Dext vs. FreeAgent vs. QuickBooks Online

It is great for accounting firms. Easy to add and administer client accounts. Easy to integrate with QuickBooks Online. Easy for clients to capture and submit receipts on the go. It is hard to use for manual data entry, and if your clients frequently have very long receipts the Dext Mobile app does not work well as it compresses the image to the point where it is completely illegible. It does not seem to be designed for business owners to use directly rather than using it through their accounting firm.

Incentivized

For micro and small business it is a great solution. The new requirements for MTD for landlords could also be met with this software. Groups and more complex businesses could not use the accounts and tax returns features, however they still could use it for bookkeeping and then export the data to other tax and accounts production software.

QBO is a great solution for small and midsize companies. If the goal is to record all transactions and pull reliable financial reports, QBO is a great option. QBO is also a great solution if most operations are run in a system like Ramp. It syncs well with systems like that and turns the data into something management can use to make decisions. QBO is great because so many people use it. It is easy to find training online, and many people have experience with it.

Incentivized

• Receipt Bank does a stellar job of extracting information from photos of receipts and bills. I'd say 95% of the time the information pulled is correct, so very rarely do I have to correct an amount or date.
• One feature I really enjoy is not only the syncing with Quickbooks Online, but the fact that it also pushes the image to Quickbooks Online as an attachment! This means that for every expense/bill processed through Receipt Bank, an image of it is available inside of the transaction inside of Quickbooks Online. This makes researching a breeze.
• Receipt Bank makes it very simple for users to add documents to the platform. Each company receives a dedicated Receipt Bank email address, which they can email to and upload documents, or users can use the phone apps (which are really easy to use), or they can upload documents from their computer. Training our clients to use it really can't be any easier!

Incentivized

• Accounting! As you'd expect. Makes it much simpler andmore cost effective. In-coming and out-goings are recorded and assigned to projects and accounts. My accountant can access my books and reconcile so much more easily than trawling through spreadsheets.
• Time billing - time spent on projects/client work is recorded and is ready to be invoiced as required. Saves so much time and prevents inaccuracies.
• Invoicing - again, it should do this well and it does. Non payment reminders are automatic and clients have no excuses for not knowing the status of their account.
• Account dashboard - gives me an instant overview of the health of the business (am I on track to meet my yearly targets) and my accounts.

• Workflows for accounts payable invoice review are terrific.
• Bill payment allows you to pay vendors online via ACH or check without having to write a physical check, which reduces admin time.
• The cloud based login lends well to a remote or hybrid work environment for staff.
• QuickBooks Online allows you to pre-configure vendors' general ledger expense accounts. This helps with general ledger coding accuracy and consistency.
• QuickBooks Online integrates with Rippling HRIS, Coast, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, etc., which lends well to an efficient month-end closing and reduced administrative time.

Incentivized

• Receipt Bank Practice Platform has many great features. As they develop the platform I would like to see a rigorous review of all features so as not to add too many and overwhelm my team.
• Having the flexibility to pick and choose from a suite of features and implement the ones that best suit my practice. A tailor made Receipt Bank Practice Platform. this would allow my practice to grow into the features rather than be overwhelmed by too many.

Incentivized

• Reporting on financials, time tracking and project status is a little poor. It's adequate for what what we need, but would be great to see more advanced features.
• API is quite closed so cannot integrate with our other project management tools.

Incentivized

• I dislike that the online bill pay option through QuickBooks is required for their invoicing.
• The auto-fill portion of the customer setup, specifically the company name, is listed, but it also auto-fills in the name portion, which is inconvenient and time-consuming to remove.

Incentivized

Dext is the best way for us to manage our business expenses. Physical and PDF receipts/invoices will be around for a while, but the move to eInvoicing is very good and we look forward to Dext adding this feature

Incentivized

We have used Freeagent for many years now and it serves us well for our needs. To change it would mean a lot of work, and this would most likely only happen if the cost became prohibitive to us.

Incentivized

It like the product 'right out of the box' and I trust Intuit will continually improve it over the years based on my experience with their desktop products. The large providers of Apps makes customizing the entire package relatively easy and seamless for a wide variety of business types.

Incentivized

Dext Prepare's usability is great, it has lots of functions and you can scan any type of document, including hard copy handwritten documents. It is not very accurate but it is handwritten!! Apart from it, you can use multiple functions like one page at a time, multiple, in bulk. You can send emails with multiple attachments and one of the greatest function is the mobile application capabilities.

Incentivized

It is a great software that does everything we need for small business clients. It allows to keep the books in a cloud from bookkeeping to accounts production and tax returns, all in one software. There are no major drawbacks and I would highly recommend it for most of our clients.

Incentivized

Beyond being overkill for a small org's needs, QBO is constantly stealing screen real estate and attention by hammering users for account upgrades, connecting to one of their approved consultants or buying add-ons. The idea of using a simple configurable bookeeping and light accounting interface is completely missing. At the very least, we should be able to hide functions like inventory that we will never use.

Incentivized

Based in a cloud and never had any issues with down time. I can access from any device

We have rarely had outages in the last 10 years. I can only recall 2 times in the last 10 years where we were not able to access our client files.

Incentivized

Everything process has its bugs lately with the new interface. Nothing has worked smoothly since this all began last month.

Incentivized

When I think I have broken the platform the help guys and girls are simply fantastic. They take time to understand the problem and usually resolve the issue on the spot. I have not had to wait more than an hour to get anything resolved - be that an issue I have created or a fault in my understanding of the program. Can't rate their support I have received to date highly enough.

Incentivized

I have never personally used support

Incentivized

In my experience, most representatives keep me on the phone for hours, literally, for a single issue and then usually cannot resolve it satisfactorily. I have 10 open cases that need resolution and, in my experience, there has been NO follow-up communication on any of them.

Incentivized

Did not participate

Incentivized

The person in charge of QB needs to be very accurate with record keeping and is recommended to stay on top of tasks. The biggest issue we have is reconciliation, and those issues occur only when too much time has occurred between reconciliations

Incentivized

Dext is much easier to use than Hubdoc. You can approve documents in batches whereas in Hubdoc you need to review each document separately. Once Dext is set up properly, there is little need to review every document.

Hubdoc does have the ability to save documents to an external site, like Google docs as a backup.

I have used and tested out many other systems. I was looking at Xero for my accounting system but at the time I chose FreeAgent because of the way it handles the recording of dividends and the inbuilt time recording. The others I trialed were good and many of them cheaper. FreeAgent best suited my requirements at the time.

Incentivized

As a freelance bookkeeper, the Desktop version of QuickBooks Online doesn't allow for ease of access from any device. Having to be on a computer with the software downloaded creates additional work to gain access to all required filings etc. Also, I personally find the linking functionality on the Online version to be much more streamlined and user friendly.

As we have grown along our professional path, we have also expanded our use of QB. The scalability is easy and features seem to be waiting for you until you need them. We have increased profits by over 10x from our first year in business to the current and have yet to find a reason to look elsewhere

Incentivized

• I am a single operator Bookkeeping business and run a very profitable business because DEXT provides me a very efficient process to capture critical data without the need for additional manpower.
• The information DEXT captures, stores and reports helps me plan an present relevant information to the client to support pricing increases at client reviews
• The information DEXT contains helps me present business insights to the client thereby assisting in their business aspirations which helps deepen client relationships

Incentivized

• Professional and uniform offering providing great confident customer service. My clients love it, whether they use it a little or a lot. It's a great piece of software - while sophisticated, it's straightforward to use.
• Time saving and efficient use of my team's time. Being able to easily share and compare work / tasks.

• QuickBooks has given us a useful portal by which to get an overview of our financials.
• QuickBooks has given us a relatively easy way to send out invoices quickly and efficiently.
• Due to the customization limitations on QuickBooks, we've had to get creative in third-party implementations to better represent our brand and to track financials.

Incentivized