Dext vs. Xero

Application suits well to multiple user structure where users buy and pay expenses on the go so each user would have their own mobile app and access to Dext Prepare and soon after the purchase, they take a picture of the receipt and upload so finance team can access the information straight away. It would not suit well where a business has very few users who pay the bills and most bills are on the cloud (via emails, all-digital in the first place). Because these bills can be emailed to the accounting system in the first place anyway or other software providers where monthly subscription is much cheaper.

Incentivized

I am a massage and physical therapist. We are not a fancy business but business admin can take a lot of time and effort. Xero came recommended to me by colleagues in the sector. You raise invoices, you get paid. and you pay your bills. These are all daily scenarios for most businesses and Xero does this particularly well. Since my accountant can query my records directly, this greatly saves on bookkeeping time when it is time to do the company returns.

Incentivized

• Key metrics on the submissions by clients and any delays. This allows for early identification where client may be struggling to get the information submitted to Receipt Bank, holding up the bookkeeping processing and ultimately delays in delivery of information to the clients.
• Identifying unprocessed receipts sitting in the clients Receipt Bank file.. This assists in managing internal workflow and aiding team members who may find they need assistance in completing key tasks.
• Identifying which clients are using Receipt Bank effectively and which clients need assistance. This can provide the opportunity to discuss with all clients what works well for them and what needs improvement by sharing some of the wins from other clients.
• Providing managers the ability to review with ease the progress of Receipt Bank processing by client and by bookkeeper. This allows them to identify issues literally before they occur.

Incentivized

• Repeating invoices (most of my business is monthly recurring invoices) - it does these very well.
• Reporting - particularly being able to dig into the different lines of the P&L statement.
• Tracking categories - I assign a category to every line of every invoice so it's easy to see how much has been sold of each type of service every month and year, and compare them to previous periods.

Incentivized

• On the Inbox screen include a 'due date' column so items can be easily sorted in due date order to assist managing accounts payable
• improve the data matching between XERO and DEXT. Currently it performance is 'random' and does not occur on each customer file. Seems it is something that needs to be requested from support. It should be an automatic feature

Incentivized

• Multiple addresses for singular contacts.
• Limit unit price decimals to 2 digits, currently shows 3 or more after the decimal on invoices.
• Discounted rates for multiple entities within the same group e.g. if you have a group of 3 or more companies looking to move to Xero, incentivize those clients with discounted monthly rates.
• Easier way to reconcile loan accounts across multiple entities.

Dext is the best way for us to manage our business expenses. Physical and PDF receipts/invoices will be around for a while, but the move to eInvoicing is very good and we look forward to Dext adding this feature

Incentivized

In addition to the matters covered in this review, my reason for renewing this product is that Xero's functionality and the constant updates that the company provides, makes the software even more business friendly. The software therefore builds a brand loyalty among customers.

Receipt Bank was great 3 years ago when I started using it. Now it’s way to expensive for what you can get elsewhere for free. Also the rebranding didn’t work in my opinion so the Dext name doesn’t have the same feeling to me as Receipt Bank.

Incentivized

As a standalone software, it allows users to fulfill most of the basic functions (e.g. transaction input and report generation) simply and conveniently. It also allows for multiple APIs to help augment various tasks that accounting-adjacent (e.g. claims processing). The cloud based model and portability to mobile devices allows tasks to be carried out in a more convenient way.

We have been actively using and 100% Xero based for our ecommerce accounting practice for over 4 years. There has on been one real outage for more than 5 minutes. Xero was open and transparent about the outage, what they were doing to resolve the issue, and provided 15 minute updates. Showing how they care about their customers and partners. Plus, showing that their customers care too, were understanding, and went surfing or in our case took a nap. Couldn't run our business without Xero as a partner.

The product is pretty stable in performance. However, sometimes the links to bank feeds are not available which can be frustrating if you need to update the application for important transactions. I currently have to manually upload credit card transactions so that is not ideal and makes for manual errors or duplication.

Incentivized

When I think I have broken the platform the help guys and girls are simply fantastic. They take time to understand the problem and usually resolve the issue on the spot. I have not had to wait more than an hour to get anything resolved - be that an issue I have created or a fault in my understanding of the program. Can't rate their support I have received to date highly enough.

Incentivized

Always respond and keep issues open until you are satisfied with the result. Generally good responses, in the past, I had some support responses that were really basic and really annoying. They type where "have your tried restarting your computer" style of answers. Well, of course, I went through all the basics before contacting them. Duh, but I suppose not everyone does. Otherwise, it would be a 10. The last year has shown a marked improvement in the support responses however.

The format was great; someone was there to ask questions or help if you were stuck.

Incentivized

All of Xero's training is online and available for anyone (business owner or accountants) to learn and become experts in their system. There is a range of content from product training to real world webinars from their partners. Xero is beautiful accounting software and their training is the same.

If it can be done, time the implementation near a new fiscal year so you can start clean. Otherwise, you have to go back and do historical data from the beginning of the fiscal year, which can be brain draining.

Incentivized

I have never been able to get Expensify to work for me. The reports are just completely unintuitive and I end up having my client generate the report I need and send it to me instead. For QBO the restriction on which email addresses can send receipts is too limiting. They also do not extract data well and the overall system is very clunky compared to Dext. Of course the trade-off there is that you aren't paying a separate monthly subscription fee.

Incentivized

MYOB has always seemed well behind in the functionality. We recently discontinued our DEAR subscription due to astronomical increase in subscription fees. While Xero doesn't do as much in terms of inventory management we can manage without that function for the lower price.

Incentivized

I have yet to fully stress test the product given the size of the company where I am using it. I am sure as we scale to more customers, more vendors and more reporting requirements, I will have a better understanding of what it is capable of in terms of bandwidth and processing

Incentivized

• Receipt Bank has helped alleviate the frustration felt by both our clients and our staff when it comes to the detail needed for some of the organizations that we serve. In some cases it's just NECESSARY to have all of that detail for the financial statement preparation, and prior to Receipt Bank, we had to email back and forth, download attachments, manually enter the information into Quickbooks Online, save the document etc. It was a tedious process. Receipt Bank took care of all of that, and it saves both our clients and our staff HOURS of work each month.
• Receipt Bank has given our clients the confidence to make their work places paperless offices. It frees time and money for them, because they don't have to keep track of the documents, they don't have to store the documents (and find a place to store them), and they never have to file them away. Receipt Bank archives all of the documents so you can find them if you ever need them, and the documents are in their financial data as well, which is where they really need them. I've never had a client regret going to Receipt Bank just because it makes life so much simpler for them.

Incentivized

• Xero is a basic accounting system that performs basic accounting tasks easily and accurately. For that, it provides a positive impact on our day to day accounting operations.
• Because of Xero's basic structure, I feel it lacks some of the sophistication that some users want and need. The ability to create unique custom reports would enhance the impact Xero would have on meeting business objectives by providing current and useful accounting information.
• In my opinion, Xero's lack of focus on their customers - their users - is a real issue with me. In my opinion, those of us that are in the trenches that work with the system on a daily basis have to deal with the shortcomings of the system with the knowledge that Xero support refuses to address the operational issues that make their user's lives difficult. I feel if Xero would focus on truly making their software better from a users point of view, it has the potential to be a great system.