Top 5 Features in Dext Prepare You Probably Don’t Know About
Dext Prepare is the unsung hero for many small to medium-sized businesses aiming to simplify their financial management. You already know how to take a photo of a receipt or invoice, or how to forward an email to your Prepare account - great! While these features are indeed very useful, there’s more to Dext than meets the eye.
In this article, we're diving into five under-the-radar features in Dext Prepare that could be game-changers for your business operations. From smart rules to on-the-go expense reporting, these features are about to make your financial handling a breeze.
So, let's unravel these hidden treasures and see how they can take your Dext Prepare experience up a notch:
1. Supplier Rules and Auto-Categorisation
What is it?
Dext Prepare’s Supplier Rules help you to establish routine behaviours that take effect whenever documents from specific suppliers or customers are uploaded into the app.
How does it work?
From utility bills to subscriptions, it’s common for a business to purchase the same products or services from a single supplier several times, or receive repeated orders from the same customer. To make it easier to manage these transactions, we created Supplier Rules and Auto-Categorisation so you don’t need to review predictable paperwork from regular suppliers or customers.
You can use Supplier Rules to assign a default category, description, currency, invoice due date, tax rate, payment method, paid/unpaid status and more.
Once you’ve set a supplier or customer rule, it will be applied every time a new transaction from that supplier or customer is uploaded to Dext Prepare. When a Supplier Rule is changed, it will also be applied to every existing transaction from that supplier in the Inbox.
There’s more! With Smart Split Rules you can also automatically split receipts or invoices into multiple line items. When you work from home and want to split the electricity bill between business and personal use, for example.
How do I use it?
Using Supplier Rules is very easy. Follow the step-by-step on our Help Centre to set your first rules!
2. Line Item Extraction
What is it?
This feature extracts each of the individual purchases that are listed on your receipts, bills and invoices. When you purchase items from a single supplier that need to have different categories or tax codes.
How does it work?
Let’s say you’re buying a printer and some paper from a certain supplier. The paper may be coded to 'sundries' while the printer may need to be coded to 'IT Hardware'. When something like this happens, you don’t have to manually split your documents out into line items: Dext Prepare will automatically list the total, tax and description of every line on your financial documents.
Dext Prepare can extract line items from invoices, receipts, credit notes and delivery notes. It will flag all documents from that specific supplier and add them to a Line Item Extraction queue. After the tool has read and extracted all of the data from the document, you can find it in the Inbox of the Costs Workspace. Automatic Line Item Extraction can be turned on for each of your suppliers.
How do I use it?
Any administrator on the account can activate Line Item Extraction - this could be an employee in the business, or an accountant or bookkeeper who has access to the business’s Dext Prepare account. Our Help Centre has a visual step-by-step to help.
3. Sales Workspace
What is it?
The Sales Workspace houses all financial documents, including invoices, that your business provides to its clients for billing purposes. This is separate to the Costs Workspace, where financial documents for accounts payable are extracted and stored.
How does it work?
This is where you process sales transactions. Each time a user on the account adds a new Sales document to Dext Prepare, the app extracts the visible data and presents the item in the Inbox of the Sales section.
Your Sales Workspace is split into five sections: Inbox, In Processing, To Review, Ready and Archive - so it’s easy to find entries and keep an eye on progress.
How do I use it?
You can find out more about Sales Workspace - including how to customise your inbox - on our Help Centre here.
4. Mobile Expense Reports
What is it?
This feature allows you to create and add items to an existing expense report on the go using the Dext Prepare mobile app
How does it work?
As your business grows, keeping track of expenses can become complex. Often, you might have employees who need to make transactions while on the go - whether it’s the sales person paying for lunch in the middle of a day of client meetings or the marketing person having to jump in a taxi and rush to an event, for example. With Mobile Expense Reports, you can easily check and approve expenses without losing track of your budget.
Only Admin Users can create and edit anyone’s Expense Reports - but other team members can be given access to creating expense reports when they’re created, or by editing the permissions.
How do I use it?
Check out the steps to create a Mobile Expense Report on our Help Centre. You can also use additional features to enhance your experience - check the Advance Expense Report options.
5. Bank Match
What is it?
Bank Match is an automated feature that identifies Dext Prepare items that already have a matching transaction in your accounting software Bank Feed or cash coded payments.
How does it work?
As a business owner, you want to have up-to-date records, but also ensure you don't pay the same bill twice.
Bank Match automatically checks in your accounting software for bank transactions that match a given cost item. It uses bank data from Xero or Sage Accounting (in which users can autofill payment details when there is a match in place).
It can also check for matches using bank transactions that are present in Dext Prepare (under Bank then Transactions). This means they were either pulled across via Bank Feeds, or they were captured during Bank Statement Extraction.
How do I use it?
Our Help Centre has an example on how it looks like with both Xero and Sage.
As you can see, Dext Prepare has layers of functionality waiting to be explored. Harnessing these features can propel your financial management to a more streamlined, efficient frontier. So, dive in, give these features a try and make the most out of Dext Prepare. Your business’s financial workflow will thank you.
If you never used Dext Prepare, why not give it a try? Start a free trial today!
