Workflows are a task management tool for accountants and bookkeepers. They let you standardise the work you do for clients — such as monthly bookkeeping, VAT return preparation, or year-end accounts — by bringing all the relevant tasks into a single, structured process that your team can work through, complete, and sign off.

Instead of relying on spreadsheets, checklists, or memory to track what's been done for each client, Workflows give your whole team a consistent, repeatable process — with a clear record of who did what and when.

Workflows are only available on the Practice Advanced plan.

Every workflow is built from a Workflow Template. A template defines the set of tasks — called checks — that the workflow contains and the order they appear in.

When you create a workflow, you select a template and assign it to one or more clients for a specific reporting period.

Dext includes several pre-built templates to get you started, such as Monthly Bookkeeping, Health Review, and VAT Return Preparation. You can also build your own templates with exactly the checks your practice needs.

If a built-in check doesn't exist for a task your team performs, you can create a custom check to cover it.

There are two types of workflow:

One-off workflows run once for a specific reporting period. Use them for work that doesn't repeat — such as onboarding a new client, a special assignment, or covering a client who was missed in a repeating workflow for a given period.

Repeating workflows run automatically on a schedule or are triggered by a client-specific event, such as a year-end date or VAT return period. Once set up, Dext creates a new workflow instance for each assigned client every time the workflow triggers — so you never have to recreate the same workflow manually.

The type of checks in a workflow depends on whether your practice has the Data Health & Insights add-on.

Without Data Health & Insights, workflows contain manual checks. Your team works through each check themselves, marks it as complete, and adds comments or files as needed. The checks act as a standardised prompt — a reminder of what needs to be done — but Dext doesn't perform any analysis automatically.

With Data Health & Insights, workflows become intelligent. Dext connects to your clients' Xero or QuickBooks Online accounts and automatically runs data-driven checks — analysing transactions, reconciliations, contacts, and more — and flags discrepancies for your team to review. Rather than manually verifying each area, your team can focus on investigating and resolving the issues Dext has already identified.

This is the difference between a workflow that tells your team what to check and one that tells them what's wrong.

Once a workflow is created and assigned, a team member works through the checks, marks each one as complete, complete with issues, or not applicable, and adds comments or files where needed.

When all checks are done, they either mark the workflow as complete or submit it for review if reviewers have been assigned.

Reviewers can go through the completed checks, leave feedback, and either approve the workflow or hand it back to the assignee for further work. Once the final reviewer approves, the workflow is marked as complete and locked.

Here's everything you need to set up and use Workflows in your practice.