Practice settings is available to accountants and bookkeepers with a Dext practice account. It's where you manage configuration that applies to your practice as a whole - including your practice profile, client defaults, subscription, and security.
Select Practice settings in the bottom-left navigation to access it. Each section of Practice settings is covered below.
Who can access Practice settings
By default, only Practice Admins can access Practice settings. Other roles may see a limited set of sections depending on their permissions:
Standard users and Client Admins with the Manage the practice's business permission can see Practice profile and Client defaults
Client Admins with this permission also see AI Assist and Vault
See Roles and permissions in Dext for more details.
Practice profile
Practice profile is where you manage your practice's details - the information Dext uses for your account, invoices, and client-facing messages. It covers:
Upload your logo - add or update your practice logo
Practice profile - business name, country of registration, base currency, and account language
Year-end date - set how Dext determines year-end dates for your client accounts
Tax details - VAT registration number, reporting cycle, and starting month
Registered address - your practice's registered address
HMRC connection - connect your practice's HMRC agent account to Dext to support Making Tax Digital for Income Tax (MTD IT). See How to connect Dext to HMRC for MTD for Income Tax
Karbon connection - connect your Karbon account to Dext. See Connect Dext with Karbon
Item messaging - control whether messages to clients are signed off with your company name or the signed-in user's name. See How to use item messaging in Dext
Integrations
This section is only available to practices that have purchased Data Health & Insights.
Integrations in Practice settings covers two connections used by Data Health to monitor client data quality. Note that this is separate from the HMRC connection in Practice profile, which relates to MTD for Income Tax.
HMRC (UK only) - connect Dext Data Health to HMRC via your agent or business credentials to track VAT (MTD) liabilities and payments automatically. See Connecting to HMRC for VAT (UK only)
Senta - connect your Senta account to sync Health Scores for your clients. See Connecting with Senta
Client defaults
Client defaults lets you set default settings that apply across all your client accounts - including accounting software connections, payment status, due dates, categorisation, archiving behaviour, and image sharing. See Setting default client account settings in Practice settings.
Vault
The Vault section in Practice settings lets you manage folder templates for your clients' Vault storage - including setting up default folders and tags to help organise files consistently across accounts. See Using Vault in Dext and Managing a Vault plan.
AI Assist
The AI Assist section in Practice settings is where you manage Practice Guidance — rules that Dext AI Assist uses to generate suggestions across your client accounts. Practice Guidance is centrally managed here and can be enabled for all or selected clients. See Managing Dext AI Assist guidance.
Data Health
This section is only available to practices that have purchased Data Health & Insights.
The Data Health section in Practice settings covers configuration for the Data Health & Insights feature:
Health score - view how the Health Score is calculated and customise the checks that apply to your clients. See Using the client Health Score
Connections - connect your clients to Xero or other accounting software for Data Health monitoring
Lock dates - set a grace period for monthly lock or closing date alerts across client accounts. See Using lock dates
API tokens - generate authentication tokens to access client data via the Data Health RESTful API. See Data Health & Insights API
Subscription
The Subscription section is where you manage your practice plan, client limits, credits, and add-ons. See:
Authentication
The Authentication section lets Practice Admins manage login security for all practice members.
Single Sign-On (SSO) - connect your organisation to Dext and grant SSO access to your users. Supported providers are:
Microsoft Entra ID - see Using Microsoft Entra ID Single Sign-On with Dext
Okta - see Using Okta Single Sign-On with Dext
JumpCloud - see Using JumpCloud Single Sign-On with Dext
Practice Protect - a third-party security platform designed for accounting practices
Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) - enforce 2FA for all practice members, making it mandatory when they log in. Individual users can also set up 2FA for their own account independently. See How to set up two-factor authentication (2FA) in Dext.