How Dext AI Assist takes the heavy lifting out of quarterly submissions
Key Takeaways
AI Assist learns from your firm's existing patterns. Once there's transaction history in Solo, it identifies the manual corrections you repeat and surfaces them as suggested guidance rules – meaning much of the setup work is done for you.
Rules are written in plain English, the way you'd brief a colleague. Natural language guidance like "flag weekend food receipts as personal" lets you encode firm-specific judgement without coding, training data, or complex configuration.
Five recurring sole trader headaches are handled automatically. Mixed personal and business spend, recurring subscriptions, non-allowable costs, CIS labour deductions, and net-of-fees income are all categorised or flagged with minimal intervention.
You stay in control with auto-apply or manual review. Each rule can be toggled between automatic action and approval-first, letting firms build trust gradually before handing the system the keys – and switch back at any time.
Client document habits decide how well automation performs. Receipts submitted promptly throughout the quarter, rather than dumped before the deadline, give AI Assist the data it needs – making client behaviour the single biggest performance lever.
When you're managing dozens, or even hundreds, of sole trader clients through MTD for IT, the bottleneck isn't usually the submission itself. It's everything that happens before it: reviewing transactions, spotting personal expenses mixed in with business ones, handling CIS deductions, categorising subscriptions. Done manually, that's hours of work per client, per quarter.
AI Assist in our MTD software Dext Solo is designed to remove that bottleneck. Here's how it works in practice.
It learns from your firm's own patterns
Once clients are submitting documents through Solo, Dext AI Assist analyses the history of changes that have been made manually within your organisation. It identifies patterns, such as the corrections you make regularly, the categories you consistently apply, and surfaces those as suggested guidance rules for you to review and adopt.
This means you're not starting from scratch. If you've been using Solo for a while and there's already data in the system, the AI agent for accounting can do much of the setup work for you by recognising what you already do and translating it into automated instructions.
You write the rules in plain English
Beyond the auto-generated suggestions, you can create your own guidance using natural language, written the same way you'd brief a new member of staff.
For example:
- "Flag any receipt for food and drink that falls on a weekend, and categorise it as personal."
- "For any subscription that doesn't relate to the trade of accounting and bookkeeping, flag for my attention and categorise to personal. If it relates to the trade, categorise to other business expenses."
- "If you see an invoice with CIS deducted at 20%, select the category CIS Labour 20%. If 30% is deducted, select CIS Labour 30%. Set the total amount as the gross figure less any fees, not the net."
The guidance title gives the rule a name, and the description contains the actual instructions. The more specific and clear you are, covering the different scenarios a transaction might fall into, the more accurately Dext AI Assist will apply those rules.
Five use cases where it makes the biggest difference
Separating personal and business spending – Sole traders commonly mix groceries, coffees, and personal subscriptions with legitimate business expenses. Dext AI Assist can automatically flag and categorise these so they're handled separately, saving you from combing through transactions manually.
Managing subscriptions and recurring costs – Software tools, memberships, and other regular charges follow recognisable patterns. Dext AI Assist learns to categorise these consistently over time without intervention.
Keeping non-allowable costs out of business expenses – Fines and other disallowable expenditure can be identified and flagged automatically, reducing the risk of errors and keeping submissions compliant.
Handling CIS labour costs – For construction clients, CIS deductions involve different percentage rates and specific categorisation rules. AI Assist supports the correct categorisation of subcontractor payments and deductions, which is a significant time saver given the nuance involved.
Recording net payments correctly – When platform fees are deducted before income reaches the bank account, splitting and categorising that income accurately can be tricky. Dext AI Assist can spot these scenarios and handle the recording correctly.
Auto-apply or manual review – your choice
Every guidance rule can be set to either auto-apply or manual review. Auto-apply means AI Assist makes the change immediately when it identifies a match, without you needing to click anything. Manual review means it flags the suggestion for your approval first.
For new users, starting on manual review for the first month or two is a sensible way to build confidence in how the system is interpreting your instructions. Once you're satisfied, switching to auto-apply takes seconds and can be reversed at any time.
Full visibility, always
Every action Dext AI Assist takes is logged in the transaction's history tab with a clear reason. If it's categorised a weekend food receipt as personal, you'll see exactly why. If it's amended a CIS total to the gross figure less fees, the reasoning is right there. You have a complete audit trail for every automated decision, and the ability to edit, pause, or delete any guidance rule at any point.
The key to making it work well
Dext AI Assist operates on the data it receives. The more consistently your clients get their documents through to you (receipts submitted promptly, not dumped in a pile at the end of the quarter) the more effectively the automation can work throughout the period. Building that habit with clients now, before the quarterly deadline pressure kicks in, is the single biggest thing you can do to make the system run smoothly.
Dext AI won’t replace your judgement. It will enhance it by taking on predictable, rules-based work so your time is spent on the things that actually require your attention.
FAQs
Dext AI Assist is more than an automation feature inside Dext Solo, it's a bookkeeping AI agent that learns from your firm's manual corrections and applies plain-English guidance rules to incoming transactions. It categorises, flags, and amends documents based on instructions you write – removing the manual review work that sits between client receipts and quarterly submission.
You can write guidance rules instructing AI Assist to apply CIS Labour 20% or CIS Labour 30% categories based on the deduction shown on invoices, and to set totals using the gross figure less any fees rather than the net. This automates one of the more nuanced areas of sole trader bookkeeping.
Yes. Every guidance rule can be set to manual review, where suggestions are flagged for your approval, or auto-apply, where changes happen immediately. Many firms start on manual review for the first month or two to build confidence, then switch to auto-apply once they're comfortable.
Consistent client behaviour matters most. Receipts and invoices submitted promptly throughout the quarter, rather than at the deadline, give the system more data to apply rules against. Building that habit with clients before quarterly pressure hits is the biggest factor in smooth automation.
