Any Dext alternatives?

eteb3 · Oct 22, 2023

Our accountant has told us Dext are putting up their prices 400%, so they will no longer be offering it as a freebie with their service. It was superb software, but we can't justify £20/month to get our own subs.

Anyone know any alternatives?

I'm wondering if there are public AIs that would do the same job?

NicoJ · Oct 22, 2023

Auto entry and Hubdoc are the ones that come to mind. What software do you use and what do you use Dext for?

eteb3 · Oct 22, 2023

Thanks. Dext can read an upload of 30 PDF invoices and recognise payee, amount, date, etc. It’s the bypassing the data entry we use it for.

Interfaces with Xero I think (which I don’t love but our accountant does)

GLAbusiness · Oct 22, 2023

I use Dext to download invoices from some of the sites it supports. I also forward emailed invoices. Dext analyses them (as eteb3 says) and publishes them to FreeAgent.

NicoJ · Oct 22, 2023

eteb3 said:
Thanks. Dext can read an upload of 30 PDF invoices and recognise payee, amount, date, etc. It’s the bypassing the data entry we use it for.

Interfaces with Xero I think (which I don’t love but our accountant does)

Hundoc is free with the standard Xero package. It is not as good as Dext, I don't think you would expect it to be, so will take some adjusting to but it should do what you need.

Paul Kelly ICHYB · Oct 23, 2023

How much would it cost to enter the data manually? More than £20?

Surely there are several options that work with Xero?

MyAccountantOnline · Oct 23, 2023

eteb3 said:
Thanks. Dext can read an upload of 30 PDF invoices and recognise payee, amount, date, etc. It’s the bypassing the data entry we use it for.

Interfaces with Xero I think (which I don’t love but our accountant does)

If it's only 30 invoices I'd have a discussion with your accountants and see if they can offer a quicker way to enter the transactions manually. It may be that you can automate some of the information or reduce the data you are entering at present to save time.

If you dont like Xero I'd also ask your accountants if they will/can recommend an alternative.

eteb3 · Oct 24, 2023

Paul Kelly ICHYB said:
How much would it cost to enter the data manually? More than £20?

Yes, but we're a charity with miserably small unrestricted funds. We probably can't risk spending even £20/mo on that. (Long story; we have plenty of restricted funds, but can't spend them on core costs)

AndreasC · Nov 9, 2023

HubDoc is free with Xero subscription

Paul Kelly ICHYB · Nov 9, 2023

For those that are not involved in charities, unrestricted funds are those that can be spent on anything. Restricted funds are those (normally grants or donations) that must be spent on specific activities.

HOw many invoices do you have to upload a month?

richardok · Jul 25, 2026

Booksmate is a great option, fetches invoices, extracts then syncs to xero

Daybooks · Jul 25, 2026

eteb3 said:
Yes, but we're a charity with miserably small unrestricted funds. We probably can't risk spending even £20/mo on that. (Long story; we have plenty of restricted funds, but can't spend them on core costs)

You may have an abundance of restricted funds because the unrestricted funds are subsidising it.

The Charity Commission expects and it is logical that restricted funded projects contribute towards the overheads of the charity. By way of example Lottery bids expressly encourage bids using the ‘full cost recovery’ method - perhaps in part as a result of Dame Esther Rantzen’s insightful view that charities should not be judged on how little they spend on overheads.

Whether the cost is justifiable is up to the trustees as is the proper allocation of costs.

Daybooks · Jul 25, 2026

Paul Kelly ICHYB said:
For those that are not involved in charities, unrestricted funds are those that can be spent on anything.

Only things that furthers its charitable purposes.

Tables Force · Jul 27, 2026

richardok said:
Booksmate is a great option, fetches invoices, extracts then syncs to xero

Oh... really?

You had to dig up a three year-old thread just to promote (presumably) your own software?

EnterprisePro · Jul 27, 2026

I might be able to help but I need to check. We've built our own invoice PDF parser in Python that can parse through specific provider invoices, convert the data into suitable data structures and then push to Xero via API. Its heavily integrated into our ecosystem, but I can see if we can open source part of it. We did all this to reduce reliance on third parties for a number of reasons.

numbersrule · Aug 2, 2026

This resurrected thread is a useful retro.

For Purchase Invoice / Bills data entry, one option available now is to upload PDFs or JPEGs to a freely available AI and prompt it to read the PDFs and / or JPEGs and convert them to individual lines on an Excel .CSV in a 'Xero bills' format for Import into Xero. In the scenario where you have 30 Bills, this can be quicker than adjusting/processing individually in Xero Files, formerly Hubdoc now superceded.

But Xero Files, the evolution from HubDoc is very good and probably all you need for anyone averse to devising suitable AI prompts for .CSV Imports.

eteb3 · Aug 7, 2026

EnterprisePro said:
can parse through specific provider invoices

If I understand correctly, you have to set it up manually per supplier?

Do you ever run into problems with non-standard PDFs? Do they have to be PDF/A, for example?

EnterprisePro · Aug 7, 2026

eteb3 said:
If I understand correctly, you have to set it up manually per supplier?

We have what's called an "integration" for each supplier's invoice type. For Microsoft, for example, we have more than one integration as there were different patterns of invoice PDFs at some point. These integrations work with the core part of the software which then ingests the data and repurposes it for other systems, including Xero.

eteb3 said:
Do you ever run into problems with non-standard PDFs? Do they have to be PDF/A, for example?

We've had problems a long while ago but it has become better. I will find out about the PDF/A requirement. All the PDFs are those that are generated from systems, such as Microsoft, AWS, Amazon Business, Hetzner, Adobe, Google, Netlify etc. Is there a particular vendor invoice type that has been giving you problems?

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Any Dext alternatives?

eteb3

NicoJ

eteb3

GLAbusiness

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Paul Kelly ICHYB

MyAccountantOnline

eteb3

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Paul Kelly ICHYB

richardok

Daybooks

Daybooks

Tables Force

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numbersrule

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