Getting paid, 29 October 2026
Dext alternatives for trades, or do you need Dext at all?
Most trade firms with fewer than about 250 supplier bills a month don't need to pay for Dext. If you're on Xero, Hubdoc is included in every current plan and does the same basic job: read a bill or receipt and push it into Xero with the image attached. Pay for Dext or AutoEntry when your volume, your bookkeeper or line-item detail makes it worth it.
What does Dext do, and what does it cost?
Dext reads receipts, bills and bank statements, pulls out the supplier, date, totals and VAT, and publishes them to your accounting software after you review them. Your team can send documents in by phone, email or WhatsApp, and it connects to more than 36 accounting packages including Xero, QuickBooks and Sage.
As of October 2026, Dext's UK business pricing shows one base plan: £290 a year billed annually (about £24.17 a month), excluding VAT, for 250 documents a month and five users. Monthly billing costs more; Dext says annual is up to 19% cheaper. There's a 14-day trial without a card. Monthly plans can be cancelled before the renewal date; annual plans need 30 days' notice before renewal. Line-item extraction, bank statement extraction and supplier statements are paid add-ons beyond a small free allowance.
Many accountants put clients on Dext through their own practice plan, so check whether you're already paying for it inside your accountant's fee before you buy it yourself.
What are the alternatives?
There are four realistic routes for a small firm. Prices below are from each vendor's own page, ex VAT, as of October 2026.
| Option | What you pay | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|
| Hubdoc (with Xero) | Included in Xero Ignite £18, Grow £39, Comprehensive £55, Ultimate £70 a month | Xero users with a steady trickle of bills |
| QuickBooks receipt capture | Included in the QuickBooks subscription | Firms already on QuickBooks |
| AutoEntry | £15.45 (50 credits) to £51.95 (200 credits) a month, credits kept 90 days | Seasonal volume; pay only for what you use |
| Dext Business | From £290 a year for 250 documents a month | Higher volume, several people sending receipts, bookkeeper already uses it |
A few details matter more than the headline price:
- Xero Ignite only lets you enter 10 bills a month. Grow and above include bill entry with no stated limit. If you're on Ignite and buying from merchants weekly, the plan is the bottleneck before the capture tool is.
- Xero's prices rose on 1 September 2026 (Ignite from £16 to £18, Grow from £37 to £39). If you're comparing against an old invoice, use the new figures.
- AutoEntry is monthly with no annual lock-in. You can pause or downgrade, and unused credits roll over for 90 days. Overage costs more per credit, so check how many credits your bills use on its pricing page.
- QuickBooks lets you photograph a receipt in the app, forward an email attachment to a QuickBooks address, or drag a file in. It extracts the data and suggests a category.
For a wider look at whether you need a bookkeeper on top of any of these, see do you need a bookkeeper with AI and Xero.
Compare Dext's annual plan with AutoEntry's monthly credits against your real volume. Ask your accountant first; they may already include one.
Turn on Hubdoc or your software's own capture, set one email address for supplier bills, and spend the money on getting bills tagged to jobs instead.
Ignite caps bill entry at 10 a month. Moving to Grow (£39 a month) removes that limit and still includes Hubdoc.
What does keying bills by hand cost you?
More than any of these tools, once you count your own time. The sum is worth doing before you decide a subscription is "a lot of money".
The hidden cost of typing 150 supplier bills a month
A five-person building firm gets about 150 merchant bills, fuel receipts and hire invoices a month.
| Time to key one bill and attach the PDFassumed | 3 minutes |
| Time a month150 × 3 minutes | 450 minutes |
| Hours a month450 ÷ 60 | 7.5 hours |
| Value of the owner's evening7.5 hours × £40 an hour | £300 |
| Cost a year if the owner does it£300 × 12 | £3,600 |
| Dext Business, billed annuallyfrom the vendor page | £290 |
The capture tool is the cheap part. The expensive part is the follow-up work none of them do: deciding which job each bill belongs to, spotting a price rise against what you quoted, and chasing the bills that never arrived.
Another monthly bill that I feel like I don't need… a smart diary.
That was said about job management software, but the same test applies to capture tools: does it save more than it costs each month? The saving comes from getting supplier invoices into Xero automatically, matched to jobs and checked for price rises.
Is a photo of a receipt good enough for HMRC?
Usually, yes. HMRC's record-keeping notice says that if a scanned image of a purchase invoice contains all the detail required for VAT, you don't need to keep the paper original, unless you need it for another purpose.
This is why capture tools keep the image: the photo is the record. A limited company must keep its accounting records for 6 years from the end of the financial year they relate to. If you're self-employed, keep them for at least 5 years after the 31 January filing deadline for that tax year. If you're unsure what your firm must keep, ask your accountant.
What should you set up whichever tool you choose?
The tool matters less than the habits around it. Set these up once and most of the benefit comes from any of the options above.
Tagging bills to jobs is what turns a tidy ledger into something useful. See matching supplier invoices to jobs in Xero and job costing for trades for how to do it.
Who should still pay for Dext?
Dext earns its fee when volume or people make the free options awkward. A groundworks firm buying £300,000 to £400,000 of materials a year from several suppliers, with subbies and drivers all sending receipts, will use the five logins, the supplier rules and the extra extraction. So will a firm whose bookkeeper already runs every client on Dext and charges less for it.
A firm with one or two vans, a single merchant account and 40 bills a month will usually get the same result from Hubdoc or QuickBooks capture at no extra cost. If you're not sure, run Dext's 14-day trial in a busy fortnight and count how many documents you send.
Where Nexley fits
Nexley is the AI back office for UK trade firms: five AI assistants run your tenders, quotes, buying, scheduling and invoicing. It connects to the tools you already work in, you run it all from WhatsApp, and you approve everything. £799 a month.
For supplier bills, Nexley reads the invoices that land in your inbox or come in over WhatsApp, matches each one to a job, checks the price against what you quoted, and posts it to your accounts as a draft bill for you to approve. It doesn't replace your accountant; it replaces the evenings spent typing.
Common questions
Is Hubdoc free with Xero?
Hubdoc is included in Xero's current UK plans at no extra charge, as long as it's connected to your Xero subscription. You still pay for Xero itself, from £18 a month on Ignite as of October 2026.
Can I cancel Dext at any time?
Dext's business page says monthly plans can be cancelled any time before the renewal date. Annual plans need 30 days' notice before they renew, so diary the date if you sign up annually.
Does Dext tell me which job a bill is for?
Dext files documents by supplier and can apply rules per supplier, but it doesn't know your jobs unless the job reference is on the bill or you add it. Put the job name on every order so whatever tool you use can pick it up.
Do I need to keep paper receipts after scanning them?
Not for VAT, if the scanned image shows every detail a VAT invoice needs. Typed-in figures alone aren't enough. Check with your accountant if a receipt might be needed for another purpose.
Sources
- Dext: Business pricing (UK)
- Dext: FAQs for business owners
- Xero: UK pricing plans
- Xero: UK pricing updates from 1 September 2026
- Xero App Store: Hubdoc
- AutoEntry: Pricing
- QuickBooks UK: Business expenses and receipt capture
- GOV.UK: Record keeping (VAT Notice 700/21)
- GOV.UK: Running a limited company: company and accounting records
- GOV.UK: Self-employed records: how long to keep them
Every rule, rate and date above was checked against these sources on the date shown at the top.
Topic: Getting paid
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