If you manage a Solo client's account - or your own - getting transactions in and coded correctly is what makes everything downstream work. Accurate categories, income source assignments, and splits feed directly into reports and HMRC submissions.

You can get costs and expenses into Dext in several ways. Fetch and email work well for recurring suppliers and clients who capture receipts themselves; upload and mobile are better for one-off documents:

For Solo clients with self-employment income, Sales invoicing is the primary way to create and send invoices and quotes to their customers directly from Dext. Invoices are tracked, can be customised with the client's branding, and feed into reports once recorded.

See How to set up sales invoicing in Dext Solo and How to use sales invoicing in Dext Solo.

If you need to record a sale without creating a formal invoice, you can also create a sales document manually. See How to manually create a costs or sales document in Dext Solo.

Bank transactions can be added by uploading a bank statement or by connecting a live bank feed. See How to use Bank Statement Extraction and How to connect Dext to a bank feed.

Once transactions are in Dext, you need to code them so they appear correctly in reports. Coding means assigning each transaction to the right income source, category, and any other relevant fields.

Unlike standard Dext accounts, Solo accounts use income sources - self-employment businesses or UK properties - to organise transactions for MTD and tax reporting. Every transaction needs to be assigned to an income source before it can appear correctly in reports.

Costs and Sales items:

For UK property income sources, a Rental property field also appears on the item details page. Select the relevant property to assign the transaction to a specific property within that income source.

Bank transactions:

For UK property income sources, a Rental property column also appears on the Transactions page. Select the relevant property from the dropdown to assign the transaction to a specific property within that income source.

Categories in Dext Solo are mapped to HMRC tax return boxes. Applying the right category to each transaction is what drives the accuracy of the tax report and transaction summary.

To apply a category to an individual item:

To apply a category to bank transactions:

To apply a category in bulk:

Automate categorisation with supplier rules: You can set a default category per supplier so it's applied automatically to every new document from that supplier. In Solo, supplier rules include an Income source field - so you can automate both the category and the income source assignment in one rule. Fields related to accounting software publishing are not present, as Solo accounts don't use a bookkeeping integration.

See How to use supplier and customer rules in Dext.

Dext can also apply categories automatically using machine learning, based on how similar items have been coded in the past. Supplier rules take priority when both are set. See How Dext auto-categorises your Costs items.

To manage the categories list itself - including adding, editing, and importing categories - see How to manage categories in Dext Solo.

Dext automatically extracts payment methods from documents where the last 4 digits of the card are visible. Once extracted, you can review or change the payment method on the item details page.

You can also create payment methods manually for cash, cheques, or cards that aren't automatically recognised. See What is a payment method in Dext?

If the client uses projects to track spend - for example, by job or cost centre - you can assign a project to any Costs or Sales item from the item details page. Projects are managed manually in Solo under Business settings > Lists > Projects, as there's no accounting software to sync them from. See Using projects in Dext.

If Smart Suggestions is enabled, Dext may suggest a project value below the field based on document content and past coding. Select the suggestion to apply it instantly. See What are Smart Suggestions in Dext?

Some transactions cover more than one income source, category, or rental property and need to be split before they'll report correctly.

Line items let you split a costs or sales document into separate lines, each with its own category, income source, and amount. This is particularly important for rental clients - for example, a maintenance invoice that covers work across multiple properties needs to be split so each property's costs appear correctly in the tax report.

See How to manually create line items in Dext and How to use Line Item Extraction in Dext.

For rental statements specifically, see How to add rental statements in Dext Solo.

To automate line item splits by supplier or customer, see How to use Smart Split in Dext.

Bank transactions have their own split mechanic. If a single bank transaction needs to be split across multiple income sources, categories, or rental properties, select Splits next to the transaction to open the splits window. Each split line can be coded independently.

Setting up automation rules early reduces manual coding as transactions come in. Two features are particularly useful for bank transactions:

Bank rules let you set automatic coding rules for recurring bank transactions - for example, always categorising transactions from a specific payee as a particular expense type. See How to use bank rules in Dext Solo.

Bank match connects bank transactions to matching costs and sales documents already in Dext, helping confirm that recorded expenses have a corresponding bank entry. See How to use Bank Match in Dext Solo.

Dext AI Assist is an intelligent coding agent that learns how you work and applies that knowledge to automate categorisation, descriptions, and other fields across Costs and Sales items. It explains the reasoning behind every suggestion so you can accept, adjust, or dismiss it - and improve its accuracy over time. AI Assist works with Solo accounts. See Dext AI Assist.

Before reviewing reports or filing a submission, use the Items to review report to find and fix any transactions that are uncategorised, missing an income source, or have other issues that would affect accuracy. It pulls together all outstanding items from Costs, Sales, and Bank in one place.

Go to Reports > Items to review. See Using the Items to review report in Dext Solo.

Once your data is clean, you can review totals in the transaction summary and the tax report before moving to submission.