Do More with Dext: Guide to Everyday Automation Wins
If bookkeeping still feels heavier than it needs to be, you're not alone. It's because most businesses haven't switched on the automation tools available to them, or they don’t know where to start to enable Dext to do the heavy lifting for them.
This guide walks you through seven practical steps to get Dext working harder for you. The secret isn't any single feature – it's building a chain of small automations that stack on top of each other. When documents are captured consistently, categorisation is predictable, duplicates are handled early, bookkeeping decisions are managed, and publishing is controlled, the entire workflow becomes faster and more accurate (and a lot less stressful).
Step 1: Get documents in fast – including via WhatsApp
Automation works best when documents arrive quickly and consistently. The longer a receipt sits in someone's pocket or an invoice sits in their email inbox, the more likely it is to cause a problem later. Dext captures up to 19 fields per document at 99.9% accuracy – but only if documents actually make it in.
Pick the right submission method for the moment:
- Mobile camera – best for capturing receipts on the spot
- Email forwarding – ideal for supplier invoices that arrive by email
- Bulk upload – useful for batches of documents, but can mean older documents arriving later
WhatsApp is definitely worth activating. It's the newest submission method and one of the least-known and used – but it's brilliant for anyone who's constantly on the move: drivers, field workers, tradespeople.
Users just send a photo of their receipt to Dext's WhatsApp number, the same way they'd message anyone. It appears instantly in your Dext Cost Inbox with a full audit trail showing who submitted it and when. You can also send a message with your picture and it uploads as a description in your Cost item.
The faster a document lands in Dext, the sooner automation can act on it.
Setup takes around 2 minutes: Go to user settings → , select Activate next to WhatsApp → , add a mobile number → , verify it via WhatsApp, and you're done.
Step 2: Stop duplicates before they reach your accounts
Duplicate document submissions happen more than you'd think. Two team members pay for their lunch together in one transaction but both upload the same receipt for their expenses. Or someone sends a document via WhatsApp, forgetting they had already uploaded it by the mobile app. Once a duplicate is published to your accounting software, it's a pain to fix it there. Catching it beforehand takes seconds.
Duplicate detection flags potential duplicates before they're published. Flagged items show up highlighted so you can decide: delete it, attach it to the original, or keep it if it genuinely is a separate expense.
We recommend turning your setting to Review. Go to Business Settings → Extraction → Duplicate Items, and set it to flag for review.
There's also an automatic setting that deletes suspected duplicates immediately – but starting with manual review gives you confidence before going fully hands-off.
Step 3: Let Dext learn your coding patterns
Once documents are coming in cleanly, the next time-drain is coding them one by one. Auto-categorisation removes that by learning from your history. It recognises suppliers you've seen before and applies the same category, tax rate, and account codes automatically.
Two settings make the biggest difference:
- Set categorisation to Always apply so suggestions go in without you having to approve each one
- Turn on Smart Suggestions so Dext also fills in descriptions and other relevant fields
You can still review what the system did at any time – this isn't "set and forget forever," it's “you’re in control.”
Step 4: Set rules for your most predictable suppliers
Auto-categorisation works document by document. Supplier rules take it further by locking in exactly how every future document from a specific supplier should be treated – category, tax rate, payment method, even whether to auto-publish it to your accounting software.
Set it once, and it runs every time that supplier comes through.
That's a lot of clicks and time re-entering categories saved. The compound effect is huge if you have multiple supplier rules set up.
Tip: Best suppliers to start with are ones where the coding never changes.
Think of a Trainline receipt – it's always downloaded as a clean PDF, you always code it to Travel – National, and you pay for it by company credit card.
That's a perfect candidate. Set the rule and never think about it again.
How to set up: You can create rules from inside a cost item or from your supplier list, whichever is quicker in the moment.
Step 5: Auto-publish the documents you trust
Even businesses who love automation sometimes hesitate to auto-publish their documents straight to their accounting software. That’s normal. Nobody wants the wrong document type or mis-categorised documents entering the books.
But Auto-publishing doesn't have to be all-or-nothing. You can choose exactly which suppliers documents and document types are published automatically, and exclude anything that needs a human eye or manual intervention first (like ATM withdrawals or one-off purchases).
Tip: Start small.
Pick three suppliers that send you recurring invoices you trust completely that will be the same and for the correct amount – utility bills are a good example – and enable auto-publish just for those.
Once you're comfortable, you can expand.
Step 6: Handle complex invoices with Line Item Extraction
Not every receipt or invoice belongs to a single category. Many supplier invoices contain dozens or even hundreds of individual items across different expense types.
Imagine running a restaurant and receiving a £2,000 supplier invoice with 100+ line items, including:
- Food ingredients
- Alcohol
- Cleaning supplies
- Packaging materials
Without Line Item Extraction, you’d have to manually separate and categorise each item yourself. With Line Item Extraction, the document is automatically broken down into individual line items, allowing each one to receive its own treatment – including the correct category, tax rate, and accounting treatment.
For a restaurant, this means you can track food and beverage costs separately, apply the right VAT treatment where needed, and produce cleaner, more accurate month-end reports. All without touching a spreadsheet.
Using the same example of running a restaurant, with Line Item Extraction Grouping, restaurants with multiple locations can go even further by organising costs by restaurant, project, department, or other groups.
You get a free monthly allowance of Line Item Extraction credits.
Go to Business Settings → Subscription → Scroll to Credits to see your allowance.
To get the most value, start with invoices that either have the most line items or those you need to categorise differently.
Step 7: Use Dext AI Assist for the decisions rules can't make
The most game-changing capability in Dext to date is AI Assist. It brings together automation features – rules, categorisation logic, review processes into a guidance-driven AI workflow based on context.
Some transactions can be ambiguous. A Tesco receipt could be a business lunch or a personal grocery shop. A fuel receipt might be tax-deductible or not depending on the vehicle. No fixed Supplier Rule can handle that kind of nuance and complex bookkeeping decision, but AI Assist can.
AI Assist uses guidance you write (or that Dext generates from your history) to make contextual decisions automatically.
The more specific you write your guidance, the better it performs. Think of it like writing a prompt for ChatGPT. Example guidance you could write:
- "If a receipt from Tesco mentions fuel, petrol, or diesel, categorise as Travel – National, zero rated. If not, categorise as General Expenses."
- "If the invoice date is later than the submission date, flag it with the note: 'Please check the date of this invoice.'"
- "If a description includes words like subscription, licence, or SaaS, categorise as Software Subscriptions."
With your Dext subscription, you’ll get a free trial of AI Assist.
You get 50 free applied suggestions to test it on real documents before committing. Start with manual review to check accuracy, then switch to auto-apply once you're confident.
Supplier rules vs. AI Assist: Use supplier rules first when a supplier's documents are predictable and always coded the same way. Use AI Assist when documents are more complex or vary by context.
Your action plan: start small, then build
You don't need to do everything at once. Here's a simple order to follow:
- Switch on WhatsApp submission for anyone capturing receipts on the go
- Enable duplicate detection and review flagged items before publishing
- Set 3–5 supplier rules for your most predictable, recurring suppliers
- Turn on auto-publish for those same trusted suppliers
- Test Line Item Extraction on your most complex invoices using your free credits
- Run the AI Assist trial on real documents, starting with manual review
Each step saves a little time. Together, they add up to something meaningful – fewer errors, less repetitive, manual tasks, and a bookkeeping workflow that runs largely by itself. And that’s the real goal: reclaim time, improve accuracy, and build a workflow that scales with your business.
