Dext is a bookkeeping automation platform now from IRIS (acquired December 2024) that eliminates much of the manual work associated to accounting processes.
$150
per month for 5 users (minimum) and 250 documents per month
Vertex
Score 8.0 out of 10
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Vertex combines tax research with technology to improve tax accuracy and
consistency on sales and purchase transactions. The automation aims to support high volume and complex transactions at speed and scale to streamline internal
processes and improve audit performance. Integrations to
ERP, e-commerce, procurement, and other billing systems enables a single tax
engine to seamlessly support a growing business. In addition to tax
determination, Vertex provides tools and services to automate and…
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Pricing
Dext
Vertex
Editions & Modules
Dext Essential
$23
per month per client (10 minimum, for accounting & bookkeeping firms)
Dext Advanced
$24.72
per month per client (10 minimum, for accounting & bookkeeping firms)
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.
It is easy to use, and the user interface is very interactive. A beginner can also work with ease and have no difficulty accessing Vertex. It is straightforward to understand how Vertex works. The tax calculation mechanism is good and accurate.
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!
Vertex does a great job of building in-house industry expertise (leasing in our case) so they truly understand the tax technical and compliance obstacles we face day to day.
Vertex actively solicits for and responds to customer feedback on development and product roadmap suggestions. The Leasing users group is an example where Vertex takes an active role in communicating with and taking feedback from our industry.
Vertex tax updates are very timely and thorough, which makes the compliance process less stressful for our team.
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.
Reporting: Vertex VAT Compliance is not fully ready to support all EU country's requirements.
Data storage.
Online reporting in VVC: many countries require to report VAT Declaration in an electronic way. This function is still missing for some of the countries from VVC.
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
We are satisfied with the overall performance of Vertex. The software has provided my company with many efficiencies. We have shorted our audits and found that many audits are happy that we are using Vertex to calculate our taxes. We no longer need to worry about updating our rates each month since Vertex sends us a file to upload
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.
Great program, but a lot of features are still manual. It's difficult to set recurring monthly reports in a time frame of "Previous Month" and we have to kick them off. We have to manually delete reports, there isn't an option to choose multiple at once. Data that is transferred into Vertex returns is quirky as well, taking multiple steps to update lines of data.
Our Vertex performance is good, although we are now experiencing Error 502 when adding additional data points to our transaction tester single tests. At Exchange, I was told to reach out to support....that most likely the On Demand system needed some additional CPU resource added. I have a currently open ticket, that has not yet been fixed on this matter
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.
I cannot speak from personal experience, but our IT staff has found contacting Vertex support staff to be challenging. One coworker has gone through several support tickets because he was an unrecognized contact. He has also expressed frustration that communication with support staff is conducted solely by email, drawing out issues over an extended length of time that could be more easily resolved by a brief phone call.
By training I'm referring to our engagement with Vertex Consulting's professional services group. Each person on the engagement had prior leasing industry tax experience and most if not all used O Series before joining Vertex. Consultants with industry specific tax experience provide so much more than just "training". They are able to engage in deep tax technical discussions with actual experience while in private practice. This coupled with having visibility to how numerous other leasing peers approach similar tax issues is a huge plus on top of the standard training.
Vertex has offered multiple webinars for the products we have purchased that are informative and helpful. I've also attended a few of the Vertex annual conferences where I was able to strength my knowledge of Vertex. I also found that their online library and videos can be helpful in resolving issues and answering questions.
The implementation is challenging, make no mistake but will provide much value over time. Make sure you have full support of IT and your major stakeholders in your company. I found that while many people claimed to understand tax was important, they had no idea how deep tax in entrenched throughout the lease life cycle.
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.
In comparison specifically with Avalara, Vertex is better in every way. It is much more customizable and allows us to change the way our tax software is set up for our business needs. Avalara is much more constricted, and is using the SST system which can allow for simplified returns, but in our case was causing more problems. Avalara is also much more expensive than Vertex, for less capabilities. Vertex' customer support is much stronger than Avalara's, as they are focused on obtaining and retaining customers whereas Avalara was continually trying to find ways to get money from us
There needs to be a time-consuming setup both in the Enterprise Resource Platform and in Vertex and the related tools as well but once this is all established, Vertex is very proficient at calculating Sales and Use Tax in the USA and in Canada with GST/HST, as well as several of the provinces where we are located. As we added plants in different jurisdictions via greenfield expansion and aquisition, Vertex was able to integrate those as long as the tax department is fully informed of the system.
Receipt Bank has helped alleviate the frustration felt by both our clients and our staff when it comes to the detail needed for some of the organizations that we serve. In some cases it's just NECESSARY to have all of that detail for the financial statement preparation, and prior to Receipt Bank, we had to email back and forth, download attachments, manually enter the information into Quickbooks Online, save the document etc. It was a tedious process. Receipt Bank took care of all of that, and it saves both our clients and our staff HOURS of work each month.
Receipt Bank has given our clients the confidence to make their work places paperless offices. It frees time and money for them, because they don't have to keep track of the documents, they don't have to store the documents (and find a place to store them), and they never have to file them away. Receipt Bank archives all of the documents so you can find them if you ever need them, and the documents are in their financial data as well, which is where they really need them. I've never had a client regret going to Receipt Bank just because it makes life so much simpler for them.
We use Vertex on a monthly basis to see if tax has been over-accrued or over-charged on invoices. We do save tax every month using the tool. Not at liberty to share too much more - the technology does assist the human efforts.
