The Dext AI Connector lets you ask Claude, ChatGPT or Copilot questions about your practice and clients directly from a chat. This article explains what's available today, where the rough edges are, and the kinds of questions worth trying. These tools are still in early testing, so they don't yet expose everything in your Dext account — that's expected, and your feedback helps decide what to build next.
Before you start
Before you start asking questions, keep a few things in mind:
Every connector is read-only. The assistant can look things up and summarise them, but it can't change, post, delete, or submit anything in Dext.
Most questions need a practice and, often, a client in scope. If the assistant asks you to confirm which one, that's why.
Some questions only work for clients with the Data Health & Insights add-on enabled (formerly Precision) — this covers tax estimates, aged balances, journals, bank balances, fixed assets, workflows, and configuration checks. Not sure which of your clients have it? Ask "Which of my clients have the Data Health module enabled?"
Some tools are admin-only. If you're not a practice admin or client admin, a handful of queries about users, access, and time tracking won't be available to you.
Your practice and clients
Ask the assistant to get a handle on who's in your practice, what your client list looks like, and how it's segmented. You can ask about:
The practices you have access to, which is handy if you work across more than one.
Your full client list, filtered by status, kind (business or individual), plan, accounting integration (Xero, QBO, Sage, FreeAgent, Pennylane, and others), or active modules.
Whether clients are managed by your practice, self-paying, and on what bookkeeping cadence.
Sorting and ranking by name, healthscore (for Data Health & Insights), next deadline, document volume, or item delay.
Try asking:
"Show me all my active Xero clients on the Data Health & Insights plan."
"Which 10 clients have the lowest healthscores?"
"List my managed clients on a monthly bookkeeping cadence."
"How many clients does our practice have in total, and how many are inactive?"
Note: The list returns 50 clients per page. For large practices, the assistant may need to fetch several pages to answer questions like "how many in total." If a client isn't connected to an accounting integration, downstream questions about their financials or bank balances won't return data.
Users, access, and account managers
This is useful for access audits, onboarding reviews, and the "who looks after this client?" question. You can ask about:
Everyone in your practice — name, email, role, and last login.
Users on a specific client account (the client's own people, not your staff).
Which practice users have been explicitly granted access to which clients.
Account managers for each client, including the assignee and reviewer, with team-based access shown separately.
Try asking:
"Which practice users haven't logged in for over 90 days?"
"Show me everyone with admin rights on our practice."
"Which clients is Sarah Jones the account manager for?"
"Does client ABC have any users on their side, or only us?"
Note: Access, time-tracking, and account-manager queries are restricted to practice admins and client admins. If you're a standard user, the assistant will let you know it can't pull those. Practice admins and client admins automatically see all clients, so they won't appear in the "explicitly granted access" list — that's intentional.
Where your time is going
If you track time in Dext, the assistant can slice it three ways: by client, by colleague, and by colleague-and-client as a drill-down. You can ask about:
How much time the whole practice spent on each client over a period.
How time is distributed across colleagues — total hours, active days, and number of clients touched.
A specific colleague's breakdown of which clients they worked on and how much time on each.
Any custom date range, which defaults to the last 30 days.
Try asking:
"Which 5 clients ate the most hours last month?"
"Show me time spent by the team in Q1."
"What was Alex's workload last week, by client?"
"Compare time spent on managed vs non-managed clients in the last 90 days."
"Which colleagues worked on more than 20 different clients last month?"
Note: This is admin-only, as above. Time data only exists for the period you've actually been tracking time in Dext — periods before you started tracking will be empty.
Client financial snapshots
This covers headline metrics for a single client or a portfolio, and is good for a quick health check before a client call. You can ask about:
Revenue, expenses, profit, and cash flow indicators for a connected client.
The same headline view for up to 20 clients in one go.
Health scores and connection status, so you can spot disconnected clients quickly.
Try asking:
"Give me the financial dashboard for Smith & Co."
"Show stats for these five clients side by side."
"Which of my managed clients aren't connected to their accounting provider?"
"Which clients have the strongest cash flow this quarter?"
Note: If a client isn't connected to Xero, QBO, or another integration, you'll get connection guidance instead of stats. Bulk calls are capped at 20 clients at a time, so for larger portfolios the assistant will need to make multiple calls.
Aged debtors and creditors
This covers outstanding customer and supplier balances, bucketed by age (0 to 30, 31 to 60, 61 to 90, and 90-plus days). It's built for cash flow conversations and credit control prioritisation. You can ask about:
The total owed to or from a client and the largest contributors.
Average debtor or creditor days, with alerts when they cross 60 or 90 days.
Which suppliers or customers fall into each age bucket.
Try asking:
"Who owes Smith & Co the most, and how overdue are they?"
"Are any of Acme Ltd's customers more than 90 days overdue?"
"What's the average debtor days across my top 10 clients?"
"Show me suppliers Smith & Co hasn't paid in over 60 days."
Note: These reports work one client at a time — there's no single call for aged debtors across all your clients, though the assistant can loop through clients if you ask it to. The default page size is 100 customers or suppliers, up to a maximum of 200, so for very large ledgers you may need to ask for the next page.
UK tax estimates and compliance checks
This is a starter set of UK-focused tax tools, useful for sense checks rather than filing — always review the underlying data before relying on the numbers. You can ask about:
Annual Investment Allowance (AIA) eligibility for fixed assets, with the eligible total compared against the £1m cap.
Corporation Tax estimates over an accounting period, pulled from journals and calculated at the right rate (19%, 25%, or marginal relief).
A VAT return summary for a period, including the effective VAT rate and a per-tax-code breakdown.
A P11D requirement check that flags clients who likely need to file, based on payroll and benefit-style account activity.
Try asking:
"Which assets at Acme Ltd are AIA-eligible this tax year?"
"Estimate Corporation Tax for Smith & Co for their year ending 31 March 2026."
"Give me a VAT return summary for Acme Ltd for Q4 2025."
"Does Smith & Co probably need to file a P11D this year?"
"Across my UK clients, who's likely to breach the CT instalment threshold this year?"
Note: These are estimates pulled directly from a client's accounting data. The Corporation Tax estimate, for example, doesn't apply capital allowances, depreciation add-backs, or entertainment disallowances, and the assistant will flag these caveats. The tools are UK-focused only and won't give meaningful answers for non-UK clients, and they're designed for advisory conversations, not as a substitute for review by a qualified adviser.
Invoices and journals
This covers the "what got posted?" and "did payroll run?" style questions. You can ask about:
Finding a specific invoice by invoice number.
Listing a client's invoices, filtered by status (paid, authorised, draft, or voided).
Listing accounting journals, filtered by date range, source type (manual journals, sales, or purchases), or a free-text search.
Payroll journals specifically — the assistant identifies wages and PAYE accounts and flags if payroll appears to be missing for a period.
Try asking:
"Has invoice INV-2025-0431 been paid?"
"Show me all draft invoices for Acme Ltd."
"Were there any manual journals over £5,000 last month at Smith & Co?"
"Did payroll get posted for Smith & Co in March?"
"List unbalanced journals for Acme Ltd in the last 90 days."
Note: Invoice and journal lists are capped: invoices default to 20 with a maximum of 100, and journals default to 100 with a maximum of 200. Free-text search on journals covers the reference or narration only, not the line description.
Fixed assets and live bank balances
You can ask about:
A client's fixed asset register, including name, type, purchase date, cost, depreciation, book value, and an AIA eligibility flag.
Live bank balances pulled directly from Xero for every active bank account, with per-currency totals.
Try asking:
"What does Acme Ltd's fixed asset register look like?"
"Total purchase cost of all assets purchased in the last 12 months at Smith & Co."
"What's the live cash position for Acme Ltd today?"
"Pull bank balances for Smith & Co as of 31 March 2026."
Note: Live bank balances are Xero-only at the moment — QBO and other integrations will return an error or empty result. The "AIA eligible" flag on an asset is a simple heuristic based on purchase year, not a full tax review.
Workflow, configuration, and client activity
This covers the bits that help you understand how Dext is set up for your clients and what's running over their data. You can ask about:
Whether a client's chart of accounts has critical accounts configured: PAYE, Dividends, Director's Loan, and Entertainment. This works for up to 20 clients at once.
The workflow checks available to your practice, including Dext's global checks and your own custom ones, whether active or inactive.
Flows currently running for the practice, including progress, status, due dates, and who they're assigned to.
The catalogue of Data Health insights available for a client, and which ones have been dismissed.
Lightweight client activity data, such as proposal and engagement metrics, for up to 20 clients.
Try asking:
"Which of my clients are missing a Dividends account?"
"Show me all flows assigned to me that are still in progress."
"List the custom checks my practice has built, and which are active."
"Which Data Health insights has Smith & Co dismissed?"
"Are there any flows overdue across the practice?"
Note: Configuration checks are capped at 20 clients per call, though the assistant can loop through batches for larger portfolios. Flow statuses are limited to pending, in progress, review, and completed — there's no "cancelled" filter.
What's in and out of scope today
Some things are ready to use now, and others are on the roadmap. Here's a quick reference for what's available today against a Dext client:
What you can do today | Not yet available |
List and filter your clients and practices | Make any changes — everything is read-only |
See who has access to what (admins only) | Create, post, or amend invoices, journals, or bills |
Track time across the team and per client (admins only) | Submit VAT returns, file Corporation Tax, or send P11Ds |
Pull financial dashboards for one or many clients* | Access live bank balances for non-Xero clients |
Aged debtors and creditors per client, with alerts* | Generic Data Health insights output — the catalogue is exposed, not the run results yet |
UK Corporation Tax, VAT, AIA, and P11D estimates* | Cross-client aged-balance roll-ups in a single call |
Look up specific invoices and list them by status* | Document images, PDFs, or item-level paperwork |
Inspect journals, including unbalanced and payroll-related ones* | Email, in-app messaging, or notifications data |
Fixed asset registers with AIA eligibility flags* | Subscription, billing, or practice-invoicing data |
Live bank balances from Xero* | Custom report builder output or PDFs of any kind |
Chart-of-accounts configuration audits* | Non-UK tax estimates (VAT, CT, AIA, and P11D tools are UK-only) |
List workflows, checks, and insights* | Anything requiring write access to your accounting platform |
*Requires the client to have the Data Health & Insights add-on (formerly Precision) enabled.
Tips for getting the best results
A few habits make these tools noticeably more useful:
Start broad, then narrow. "List my clients" then "now just the Xero ones" then "and the 10 with the lowest healthscores" works better than trying to phrase the perfect query in one go.
Be specific about clients and dates. "Last quarter", "Q4 2025", or a YYYY-MM-DD range all work well — "recently" is ambiguous.
Combine tools naturally. "Find clients with healthscore below 50, then show me their aged debtors" is exactly the kind of question these tools were built for.
Ask the assistant to summarise. If a list is long, ask for the top 5, the totals, or the patterns rather than the raw data.
Double-check numbers before using them with clients. These tools are a fast first look, not a substitute for review.
How do I share feedback with Dext?
Dext wants to hear what's useful, what's missing, and where the rough edges are. Treat it like a sandbox — try the questions you wish you could ask, and don't filter your ideas, since even "could it do X?" questions help decide where to invest next.
Dext would especially love to hear:
What you asked that worked surprisingly well.
What you tried that didn't work, and what you were hoping it would do.
Client conversations or weekly routines where this could save you real time.
Data you reached for that wasn't there, such as document images, specific reports, or cross-client roll-ups.
Anything that was misleading, slow, or confusing.
To share feedback, ask the assistant directly in the chat window: "I'd like to share feedback to the Dext team…" followed by your comments. Alternatively, email support@dext.com with a screenshot of the conversation, your comments, and details of the tool you were using.