Many businesses now use some form of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to automatically extract and process data, saving time and improving consistency. There is a wealth of options out there but in this article we look at one of the most well-established and feature-laden examples – Dext Prepare.
Dext Prepare (formerly known as Receipt Bank) automatically extracts key data from receipts, invoices, bank statements and other financial documents, eliminating the need for manual data entry, saving valuable time and reducing the risk of human error. By capturing information such as supplier details, transaction amounts, and dates, Dext Prepare allows for accurate and reliable data extraction, providing businesses with a solid foundation for their financial management processes.
Dext run regular training sessions and Armstrong Watson can support you to make the most of the key features within Dext such as contact accounting rules, invoice fetch function, and mobile app access.
Contact accounting rules and auto-publishing
When a supplier is providing the same service, it can become a monotonous task to continue to assign the Bills to the same Accounting and VAT treatment. Contact Accounting Rules allow the creation of specific accounting, VAT and payment rules for particular suppliers to reduce repetitive data entry and ensure consistency. Invoices with very predictable supplies can even be sent automatically to the accounts software with no human input at all if desired.
Personal & card expenditure
A particularly useful feature for businesses that have a lot of business or personal card expenditure, is that the software will pick up the last 4 digits of the card used for purchases, where this is visible on the receipt. Once set up, it will then send the invoice or receipt to the accounting software and enter the payment in the relevant card or bank account.
Invoice fetching
When suppliers don’t provide invoices via email or post, the task of signing into suppliers’ websites to collect invoices can become lengthy and easy to forget. Dext’s invoice fetch function allows for a one-off sign-in to some suppliers’ websites through Dext. It will then collect invoices for you, saving time and avoiding missing invoices in your accounting system.
Dext Mobile App
Bills can be uploaded via email or computer, but Dext also has a mobile app which is available to iPhone and Android users. The mobile app access allows you to bookkeep on the go, capturing the images of your paper receipts and larger bills. Once the image of the receipt or bill is captured, Dext uses its OCR technology to extract information from the image into the item details boxes to minimise processing time as much as possible.
Direct integration with approval software
For invoices that need to go through an approval process, Dext also has a direct integration with purchase order and invoice approval software ApprovalMax. No more email chains or paper document sign-off. Invoices entered in Dext can be sent to ApprovalMax through multiple, specified approval routes and approvers notified automatically to make one-click approvals with a full audit trail. We can help implement Dext and ApprovalMax with your accounts software to create a seamless, digital purchase function.
20% discount on monthly subscription fee!
Clients signing up to Dext via Armstrong Watson will qualify for a 20% discount on the monthly subscription fee, plus there are no additional user charges, making it a scalable solution for employee expense claims as well as purchase invoices.
If you are already using Dext Prepare in your business, then it may also be possible to move your subscription to our partner account and take advantage of these savings.
If you are interested or would like more information, please contact Richard Woolgar on 0808 144 5575 or email help@armstrongwatson.co.uk.
