Once you've created an Expense claim in Dext, you can publish it directly to Xero. You can publish to Purchases, Classic Expense Claims, or Bank Accounts depending on how your business handles reimbursements.
Before you start
To publish expense claims, you need an Admin role or the Can publish items and expense claims to an accounting software permission enabled by your account administrator. See Roles and permissions in Dext.
You'll also need an active Xero connection. See How to connect with Xero.
Note: Dext doesn't support Xero Expenses. Expense claims can only be published to the destinations covered in this article.
Publish to Purchases
Publishing to Purchases is the right choice for expense claims that are paid or due to be paid from a business bank account. The claim appears in Xero under Business > Bills to pay.
To publish an expense claim to Purchases:
Open the expense claim in Dext.
In the Payment section, set Publish to to Purchases.
Set Publish as to your preferred status - Draft, Awaiting Approval, Awaiting Payment, or Paid (where possible).
Select Publish.
You can find the published claim in Xero under Business > Bills to pay, in the tab matching the status you selected.
Publish to Classic Expense Claims
Use Classic Expense Claims for expenses paid personally by an employee that need to be reimbursed. Claims publish as Draft in Xero and are initially visible only to the employee they belong to. Once submitted for approval, they become visible to users with the relevant permissions in Xero.
Important: The employee in must be linked to a Xero user in Dext before publishing. If they aren't, Dext will show the error: "A valid user should be identified using the UserID." See A valid user should be identified using the userID to resolve this, then refresh the expense claim before publishing.
To publish an expense claim to Classic Expense Claims:
Open the expense claim in Dext.
In the Payment section, set Publish to to Classic Expense Claims.
Select Publish.
You can find the published claim in Xero under Business > Expense Claims > Current Claim.
Publish to Bank Accounts
Use Bank Accounts for expense claims that have already been paid directly from a business bank account. The claim publishes as a Spend Money transaction in Xero.
Important: The payment method assigned to the claim must be linked to a Xero bank account. See How to link a payment method to a bank account.
To publish an expense claim to Bank Accounts:
Open the expense claim in Dext.
In the Payment section, toggle Paid to Yes.
Select a payment method linked to a Xero bank account from the Payment method dropdown.
Set Publish to to Bank Accounts.
Select Publish.
You can find the published claim in Xero under Accounting > Bank Accounts. Select the relevant bank account, then go to Account transactions.
Attach an image to a published expense claim
You can attach a link to an image of the original item when a claim is published to Xero. Dext embeds the link in the expense claim PDF - you can view the image by selecting the hyperlink in the Item ID column.
To enable this:
Go to Business settings in the sidebar, then select Exports.
Scroll down to Image Sharing and toggle it on.