Dext Prepare

Dext Prepare captures receipts and invoices and extracts their details for bookkeeping. Users can send documents through its mobile apps, upload them from a computer, fetch supplier invoices, or submit them by email. Dext says its AI extracts supplier, date, tax, and total fields with 99.9% accuracy. It can apply learned categorisation rules, detect duplicate transactions, extract line items, match purchase orders, and route approvals.

The service connects with 36+ accounting platforms, e-commerce platforms, and more than 11,500 banks and financial institutions. Named connections include Xero, QuickBooks, Sage, Shopify, PayPal, and Stripe. The annual Business plan is £290 a year, billed at £24.17 per month, excluding VAT, for 250 documents per month and five users. There is no free plan; a 14-day free trial requires no credit card. Dext offers Android, iOS, web, and browser-extension access. It says it holds ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification and encrypts stored data with AES-256 and communications with TLS 1.2 or higher.

Dext Prepare combines document capture, extraction, and bookkeeping automation with broad accounting and financial-institution connections. The annual Business plan is £290 a year, billed at £24.17 per month, excluding VAT, and includes a 14-day trial.

Dext Prepare suits small and medium-sized businesses, accountants, and bookkeepers handling receipts and invoices. Its five-user annual plan includes 250 documents per month.

Dext Prepare turns receipts and invoices into bookkeeping data, with mobile, email, supplier-fetch and upload options for getting documents into the workflow. It is best suited to small and medium-sized businesses and the accountants and bookkeepers who support them. Its blend of extraction, categorisation and accounting connections is compelling, but the 250-document monthly allowance makes volume an important part of the buying decision.

Overview

Prepare aims to reduce manual entry between receiving a document and recording it for bookkeeping. Users can send documents from a phone, upload them from a computer, fetch supplier invoices or forward them by email, so it accommodates several common collection routines rather than relying on one channel.

Dext says its AI extracts supplier, date, tax and total with 99.9% accuracy, and it supports line-item extraction. That can save repeated keying, though the accuracy figure is a product claim rather than a reason to assume every document needs no review. Learned categorisation rules and duplicate detection add useful safeguards to a workflow where misclassification or double entry can undermine the time saved.

Key features

Prepare combines capture with extraction and bookkeeping automation. It also supports PO matching and approval routing, extending its usefulness beyond simply digitising receipts. These capabilities make it more relevant to teams handling recurring purchasing processes than to someone who only wants a place to store occasional receipts.

Integration breadth is a notable strength: Dext says it connects with more than 36 accounting and e-commerce platforms and over 11,500 banks and financial institutions. Named services include Xero, QuickBooks, Sage, Shopify, PayPal and Stripe. That range may help businesses fit document processing into an existing financial stack, although buyers should confirm their particular connection before committing.

Dext says it is certified to ISO/IEC 27001:2022, uses TLS 1.2 or higher for communications and AES-256 encryption for stored data, and hosts data on AWS with backups across regions and multiple availability zones. Support is by chat or email; Dext gives a 48-hour median time to first response, a potentially material wait for businesses with time-sensitive workflow issues.

Pricing

The Business plan (annual) costs £290 a year, billed at £24.17 per month, with £290 billed annually and VAT excluded. It includes 250 documents per month and 5 users. That allowance gives small teams a clear monthly ceiling; businesses processing more documents will need to weigh the cap against their expected volume.

Dext offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card required, but no free plan. There is no lower published tier to trade user seats or document capacity for a lower price, so occasional users and businesses with very small workloads may find the paid annual commitment harder to justify.

Platforms

Prepare is available on web, iOS and Android, with a browser extension for Chrome and Microsoft Edge. Mobile apps support capture on the go, while the extension offers another way to bring supplier documents into the process. This range suits teams that collect paperwork across phones and desktop browsers.

Who it's for

Prepare is a strong fit for small and medium-sized businesses that routinely process receipts and invoices, and for accountants and bookkeepers managing such work for clients. Its multiple capture channels, accounting integrations and approval-oriented features suit repeatable processes. It is less persuasive for a solo user with sporadic documents or a business whose needs exceed 250 documents a month without a suitable plan arrangement.

Pros and cons

• Pros: Several capture routes reduce dependence on a single document-submission habit.
• Pros: Extraction, learned categorisation, duplicate detection, PO matching and approval routing cover more of the bookkeeping workflow than capture alone.
• Pros: Connections to named accounting, commerce and payment services offer broad options for fitting Prepare into existing systems.
• Cons: The annual plan's 250-document monthly limit may constrain growing or high-volume teams.
• Cons: No free plan means users cannot keep a basic version for occasional processing after the 14-day trial.
• Cons: The £290 annual charge excludes VAT, and the stated 48-hour median first response may be slow when support is urgent.

Alternatives

For invoice-processing and receipt-management software roundups, see Invoice Processing Software and Receipt Management Software.

• Veryfi Invoices OCR API is worth considering when a freemium option or API access matters more; its Starter plan is $500 a month with a $500 monthly minimum commitment.
• Datamolino may suit a smaller workload: its Start plan is £17 a month, excluding VAT, for 100 bills and receipts per month and one company, with unlimited users and approvals included.
• DocuClipper Invoice Approval is another paid alternative.
• Tungsten Power PDF is another paid alternative.
• Circulus is another paid alternative.
• Gemina Invoice OCR API is another freemium alternative.
• Invofox is another freemium alternative.
• Nanonets Invoice OCR is another alternative with a free plan.

Verdict

Dext Prepare is a good choice for businesses and bookkeeping professionals who process documents regularly and want capture, extraction and accounting connections in one workflow. Its range of automation and integrations is the main reason to choose it; the 250-document monthly cap, VAT-exclusive annual price and absence of a free plan are reasons to look elsewhere if volume is uncertain or light.