What is Dext Assist?
Dext Assist is your intelligent bookkeeping agent. It learns how you and your team work and applies that knowledge to automate repetitive tasks with accuracy, transparency, and control.
It helps you save time on manual edits - like categorising receipts, reclassifying invoices, or updating fields - so you can focus on higher-value work. The agent suggests values directly within your Costs and Sales items and explains the reasoning behind every recommendation.
Important: Dext Assist is currently in Beta testing and available only to selected firms. During this phase, it will be automatically enabled for participating accounts.
What can Dext Assist do?
The agent enhances Dext’s automation by learning your unique bookkeeping patterns. It:
Learns from your corrections, edits, and classifications
Suggests the right values for the document fields from the list of available actions
Explains every recommendation with clear reasoning
Lets you accept or dismiss suggestions anytime; If a suggestion is dismissed, you can give feedback that would be directly used for future improvements.
Continuously improves its accuracy the more you use it
Examples of what it can automate:
Category preferences: Recognises how you categorise different types of purchases from certain suppliers (e.g., you buy fuel from Shell → “Fuel & Oil", you buy coffee from Shell → “Operating Expenses").
Description preferences: Generates the description content you want to see. Based on your guidance, the agent pulls in the details you care about most, such as what was purchased, where it was bought, due dates, or any other meaningful information you consistently reference.
New suppliers: When a brand-new supplier is added, instead of waiting for a rule or manually coding the first few invoices, the agent uses your past judgments to give a high-quality suggestion with a clear explanation.
Client nuance: Understands that the same supplier may be treated differently per client.
Flag items: Use the agent to flag items that need your attention, whether they relate to personal expenses, motor vehicles, VAT claims, or anything else you’re concerned might slip under the radar.
How to enable Dext Assist for your clients
Note: This section is for accountants and bookkeepers managing multiple clients. Access to Dext Assist in Practice settings is limited to Practice Admins and Client Admins with the Manage the practice’s business permission.
You can choose which clients to include in the Dext Assist Beta directly from Practice settings.
Go to Practice settings > Dext Assist.
You’ll see a list of your clients. You can select up to 10 clients to start with.
Use the Trial fit (sustainability) ranking to help you decide where to begin. This highlights which clients are most likely to get value quickly.
Toggle Dext Assist access on for the clients you want to include.
Once enabled, Dext Assist will start learning from activity on the selected client accounts and surface suggestions based on their data and workflows.
How does the trial fit ranking work?
The trial fit ranking helps you prioritise clients for the Beta. It’s based on how well-suited each client is for automation, using signals such as document volume and consistency.
You’ll see labels such as:
Great fit - ideal candidates to trial Dext Assist first
Good fit - likely to benefit, with slightly less automation potential
Worth trying - may still benefit, but with more limited impact
This gives you a quick, informed way to decide where Dext Assist will save you the most time.
How do Dext Assist suggestions appear?
The agent’s suggestions appear directly on the Item details page for both Costs and Sales items.
Suggestions are displayed beneath the relevant field or directly applied if Auto-apply was selected for the guidance.
A ✨ sparkle icon indicates that the value comes from the agent.
Hover over the suggestion to view the full explanation and the guidance used to generate it.
This transparency helps you understand why the agent made its recommendation, building confidence and trust.
What is guidance?
Guidance is the set of rules and logic Dext Assist uses to generate suggestions.
Important:
Admins can view, edit, create, and manage all Dext Assist guidance. Accountants and bookkeepers accessing a client account act as Admins by default.
Standard users can still see Dext Assist’s suggestions on documents and apply them, but they cannot access or modify guidance.
How to access guidance
Go to Business settings.
Select Dext Assist in the left-hand menu.
Viewing existing guidance
If guidance already exists, you’ll see a list of rules, including:
Name and details of each rule
Action (Auto-apply or Suggest)
Enabled/Disabled status
From this view, Admins can:
Edit - refine the rule logic
Set to Auto-Apply - apply it automatically
Delete - remove guidance no longer needed
Disable - temporarily pause a rule
Reviewing suggested, applied, and dismissed items
You can review the impact of Dext Assist directly from the guidance list in Business settings.
To see affected items:
Go to Business settings > Dext Assist.
In the guidance list, look at the Suggested, Applied, and Dismissed columns next to each guidance rule.
Each number shows how many items that specific guidance has affected.
Click any number to open a preview of the exact items where the guidance was:
Suggested - Dext Assist recommended a value, but a user has not yet accepted or dismissed it
Applied - The suggestion was applied, either automatically or manually accepted by a user
Dismissed - A user rejected the suggestion
What you can do in the item preview
When you click into a count, you’ll see a list of affected items.
From here, you can:
Open individual documents using View item
See the document type, date, and supplier
Use Advanced search to filter by supplier and date range
This makes it easy to validate whether a guidance rule is behaving as expected before you decide to refine, disable, or auto-apply it.
How to create or edit guidance
Generate guidance
If you haven’t set up any guidance yet:
Click Generate.
The agent will create guidance automatically based on your current data and workflows.
Note: Generate can be clicked only once for now. After the initial set of guidance is created, the button will be greyed out. We plan to let Dext Assist re-analyse a client and regenerate updated guidance in the future, but this functionality is not yet available in the Beta.
Create guidance manually
To define new rules for different workflows:
Click Create guidance.
Review the guidance writing tips at the top of the page to ensure your rule is clear, specific, and uses unambiguous language. These tips explain how to structure effective guidance and include examples and the full list of available actions.
Enter a Name and Instructions explaining the logic.
Choose how it should apply: Suggest or Auto-apply.
Click Create guidance to save.
Edit guidance
To refine an existing rule:
In the guidance list, select Actions > Edit next to the guidance you want to edit.
Update the rule’s Instructions or application type.
Click Save to apply changes.
Important: Changes to guidance apply only to new items.
How to review and manage Dext Assist suggestions
When Dext Assist makes a suggestion:
You’ll see the recommended value and a note explaining the reason on the Item details page.
If it’s correct, accept it by clicking the recommended value.
If not, you can dismiss it by clicking X next to the suggestion and add feedback.
Your feedback helps the Dext Assist learn and improve accuracy over time.
Benefits of using Dext Assist
Work smarter, not harder: Automate repetitive manual tasks like categorisation and flagging.
Cleaner data: Ensure consistent treatment and reduce errors across clients.
Full transparency: Every recommendation includes a clear explanation.
Personalised automation: Learns your preferences and adapts to your workflows.
Continuous improvement: The more you use it, the smarter it gets.