The Bookkeeping insight gives you practice-level data across all your clients, covering items that need action, submission activity, inactive clients, and supplier rules performance. Each widget on the main page can be drilled into two levels deeper — from a visual summary down to exportable client-level data.
To access it, select Insights in the left navigation, then select Bookkeeping.
Important: The Bookkeeping insight is only available on the Practice Advanced plan.
Who can use this insight
The Bookkeeping insight is available on the Practice Advanced plan. Practice Admins and Client Admins can access it by default. Standard users require the Access Practice Insights permission to be enabled.
For a full overview of roles and permissions in Dext, see Roles and permissions in Dext.
The five widgets
The Bookkeeping insight has five widgets. Each shows a real-time or 30-day summary on the main page. Select the button at the bottom of each widget to drill down for more detail.
Items to action
Items to action shows the total number of items across all clients that are either ready to publish or need reviewing, in real time.
Level 2 — Monitor client action: A horizontal bar chart showing the top 5 clients by items to action, split into Items to review and Ready items. Use the All, To review, and Ready tabs to filter the chart. Select All items to action to go to the level 3 view.
Level 3 — By status and workspace: A table showing all clients with columns for Practice code, Client, Account managers, Items, Ready, To review, Costs, Sales, and Expenses. The table is searchable, filterable, and exportable. Select any row to go directly to that client's Costs inbox.
Items submitted
Items submitted shows the total number of items submitted across all clients over the last 30 days.
Level 2 — Items submitted: Two panels side by side. The left panel shows Lowest submitters — clients submitting significantly fewer items than usual, shown as a bar chart with percentage change. The right panel shows a Submissions trend chart with three lines: Total items, Rolling average, and Same period last year, toggleable between Total and Method views. Select View all clients or View all submissions to go to the level 3 views.
Level 3 has three views, selectable from the breadcrumb dropdown:
Lowest submitters — table with Practice code, Client, Submissions this period, Average submissions, Change, and % Change. Colour-coded % Change column (red for decrease, green for increase).
By status and workspace — table with Practice code, Client, Submissions, Ready, To review, Costs, Sales, Processing, and Archived.
By method — table with Practice code, Client, Submissions, Web app, Web app (%), Mobile app, Mobile app (%), Email, Email (%), Fetch, and Fetch (%).
All level 3 views are searchable, filterable, and exportable. Selecting a row takes you to that client's Costs inbox.
Inactive clients
Inactive clients shows the number of clients with no submission activity in the last 30 days.
Level 2 — Activity: Three panels side by side. The left panel shows Least active clients — a bar chart of clients with the most significant change in activity. The middle panel shows Submission delay — a line chart of the average number of days it takes a client to submit an item. The right panel shows Clients' integration status — a bar chart showing how many clients are Cloud Integrated, connected via Dext Connect, or Not integrated. Each panel has a button to go to the corresponding level 3 view.
Level 3 has three views, selectable from the breadcrumb dropdown:
By actions — table with Practice code, Client, Client added, Last activity, Total actions, Average, Submissions, Items archived, and % Change (colour-coded).
Delay days — table with Practice code, Client, Bookkeeping frequency, and Average submission delay.
Integrations — table with Practice code, Client, Integrated (green tick or red cross), Primary integration, and Secondary integration.
All level 3 views are searchable, filterable, and exportable. Selecting a row takes you to that client's Costs inbox.
Supplier rules by client
Supplier rules by client shows the impact of supplier rules across your clients over the last 30 days, broken down by how many items were not impacted by rules, auto-categorised, or auto-categorised and published.
Level 2 — Popular suppliers without rules: A table showing the top suppliers across your clients that don't have any rules set up, with columns for Client, Supplier, Item count, Auto-categorisation, and Auto-publish. Select View all suppliers without rules to go to the level 3 view, or View rules performance to go to the Supplier rules performance level 2 view.
Level 3 — All suppliers without rules: A full table with Practice code, Client, Supplier, Item count, Auto-categorisation, and Auto-publish. Searchable, filterable, and exportable. Selecting a row takes you to that client's Costs > Suppliers page.
Supplier rules performance
Supplier rules performance shows the number of items auto-categorised and auto-published across all your clients for the current month.
Level 2 — Supplier rules: A bar chart showing the historical performance of supplier rules, with three series: Not affected by rules, Auto categorised, and Auto published, plus an Automation trend line. Select View all clients' suppliers data to go to the level 3 view, or View suppliers without rules to go to the Supplier rules by client level 3 view.
Level 3 — Client supplier data: A table with Practice code, Client, Total submitted, Items without rules, Auto-categorised, and Auto-published. Searchable, filterable, and exportable. Selecting a row takes you to that client's Costs > Suppliers page.
Filtering the insight
To filter the data shown across the insight, select the filter icon in the top right corner of any page. The following filters are available at all levels:
Clients — filter by specific clients
Account managers — filter by the colleague assigned as account manager
Location — filter by office location
Team — filter by team
Managed — filter by whether bookkeeping is managed by Practice or Client
Include deactivated clients — toggle to include or exclude deactivated clients
Select Apply to apply the filters or Reset to clear them.
For filters to work effectively, your client and colleague settings must be configured correctly. See Configuring your settings below.
Configuring your settings
To get the most out of the Bookkeeping insight's filters, configure the following settings for your clients and colleagues first.
Bookkeeping managed by and frequency
On the client list page, the Bookkeeping managed by column lets you set whether bookkeeping for each client is managed by Practice or Client.
If you select Practice, the Bookkeeping frequency column becomes available — use this to set how frequently bookkeeping is done for that client. Options are: Daily, Biweekly, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Biannually, and Annually.
These settings enable the Managed filter in the insight and populate the Bookkeeping frequency column in the Delay days level 3 view.
Account managers
On the client list page, use the + button in the Account manager column to assign a colleague as account manager for each client. This enables the Account managers filter in the insight.
For more details on managing colleague access, check Managing a colleague's access to clients.
Teams and locations
Assigning colleagues to teams and locations enables the Team and Location filters in the insight. For instructions on setting these up, see Using teams and locations.