Overqualified for the admin, irreplaceable for everything else. Where AI ends and your judgement begins. Download insights →
Weighing up Briefcase? Here's where Dext earns its place.
Intelligent automation with over 99% extraction accuracy, carrying every document from capture through approval to payment — with your firm's sign-off on the way.
No credit card required.
WHY PRACTICES CHOOSE DEXT
Automation you can hand the work to. And still answer for.
Built for invoices and receipts. Not for everything else.
Dext's models are trained on over 2 billion accounting documents and refined across 16+ years alongside practices. Accuracy that compounds, rather than accuracy that's promised.
Automate what's proven. Review what matters.
Rules and confidence scoring decide what processes untouched; your expertise handles the rest. You set the balance, and nothing publishes without the sign-off you configure.
Capture through to payment. One place.
Extraction, approvals, payments, intelligent document storage and practice insights, all working with the accounting software you already use.
PROVEN AT SCALE
Sixteen years of evidence. All of it checkable.
Briefcase is a capable, fast-moving newcomer, and much of what you'll read comparing the two comes from vendor marketing — ours included. So here are our numbers, and every one of them can be checked independently.
12,000+ accounting and bookkeeping firms and 700,000+ businesses worldwide
16+ years building AI specifically for bookkeeping
36+ accounting integrations, including Xero, QuickBooks, Sage and FreeAgent
11,500+ banks and financial institutions connected
Recognised by Xero, QuickBooks and industry awards, year after year
INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION
AI has been the engine for 16+ years. AI Assist is the layer you brief.
AI isn't new here: it has sat behind our extraction, categorisation and error detection since long before the term became a selling point. AI Assist is the newest layer — intelligent automation for the complex work, acting on the context your firm gives it rather than on assumptions.
THE DEXT AI ENGINE - 16+ YEARS IN THE MAKING
Every document runs through the same engine. Trained on nothing but accounting documents.
Models trained on over 2 billion financial documents power everything Dext does, every day.
Over 99% extraction accuracy, with confidence scoring so you review what matters, not everything
Supplier and customer rules: configure once, and recurring transactions process zero-touch and predictably
Configurable duplicate detection and anomaly flagging
Proforma invoices identified correctly; handwritten annotations captured and factored in
DEXT AI ASSIST - NEW
Advanced automation. Briefed by you.
AI Assist extends the engine to the documents and workflows that call for judgement — and the difference is that you brief it.
Give firm-level and client-level context in plain English, and AI Assist applies your treatment rather than a guess
It reasons over documents and recommends; your expertise decides what publishes
It takes on the judgement-heavy documents where pattern-matching alone gets it wrong
Every recommendation is visible and reviewable before anything reaches the ledger
CONTROL & CONFIDENCE
Posting fast is easy. Posting right is the point.
An incorrect VAT treatment or a miscoded transaction costs far more to find at review than it ever saved at publish. Dext lets you automate hard where accuracy is proven, and keep a check exactly where it protects the client's books.
Configurable automation: decide what auto-processes and what gets reviewed
Built-in duplicate & anomaly detection catches issues before they compound
Multi-stage approval workflows for invoices, expenses & payment runs
BOOKKEEPING ON THE GO
Receipts get captured where they happen. Not remembered later.
Briefcase has no mobile app; clients submit by email, drag-and-drop and WhatsApp. Dext adds a mobile app rated 4.8 on the App Store and Google Play, so a receipt is captured while the client is still standing at the till, and the record is complete when you come to close the month.
Clients capture receipts and invoices the moment they're handed over. No pile, no shoebox, no scramble in January
Employee expenses and mileage submitted on the move, with claims automated end to end
Documents arriving as they happen means fewer gaps to chase at month end
PRACTICE INSIGHTS
See where the hours go. Then get them back.
Briefcase has no practice-level insights or dashboards. Dext Advanced shows where the work slows down across every client, so you can point automation at the bottleneck instead of guessing at it.
Delay day index shows how quickly each client submits, so you know who is holding up the books
Publishing delay index tracks how fast documents move from received to published — your automation scorecard
Time spent insights show where your team's hours actually go, client by client
Adoption tracking helps you build the submission habits that keep records current
COMPLETE BOOKKEEPING PLATFORM
Categorisation is halfway. Dext goes as far as reconciled.
Collection, extraction and categorisation are where Briefcase's workflow ends. In a practice, that is where review, approval and payment begin — and Dext carries every document through to a closed, reconciled, paid position.
AVAILABLE IN BOTH PLATFORMS
Collect
Extract
Categorise
Dext only
Review & approve
Dext only
Pay
Dext only
Reconcile
Dext only
Practice insights
THE REAL COST
The subscription line isn't the cost. The processing is.
The comparison that counts is what a document costs to get right at your real volumes — including the time your team spends checking what published automatically, and putting right whatever wasn't.
What the Dext number buys:
Over 99% extraction accuracy, so review time goes where it's flagged
A complete AP cycle in one platform, from capture through to payment
Submission by mobile, email, WhatsApp or desktop however each of your clients prefers to work.
Corrections caught before they reach the ledger
Every treatment decision stays with your team — so the hours you save are hours actually saved, not deferred to a correction exercise.
Example output for a typical practice. Get your own estimate below.
"Dext is an easy return on investment. For the costs it has to run, the time it saves. Just the time it saves, pays for itself."
Jonathan Carr, Co-Founder, Gravitate Accounting
A complete alternative to Briefcase. Proven by 12,000+ firms.
The intelligent automation you came looking for, with the accuracy, control and ecosystem a practice can build a workflow on.
99%+
accurate data capture
12K+
accounting & bookkeeping firms trust us
16+
years of AI bookkeeping at the forefront
MAKING THE SWITCH
Still comparing? Switching takes days, not weeks
Connect your accounting software, invite your clients, and documents start arriving. Setting up is an afternoon's work, not a project.
1
Start your free trial
Sign up and connect your accounting software in minutes. No credit card required.
2
Invite your clients
Email, mobile app, drag-and-drop: clients can start sending documents the same day you invite them.
3
Get support that sticks
Our support team, the Help Centre and Dext U cover the move, from first connection to first month end.
Ask a technical question. Get an answer you can act on.
Our support service handles technical questions by chat or email, with practical guidance for the move to Dext and for the months after it.
customer satisfaction rating (NPS)
48 hours
median time to first response
+ 250 tutorials
available on our Help Centre and through the Dext U certification
Frequently asked questions comparing Dext to Briefcase
Three reasons come up consistently. Control: nothing publishes without the rules and sign-off your firm configures, and anomalies are flagged rather than adjusted quietly. Completeness: Dext runs from capture through approvals, payments and reconciliation, where Briefcase's workflow ends at categorisation. And proof: 16+ years of AI trained on over 2 billion accounting documents, with 350m+ processed every year across 12,000+ firms.
No. AI has been the backbone of Dext for 16+ years, powering extraction, categorisation and error detection with over 99% accuracy. What's new is Dext AI Assist, an intelligent automation layer for complex documents that acts on instructions your firm writes. The distinction that matters isn't OCR versus AI. It's AI that assumes versus AI that is guided by your context.
Briefcase markets a high auto-publish rate. Dext focuses on automation you can trust: automate confidently where accuracy is proven, and keep human review where it protects your client's books. Many of Briefcase's comparative figures are self-reported, so we'd encourage testing both on your own documents before deciding.
That is your call to make, client by client. A wrong VAT treatment or a miscoding that publishes automatically still becomes your firm's problem at review or year end, so Dext gives you configurable automation, duplicate and anomaly detection, and practice-wide data health. You scale the volume without giving up the oversight.
Yes. Dext automatically codes and categorises transactions, extracts line items and applies your rules and supplier mappings, with AI recommendations to speed up review. You keep control over how much is automated versus checked.
Dext is an established platform: 12,000+ firms, 700,000+ businesses, 16+ years alongside the profession, industry recognition, a support team and Dext U certification behind you. Briefcase launched more recently and serves a smaller customer base. If a long track record matters to how your practice buys, that difference is worth weighing.
Not hard. Connect the accounting software you already use, invite clients by email, app or drag-and-drop, and lean on our support team and Dext U along the way. Most practices are up and running in days.
It depends what you're comparing. Briefcase advertises from £9 per client per month, with that tier capped at 75 published documents per quarter, plans running to £49 per client per month and a 25-licence minimum. The figure worth working out is total cost at your real document volumes, including the review time that automatically published items still take. Run both sets of numbers side by side before you decide.
Try Dext yourself with our 14-day free trial
Over 700,000 businesses and 12,000 accounting and bookkeeping firms worldwide use Dext to make more time for what matters.
More to compare. Four places to start.
The parts of Dext a feature grid tends to flatten, and the ones practices tell us they notice first.
"So I met Briefcase recently and looked to see what their platform was delivering for receipt capturing. And I noticed that they were using their technology to authenticate VAT. But I now know that Dext also offers that functionality. So it's enabled me to go 'Actually do you know what, we need to stay where we are.' I quite like the fact that I can still stay with Dext because it just means that the service that we are able to deliver is a very slick, very professional service."
Alistair Wallace, Founder, BKB Accountants (UK)