Last Updated on December 10, 2025 by Ewen Finser
Dext is what happens when you take the worst part of bookkeeping (chasing receipts, keying invoices, decoding random Amazon purchases, etc.) and hand it to software that actually knows what a chart of accounts is.
For firms and growing businesses, this can give you hours back. For small teams or price-sensitive clients, the cost and contract terms can sting.
Let’s walk through both sides and see what makes sense and what doesn’t.
What Is Dext?
Dext started life as Receipt Bank, one of the industry’s early “pre-accounting” tools that was built to scan receipts and invoices and push them into cloud accounting systems. In 2021, it rebranded as Dext and expanded into a three-product lineup:
- Dext Prepare for document capture, expense management, and pre-accounting
- Dext Commerce for digital sales and marketplace data
- Dext Precision for data quality, health scores, and firm-wide insights
Today, hundreds of thousands of businesses use the platform, and in 2024, it was acquired by Iris Software.
All this to say, you’re not betting on a side project for part of your tech stack. You’re plugging into a mature, post–Receipt Bank platform that now sits squarely in the “AI bookkeeping” camp and pitches 99.9% data capture accuracy from receipts and invoices.
However, as a CPA, I feel it is my duty to emphasize that Dext is not a full general ledger. It sits on top of your accounting stack and eats documents, sales feeds, and bank statements for breakfast, then pushes that data into QuickBooks, Xero, Sage, and friends (where the GL actually lives).
Dext’s Core Products: Prepare, Commerce, Precision
Dext Prepare: The Pre-Accounting Engine
Dext Prepare is what most people mean when they refer to Dext, handling:
- Receipt and invoice capture: Supports uploads via app, email, browser, WhatsApp, Dropbox, and auto-fetch tools from certain banks and suppliers.
- Data extraction (OCR): Dext Prepare reads supplier, date, tax, totals, and line items, then pushes the data into your accounting system for review and publication.
- Expense management: Manage reports, approvals, and mileage tracking all in the platform.
- Vault-style storage: Easily keep a digital copy of every document in a searchable vault in case the IRS comes calling.
Think of Prepare as your hub of financial paperwork, allowing your clients or staff to upload docs from the field, and Dext extracts the data, applies rules, and queues up entries for you to approve and sync into QBO/Xero/Sage.
Dext Commerce: Digital Sales
Dext Commerce started life as Greenback, which was a separate pre-accounting app for e-commerce and marketplace data before it was acquired by Dext.
It fetches orders, fees, refunds, and payouts, standardizes them, and then syncs summarized and reconciled data into your accounting file. The goal is to give you one clean set of entries per settlement or per day, with tax, fees, and revenue clearly laid out.
Dext Commerce connects to:
- Marketplaces: Amazon, eBay, Etsy, etc.
- E-commerce storefronts: Shopify, BigCommerce, Squarespace, WooCommerce, etc.
- Payment platforms: Stripe, PayPal, Square, etc.
I can’t stress how much of a time-saver this is. If you’ve ever tried to book Amazon Seller data by hand, you already know why this is a big deal.
Dext Precision: Data Health
Precision is the layer that looks at your accounting data that already lives in Xero or QuickBooks and helps to surface issues:
- Client-level dashboards: These look at health scores, cleanup metrics, and key dates.
- Data checks: Flag duplicate contacts, uncoded transactions, stale balances, and out-of-date bank recs.
- Practice-wide views: Firms can see which clients are in good shape and which ones need work this week.
For example, you can use Precision to drive fixed-fee pricing, standardize processes, and decide which clients need a clean-up project. In my opinion, it’s not as glamorous as Dext’s other two offerings, but it’s just as important.
Integrations
In my opinion, the whole draw to using Dext is how it integrates into your overall stack.:
- Accounting software: Deep integrations with QuickBooks Online, Xero, and Sage. These integrations get high marks from me, especially around ease of setup and reliability.
- E-commerce and payments: Shopify, Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Stripe, PayPal, Square, BigCommerce, Squarespace, and more through Commerce.
- Data pipelines: API connections and auto-fetch tools that pull documents and bank statements into Prepare, if this type of integration is supported.
You’re not getting a giant app marketplace like QBO’s, but you are getting tight coverage for the core pre-accounting footprint items like documents, e-commerce, and payments.
How These Features Play Out in Practice
The Ability to Capture Everywhere and Review in One Place
Dext leans hard on “capture from anywhere”:
- Snap a receipt in the mobile app
- Forward an invoice PDF from your inbox
- Auto-fetch statements and supplier invoices (where supported)
- Feed in bank statements for OCR
As a CPA, this convenience matters because you stop being the human scanner. Clients can send documents in whatever way they actually use, and Dext will normalize them.
You get time savings, efficiency via automation, and reduced manual data entry, getting you out of the weeds and letting you focus on the things that matter.
Document Storage That Satisfies Auditors
Dext’s Vault is not a marketing term… it’s a big part of the platform that is often overlooked.
- Every receipt or invoice lives in the platform (including images and extracted data).
- You can search by supplier, date, amount, or other fields, so if a file is on the tip of your tongue, you can search for a keyword, and Dext will find it or give you suggestions.
- When you publish into QBO or Xero, the document image can follow as an attachment, depending on your setup and integrations.
From a CPA lens, this hits two pain points:
- You can respond to “show me the invoice” instantly.
- You have a central system of record for documents, even if you change GL software down the road.
Expense Management Workflows
Dext is not trying to be a full corporate card or travel platform, but it does give you:
- Employee expense submission
- Basic approval flows
- Mileage tracking
- Reimbursable vs. company-paid expense handling
This by itself gets many SMBs out of email chains and random spreadsheets, moving approvals into one place. For larger companies with complex, multi-step approval and travel policies, you will likely layer Dext alongside a more specialized spend tool.
E-commerce and Marketplace Sanity
Commerce is where Dext feels almost mandatory for some merchants:
- It pulls data from Shopify, Amazon, eBay, Etsy, and other channels.
- It understands payouts, fees, refunds, discounts, tax, and multi-currency.
- It syncs summarized transactions into QBO or Xero so that your GL matches what actually hit the bank.
This way, you stop exporting raw CSVs and building tortured Excel templates — which, from a controller’s perspective, is huge. You cut reconciliation time, and you tighten your audit trail around revenue recognition and sales tax.
Data Quality and Practice Visibility
The data side of Dext also deserves a shout-out:
- You get health scores and dashboards that show which clients are close-ready and which ones need work (who didn’t do their homework and submit everything).
- It automates a lot of the tedious review steps many firms still do by hand.
- It gives partners a way to price work and measure client profitability based on real data quality, not gut feelings.
If you run an outsourced bookkeeping practice, this is the difference between “We think this client is messy” and “This client has 147 uncoded transactions and a health score of 42 — they need a ton of attention, so bill the heck out of ’em for wasting our time!”
Where Dext Shines
From a CPA and operator lens, Dext’s strengths line up around three things: automation, standardization, and firm-scale workflows.
Serious Time Savings on Data Entry
Most users agree that Dext cuts out a big chunk of manual coding and document handling: Its OCR and rules reduce keystrokes, while its batch review and publish workflows keep the human in the loop (but a much smaller loop). For firms, this scales across dozens or hundreds of clients.
If you bill by the hour, Dext lets juniors handle more clients. If you bill a fixed fee, Dext protects your margins.
All-in-One Workflows for Cloud Firms and Online Merchants
Dext is built for those teams that live in email and Slack, use QBO/Xero as their main ledger, and have clients on Shopify and Amazon.
For these teams, Prepare + Commerce + Precision gives you one integrated system that collects documents and sales data, cleans and structures it, pushes it into the general ledger, and flags issues across the client base. The result is better books and significantly less grunt work.
Maturity in the Market
Dext has been around for more than a decade in one form or another, has a global user base, and shows up consistently on software review shortlists.
This means:
- Frequent updates and feature releases
- Documented workflows for common accounting tasks
- Enough online training and help articles to onboard a new junior without losing a week of your life
Where Dext Falls Short
Even though Dext is powerful, there are downsides you need to weigh.
Pricing and Billing
With Dext, you have to pay to play — a full stack comes with a cost.
You may feel that the benefits far outweigh the costs, but it’s always good to evaluate the contract, check renewal terms, and keep an eye on usage thresholds to ensure it’s a good fit for your budget.
A Narrower Use Case Than a Full Spend or AP Platform
Dext Prepare handles expense capture and some approvals, but it doesn’t try to replace full AP automation or corporate card platforms, and it stops short of complex reimbursement workflows, vendor portals, or payment runs.
If your main pain is bill pay or multi-level approvals, you may need to pair Dext with Melio, Bill, or another similar tool.
Learning Curves and UI Friction
Beginners to Dext can sometimes struggle with setup, rules, and understanding how data flows into the GL. Additionally, certain mobile features lag behind desktop, which can frustrate teams that live on their phones.
So, especially if your staff is not already comfortable with cloud tools, expect to spend time on training.
Processing Delays and Occasional OCR Misses
Most of the time, Dext processes documents fast and accurately. But processing can be slow depending on peak times or with large, tricky documents. Also, OCR does occasionally misread totals or tax on messy receipts, so you still need human review.
Pricing
Dext prices Prepare based on number of documents and users. For example, small businesses will pay around $27/month, including a few hundred documents and multiple users. Accounting and bookkeeping firms pay per client, with fixed-fee plans that cover unlimited users inside the firm.
Commerce and Precision are usually separate add-ons or bundles, so a full Dext stack is not cheap once you factor in all three. That’s not to say it doesn’t provide value for what it offers, but you could be approaching $100 a month on the low side. It’s up to you to decide whether you get $100+ worth of time savings by using the platform.
Where Dex Does and Doesn’t Make Sense
Dex is a Great Fit for:
- Cloud-first accounting and bookkeeping firms
- You standardize on QBO or Xero.
- You want one document and sales data layer across the client base.
- You care about health scores, cleanup automation, and practice-wide visibility.
- Growing SMBs with real transaction volume
- You have employees submitting expenses, not just a single founder.
- You deal with lots of invoices, receipts, and recurring vendors.
- You sell online through Shopify, Amazon, or marketplaces and need clean revenue data.
Dext May Not be a Good Fit for:
- Tiny solo shops with very few transactions
- If you have 30 receipts a month, a phone camera and your GL’s basic upload may be enough.
- Teams whose main pain is approvals or payments
- You may get more leverage from a dedicated AP or spend management tool and light-weight receipt capture.
Final Verdict: Should You Use Dext?
As a CPA who lives in this stuff, I walked into Dext pretty skeptical and walked out impressed enough that it’s now baked into my own workflows.
For your business, I would think about Dext like this:
- As a pre-accounting and document layer, Dext is strong: Prepare + Commerce tackles the ugly parts of receipts, invoices, e-commerce feeds, and audit trails.
- For firms, Precision is a superpower: It turns data quality into a visible metric and makes it much easier to scale consistent work across a client list.
- You pay to play with Dext: Pricing sits on the higher side of the receipt-capture market, and you need to watch contracts, renewals, and usage thresholds.
- Dext is not your whole finance stack: Dext works best as the capture and data-quality layer that feeds your GL, AP, and spend tools — not as the system that replaces them.
If your main bottleneck is manual data entry, chasing documents, and cleaning up messy client files, Dext is worth a serious look. If your main bottleneck is approvals, payments, or budgeting, you may get more leverage somewhere else and come back to Dext later once the basics are under control.