If you manage sole traders or unincorporated landlords who are mandated for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax (MTD IT), Dext Solo is where that work lives. It gives you a dedicated workspace to capture transactions, organise them by income source, and submit quarterly updates directly to HMRC - without disrupting your existing year-end process.

Dext Solo is only available for accountants and bookkeepers with a Dext Practice account. Clients don't have their own subscription, but they can submit documents and data via the Dext mobile app, email, or WhatsApp.

Solo is designed for clients who are sole traders or unincorporated landlords - not incorporated, not VAT-registered, and not using integrated accounting software like Xero or QuickBooks.

A client may have one income source or several. Solo handles both trading income (SA103F) and property income (SA105) within a single account, so clients with mixed income types don't need separate setups.

If an existing bookkeeping client qualifies for Solo, you can migrate them rather than create a new account. See How to move a client to Dext Solo for the eligibility criteria and migration steps.

The Solo workflow follows a clear sequence: set up the client account and income sources, connect to HMRC, get data in, code transactions, review with reports, and submit quarterly updates. Each income source generates its own quarterly reporting obligation - Solo's structure is built around this, keeping everything organised at the income source level from the moment data arrives.

Solo works alongside your existing year-end finalisation software. Quarterly updates go to HMRC directly from Solo.

To add a Solo client, go to your Clients list, select Add client, and choose Self-employed. You'll enter the client's details and set up their income sources as part of the same creation flow - you don't need to add them separately afterwards.

For each income source, you'll set:

See Adding a client account for the full setup steps.

If a client already has a Dext bookkeeping account and qualifies for Solo, you can migrate them rather than create a new account. See How to move a client to Dext Solo for the eligibility criteria. To add or edit income sources after the account is created, see How to add and manage income sources in Dext Solo.

If the client has a UK property income source, you'll also need to set up their individual properties in Business settings > Rental properties. This is where you define ownership percentages, ownership periods, and co-owners for jointly let properties.

Jointly let properties work differently from wholly-owned ones: you record 100% of the income and expenses, and Solo uses the ownership periods you've configured to calculate each owner's share automatically in reports. You can also export beneficial interest statements for co-owners so they can report their share independently.

See How to add and manage rental properties in Dext Solo and How do jointly let properties work in Dext Solo?

Before you can submit quarterly updates, 2 things need to be in place: your practice connected to HMRC, and each income source linked to its HMRC record.

The HMRC connection requires some setup on HMRC's side first - including having an Agent Services Account (ASA), adding client authorisations, and signing each client up for MTD IT individually. These steps must be completed in order before connecting in Dext.

See How to connect Dext to HMRC for MTD for Income Tax for the full sequence.

If a client isn't connected to HMRC yet, you can still use Solo to capture and organise their data. See Calendar or standard quarters for non-HMRC-connected clients.

Solo supports several ways to get transaction data into the workspace. The right approach depends on how your client works - and you can use more than one.

For the full breakdown of all submission methods and how to use them, see How to add and code transactions in Dext Solo.

For self-employed clients who invoice customers, Sales invoicing lets them create and send invoices directly from Solo, with income tracked and linked to reporting. See How to set up sales invoicing in Dext Solo and How to use sales invoicing in Dext Solo.

For landlord clients receiving rental statements from letting agents, Solo can extract gross income and property expenses from PDF statements automatically. See How to add rental statements in Dext Solo.

Once transactions are in Solo, they need to be coded so they appear correctly in reports and submissions. Coding means assigning each transaction an income source and a category - these two fields are what drive the accuracy of everything downstream.

Assign to an income source - in the Costs and Sales inbox, use the Income source dropdown on each item. In the Bank workspace, use the Income source column on the Transactions page. For UK property transactions, an additional Rental property field lets you assign the transaction to a specific property within that income source.

Apply a category - categories in Solo map to HMRC tax return boxes (SA103F or SA105). Selecting the right category for each transaction is what produces accurate tax reports and correct submission figures.

Split mixed transactions - some transactions cover more than one income source, category, or rental property. For costs and sales items, use line items to split them.

For bank transactions, use the Splits button on the transaction row. This is particularly important for rental clients - for example, a maintenance invoice covering work across multiple properties needs to be split so each property's costs appear correctly.

See How to add and code transactions in Dext Solo for the full coding workflow.

Setting up automation early reduces manual work as transactions come in:

Before submitting a quarterly update, use these reports to validate that data is complete and accurate.

Items to review - flags any uncategorised transactions, 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.

Transaction Summary - a comprehensive view of all transactions that have flowed in, broken down by category. Useful for an analytical review before submission. You can filter by income source, date range, and rental property, and export a client-friendly summary. See Using the transaction summary in Dext Solo.

Tax Report - rolls up categorised items into HMRC tax return boxes - SA103F for trading income or SA105 for property - giving you a review-ready picture of the figures before submission. You can drill into any category to see the underlying transactions, compare to the prior year, and export to CSV. See Using the tax report in Dext Solo.

When the data is reviewed and ready, go to HMRC submissions in the sidebar to prepare and submit the quarterly update. Select Prepare submission, review the figures, and submit directly to HMRC.

Quarterly updates in Solo are cumulative - each submission reflects all data up to that point in the period. If a client has no additional complexities beyond their trading or property income, finalisation can also be completed in Solo.

For clients connected to HMRC, the MTD IT obligations dashboard at Insights > MTD for IT gives you a practice-wide view of all outstanding and upcoming quarterly obligations, filtered by status, team member, or office. See Using the MTD IT obligations dashboard.

CIS - if a self-employed client receives income under the Construction Industry Scheme, you can apply the correct CIS deduction rate when categorising sales invoices or bank statement lines. Solo handles the rest. See How to use CIS for self-employed clients in Dext Solo.

Bank workspace on mobile - manage bank transactions for Solo clients from the Dext mobile app. See How to use the Bank workspace in the Dext mobile app for Dext Solo.