What does Dext actually do?
Receipts and invoices can be emailed, scanned and uploaded using the mobile app.
Extracts data from the document image including the supplier name, date, amount, GST, payment method as well as the person who submitted the invoice and the date and time. Supplier rules are used to categorise the purchase or expense.
Stores invoice images and data securely in the cloud. The data is available for 7 years and can be searched, sorted and filtered.
Reports for filtered receipt lists or search results can be compiled into reports and exported in PDF and excel.
Integrates to your cloud ledger to capture the receipts or invoices as transactions. For example, Dext has powerful options to create different types of transactions, typically either spend money transactions, a payable bill or an employee expense claim.
Getting Started
Your Dext account has been set up and you will have already received your login credentials.
Where Deloitte manages your cloud ledger subscription, your Dext account will have been integrated to your cloud ledger. If you own your own ledger, you will need to link your Dext account to your cloud ledger.
Submitting your Receipts and Invoices
1. How to use the Mobile App
As part of the Dext set up, if you provided your mobile number you would have received an SMS message with a link to download the mobile app. Your user account will be added to the app during the download.
The app is perfect for:
- Taxi receipts
- Train tickets
- Restaurant/cafe receipts
- Anything you buy while out-and-about
2. Submitting items by email
You have been provided with your unique OCR email-in address which is where you send your digital receipts and invoices. Your email-in address will always end with 'dext.cc'.
Email submissions are ideal for:
- Uber receipts
- Amazon receipts
- Mobile phone invoices
- Anything that gets emailed to you
Review and publish your items
Once your submissions have been processed they will appear in your Dext inbox. You then just need to check the category codes and that the data captured is correct, before publishing each item to your cloud ledger.
Start automating
Once you have a handle on how Dext works, you can start customising Dext to help automate the handling of your data.
The easiest way to start is by,
- Setting rules for your regular suppliers
- Auto-publishing items to your cloud ledger
- Setting up Fetch connections
Tips for getting the most out of Dext
Auto publish by supplier: Dext allows you to automatically publish items to your shared ledger via the set up of supplier rules greatly reducing costs and improving the efficiency of your finance function.
Invoice Fetch: A submission method which allows your Dext account to automatically download recurring bills or invoices from the supplier websites. This means no longer logging onto each supplier portal to download and send the items to your Dext account.
Staff credit card management: Where staff use a business credit card, default banks and publishing rules can be set up so that receipts submitted by them are sent to the correct bank in the accounting software. A workflow can be establish where staff are asked to submit receipts throughout the month and then use Dext to review and publish at month end instead of submitting a monthly credit card statement with paper receipts attached.
Staff expense claims for reimbursement: Using their own credentials, staff can login to review their expense claim receipts, write notes against them as needed, check the expense allocations and then compile and submit expense claim reports. These are then published as bills payable to the employee which make them easy to review, approve and pay in the accounting software. This workflow completely replaces paper based expense claim processes.
Petty cash handling: if a business uses cash takings to buy things, these won’t appear on the bank statement and may be overlooked in the accounts processes. We recommend creating a unique Dext user called “Petty Cash” and submitting any petty cash receipts to the unique email address for that user so these can be easily identified and accounted for correctly.
Supplier rules: Allows you to automatically apply data that isn't extracted through the item processing (or on a per-supplier basis) reducing the data input required when an item is submitted.
Allocate projects or tracking categories: If the accounting software integrated with Dext uses tracking categories or projects, these will be available in Dext to allocate to each document and defaults can be set for each supplier. Project categories eg for a business operating in different locations can also be allocated their own user profiles to enable the auto- assignment of the transaction to the correct project category.
Expense splitting: Dext extracts the total invoice value, without a detailed description of the items purchased. If a transaction needs to be allocated to different areas, or if more detail is needed in the description, the total can be split across any number of rows, each with a different description, expense category and tracking category that will flow through as a multi row transaction with the associated detail in the accounting software
Automated splitting - Smart Split: Create automated rules to split transactions from specific suppliers by dollar amount or % of the total invoice, and set a specific description, account and category to each split. This is helpful, for example, where expenses are to be split between personal and business, or if overhead charges are split for allocation to regional offices.
Working in Dext allows Dext to be educated over time so processing time reduces. You can spot errors and report these, identify and “merge” any duplicated suppliers, and choose the correct classification and GST handling for each supplier with a view to maximising those eventually set to auto-publish.
Need help?
We recommend you check out the Dext Help Centre. It contains lots of information from 'getting started' to the use of the more advanced features in Dext.
Should you ever have a question about tax or what's a legitimate expense, please ask your Deloitte Private engagement team.
If you need assistance with your Dext account, please contact the Deloitte Private Cloud Advisory Team.