are SAP's single currency for Premium AI. You buy them annually, they sit in one shared pool, and SAP says unused units expire after 12 months.
Agents are charged per action: 0.02 AI Units per action for standard agents and 0.05 for advanced agents. An action is a single step, such as calling a service, triggering a workflow or generating a response. A task can take several actions, and an agent that isn't running uses nothing.
Assistants aren't charged separately; SAP measures usage at the agent level. Extending an agent with text instructions adds no charge.
SAP Joule for Consultants costs 35 AI Units per assigned user per month, with a pooled allowance of 22,900 requests per user, then 2 AI Units per 1,000 extra requests.
If you use more than you bought, SAP says you can keep going, with overage charged at the contract's AI Unit rate. Consumption is tracked in SAP for Me.

SAP doesn't publish a dollar price for an AI Unit, so the cost of an agent depends on what your contract sets. To estimate, count actions rather than tasks: a task that takes a standard agent ten steps uses 0.2 AI Units, and the same ten steps on an advanced agent use 0.5.

Before you plan around a Joule agent

SAP Joule for finance: questions to settle first

Is the agent generally available for your SAP product and release? SAP's training points to the SAP Discovery Center for current availability, and some Joule integrations start in Early Adopter Care.
Do you have an SAP cloud subscription that integrates with Joule? That's SAP's listed prerequisite for Joule Base.
Which agents are standard and which are advanced, and roughly how many actions does your monthly volume of accruals, clearings or disputes take?
Who approves what the agent posts? SAP says Financial Closing Assistant users control the agents' level of engagement; decide where a person reviews journal entries, accruals and payments, and record it in your control documentation.
What evidence does the agent keep? SAP says the Journal Entry Verification Agent provides an evidence trail; confirm that your auditors can see who or what proposed, approved and posted each entry.
Are any optional learning features turned on? SAP leaves those to the customer, service by service.

What SAP says about your data

SAP's training on AI data handling says that when SAP uses external foundation models, "Customer data is not used for model training or retraining by external providers," that data is processed only to fulfill the request, and that SAP-managed layers can apply data minimization, masking and filtering first. Some SAP AI services offer optional learning features that improve from customer data; SAP says those depend on the service and that customers decide whether to enable them. Retention depends on the service and its configuration (SAP Learning (opens in a new tab)).

On control, SAP says its agents and assistants "keep humans in control and actions authorized, observable, and traceable" (SAP (opens in a new tab)). For an agent that posts accruals or journal entries, that is something to test in your own system rather than assume: SOX and audit work will ask who authorized each posting.

Joule, Microsoft's Finance Agent and specialist tools

SAP finance teams have three ways to add AI, and they aren't exclusive:

Joule inside SAP: Works on SAP data where it lives, under SAP's roles and authorizations, and is priced in AI Units beyond the free base.
Microsoft's Finance Agent: Works in Excel and Outlook and is licensed with Microsoft 365 Copilot. Microsoft lists SAP among the ERPs its collections feature in Outlook connects to, and its Excel reconciliation works on data brought in from other financial systems. See Copilot for Finance.
Specialist AI tools: AP, AR, close and treasury tools that connect to SAP and bring their own AI. They often cover several ERPs, which matters if you run SAP alongside other ledgers.

Directory tools that document an SAP integration
Tool	SOC 2	Trains on customer data	Review	Starting price
BlackLineClose & reconciliation	Type II	No	Human review	Not published
HighRadiusAR & collections	Type II	Unconfirmed	Unconfirmed	Not published
AppZenAP & invoices	Unconfirmed	Yes	Configurable	Not published
StampliAP & invoices	Unconfirmed	Unconfirmed	Unconfirmed	Not published
TipaltiAP & invoices	Type II	No	Human review	$99/month
Vic.aiAP & invoices	Type II	Yes	Autonomous	Not published
MediusAP & invoices	Type II	Unconfirmed	Configurable	Not published
KollenoAR & collections	Type II	No	Configurable	$545 per user/month
AgicapCash & treasury	Type II	No	Configurable	Not published
NakisaLease accounting	Type II	Unconfirmed	Human review	Not published

For expenses, SAP Concur has its own Joule features and agents; see the SAP Concur listing. SAP Business One, SAP's ERP for small and midsize businesses, takes a different route: its AI features run through SAP AI Core, set up and metered separately from the Business One license; see the SAP Business One listing and NetSuite vs SAP Business One. For the wider category, see AI reconciliation and close software and AP automation software.

SAP Joule: questions

What is SAP Joule?: Joule is SAP's AI across its cloud applications. Joule Work answers questions, navigates and handles simple tasks in natural language. Joule Assistants coordinate Joule Agents that carry out multistep business processes, such as accruals or dispute handling. Joule Studio lets customers build their own agents.
Is SAP Joule free?: The base version is. SAP says Base AI, including Joule Work, base, comes with SAP cloud subscriptions at no additional cost, and lists Joule Base at USD 0.00 for customers with an SAP cloud solution that integrates with Joule. Assistants, agents and other Premium AI features are charged in AI Units.
How much do SAP Joule agents cost?: SAP charges per agent action in AI Units: 0.02 AI Units per action for standard agents and 0.05 for advanced agents. AI Units are bought annually and expire after 12 months if unused. SAP doesn't publish a dollar price per AI Unit; it's set in your contract.
What finance agents does SAP Joule have?: SAP lists finance assistants for the financial close, accounts payable, accounts receivable, cash and treasury, consolidation, planning, revenue recognition, tax and others. The Financial Closing Assistant, for example, uses agents for accounting accruals, journal entries, journal entry verification, clearing, intercompany matching and asset accounting anomaly detection.
Does SAP use my data to train AI models?: SAP says customer data isn't used for training or retraining by the external model providers it uses. Some SAP AI services have optional learning features that use customer data; SAP says customers decide whether to turn them on, service by service.
Are SAP Joule agents generally available?: It varies by agent and product. SAP's own finance training labels at least one of the agents it demonstrates as a beta release that may not be generally available, and directs customers to the SAP Discovery Center for current availability.

Sources

Official documents read on November 5, 2026. Vendor facts are sourced on each listing.