Item: Dext Prepare (with Receipt Bank)
Rating: 8
Author: Russell Barnett, EA, CTS

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Dext Prepare (with Receipt Bank) makes it easy for accounting clients to capture and send receipts to us. We can then easily back these up to Dropbox for them and also send them to QuickBooks Online to be attached to the appropriate transactions. As an accounting firm this is a great tool. It generally does a good job tracking which card is being used to pay for things so it can send the transaction to the correct QB register. Dext Prepare (with Receipt Bank) can also be used to create expense reimbursement reports based on submitted receipts, and will send them to QBO for payment.

Pros and Cons

Mobile app to capture receipts on the go
Tracks which card is being used for a purchase
Matches receipts against recent existing QBO entries to help avoid duplicate entries
It is good at extracting relevant information from receipts and invoices
It tracks emailed invoices by the destination rather than the origin, unlike QB's receipt service.

Their ongoing insistence on only using European formatted dates (DD/MM/YY) is a constant irritation every single time I have to manually enter a date
There isn't a way to manually match a record against an existing QBO transaction. It either finds it or you can't use Dext to send the receipt image to QB.
The mobile app is extremely limited. You cannot publish any type of transaction other than an expense.
The mobile app severely compresses pictures of receipts, which can make large receipts literally unreadable and defeating the purpose of capturing it.

Return on Investment

It is part of our outsourced accounting services package. Our clients like using it and appreciate not having to keep copies of physical receipts.

Alternatives Considered

Expensify and QuickBooks Online

I have never been able to get Expensify to work for me. The reports are just completely unintuitive and I end up having my client generate the report I need and send it to me instead.

For QBO the restriction on which email addresses can send receipts is too limiting. They also do not extract data well and the overall system is very clunky compared to Dext. Of course the trade-off there is that you aren't paying a separate monthly subscription fee.

Key Insights

Do you think Dext Prepare (with Receipt Bank) delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Dext Prepare (with Receipt Bank)'s feature set?

Yes

Did Dext Prepare (with Receipt Bank) live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Dext Prepare (with Receipt Bank) go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Dext Prepare (with Receipt Bank) again?

Yes

Usability

Manual data entry is annoying due to the way they format the dates.

There is not a way to manually match a receipt to an existing transaction in QBO. It usually finds them, but if it does not you are sunk.

Overall the product is good and I would recommend it to accounting firms for their clients.

Support Rating

I have not had to contact support very many times for Dext Prepare (with Receipt Bank) in the 2+ years I have been using it. However, when I do they are generally responsive and helpful. Their US support and sales team seems to be based on the east coast and so they do not offer support during all of our working hours, which is annoying.

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

A good add on product to QBO for accounting firms

Overall Satisfaction with Dext Prepare (with Receipt Bank)