Dext

Dext (formerly Receipt Bank) is what happens when bookkeeping automation actually delivers on its marketing. Snap a photo of a receipt, forward an invoice email, drag a PDF onto the dashboard. Dext extracts the supplier, total, tax, and date with near-perfect accuracy and pushes it into Xero or QuickBooks ready for reconciliation.

Who it’s for

Founders running businesses with real expense volume — multiple suppliers, employee expense claims, recurring vendor invoices. UK and EU businesses especially, where Dext has the deepest accountant ecosystem. Anyone whose accountant has politely asked them to stop emailing receipts as a giant zip file once a quarter.

If you’re a freelancer with five expenses a month, this is overkill. If your accountant uses something else (Hubdoc, AutoEntry), check what they prefer before switching.

What it actually does well

The accuracy is the headline. Dext processes over 320 million documents a year with 99.9% extraction accuracy, including handwritten receipts. For comparison, free or built-in receipt capture tools typically hover around 85-90%. The difference compounds: Dext catches things you’d otherwise type wrong or skip entirely.

Multiple submission methods cover every workflow. Mobile app for in-the-moment captures, email forwarding for invoices that hit your inbox, drag-and-drop for batch uploads, direct connections to Stripe, Shopify, and Amazon for e-commerce data, and direct bank feeds linking transactions to documents. Whatever way you actually receive financial paperwork, Dext has a route for it.

The Xero and QuickBooks integration is where the time savings really land. Once a document is processed, it publishes to your accounting software with the right category, supplier rule, and tax treatment applied. For a small business owner doing their own books, this can save 10+ hours a month.

AI Assist (their bookkeeping agent) is increasingly doing the categorisation work itself. Train it on a few documents, and it starts predicting how to code each new transaction. The early version was clunky; the 2025-2026 iteration is genuinely useful.

Where it gets awkward

No free tier is the structural friction. The 14-day trial is enough to test the workflow, but committing to $34/mo (Business Plus, monthly) or $27/mo (annual) before you’ve seen real value can be a hard sell for solo founders.

Document limits create real planning problems. Business Plus is 300 documents/month — fine for most small businesses, painful if you have a busy month or run multiple side projects. Going over means upgrading to Premium at $67/mo, which is a steep jump.

Credit-based features (line-item extraction, bank statement extraction, supplier statement reconciliation) layer on top. If you need granular line items from invoices for stock or project tracking, factor in additional credit costs.

The date format quirk is a small but persistent annoyance for US users. Dext’s UK roots show in some interface defaults that resist customisation.

How it compares

Versus Hubdoc (included with Xero): Hubdoc is free if you’re already paying for Xero, but accuracy and supplier rules are noticeably weaker. Many bookkeepers use Hubdoc for clients with light volume and Dext for clients with serious bookkeeping needs.

Versus AutoEntry: AutoEntry is cheaper and credit-based, which works well if your volume is variable. Dext is more polished and has better accountant network effects.

Versus QuickBooks’ native receipt capture: Native is fine for the simplest cases. Dext starts mattering once you have employees expensing things, multiple supplier accounts, or cross-platform e-commerce data to ingest.