Insights is a suite of reporting and analysis tools for accounting and bookkeeping practices in Dext. There are two types: practice-level Insights, which show data across all your clients from one place, and client-level Insights, which give you a detailed view within a single client's account.
What's available depends on your plan and whether your practice has the Data Health & Insights add-on.
Practice-level Insights
Practice-level Insights are accessed by selecting Insights in the left navigation of your Practice account. Each insight aggregates data across your entire client base.
All practice-level Insights are available on the Practice Advanced plan. Some require or are enhanced by the Data Health & Insights add-on — shown in the table below.
Insight | What it shows | Add-on |
Items to action, submission activity, inactive clients, and supplier rules performance | Not required | |
VAT return periods, filing status, and payment data across all clients. UK only — requires HMRC integration | Not required | |
HMRC and Companies House filing deadlines with traffic light alerts. UK only | Not required | |
Key metrics for every client in a configurable, exportable table | Enhances — Data Health columns are blank without it | |
Transaction volumes across all clients, month by month, with MoM and YoY comparisons | Enhances — Data Health columns are blank without it | |
Practice-level Health Scores, upcoming workflows, lock dates, directors loan accounts, and transaction activity | Required | |
All workflows across your practice with status, progress, assignees, and period details | Enhances — Data Health columns are blank without it | |
How effort is distributed across your practice, clients, and team | Not required | |
All your saved practice-level reports, plus Dext's pre-built reports | Not required |
Most practice-level Insights let you configure columns, apply filters, group rows, save custom views, and export to Excel. Saved views appear under Custom in the Insights navigation.
Client-level Insights
Client-level Insights are accessed by going to a client's account and selecting Insights in the left navigation. Each insight shows data for that client only.
All client-level Insights require the Data Health & Insights add-on and are available on both the Practice Essentials and Practice Advanced plans.
Insight | What it shows | Accounting software |
Transaction volume and turnover across sales, bills, bank transactions, and manual journals | Xero, QBO | |
Revenue by customer segment, including each customer's reliance percentage | Xero only | |
How a client's turnover or expenses compare to similar businesses by age, industry, or region | Xero only | |
Expenses by supplier or account over time, with automatic anomaly detection | Xero only | |
Aged receivables, payables, overpayments, and draft invoices at a selected reporting date | Xero, QBO | |
Revenue Movement, Net Assets (Xero only), Customer Reliance, and Supplier Reliance | Xero, QBO | |
Custom reports built from the client's general ledger data, with flexible columns, grouping, and filters | Xero, QBO |
Who can use Insights
For practice-level Insights, Practice Admins and Client Admins can access them by default. Standard users need the Access Practice Insights permission enabled in their colleague privileges.
For client-level Insights, Practice Admins and Client Admins have access to all client accounts by default. Standard users need two things enabled per client: Bookkeeping access and Data Health & Insights access. Both are managed from the client's Practice access settings or from the colleague's Client access settings in Team.
For instructions, go to Managing a colleague's access to clients.