Auto-publish saves the most time when the documents it publishes are already coded correctly. That depends less on the auto-publish setting itself and more on the rules and automation that run before it.
This article covers which documents to start with, which level to set each rule at, how to hold some documents back, and what to check if nothing publishes.
For step-by-step setup instructions, go tо How to use auto-publish in Dext
Choose suppliers with predictable documents
The best suppliers to start with are the ones whose documents always look the same. Auto-publish applies to every future document from that supplier, so consistency matters more than volume.
Good candidates share these traits:
The category never changes between documents
The tax rate is always the same
The paid status and due date don't vary
You already have a supplier rule set up that codes the document fully
Suppliers to leave out of auto-publish include those you use rarely, those where the category depends on what was bought, and those whose documents you edit most months. A card used for both fixed subscriptions and variable spending is a common example: the subscriptions are safe to auto-publish, the rest are not.
Check the suppliers Dext suggests
Dext also suggests suppliers that are good candidates for auto-publish, so you don't have to work them all out yourself.
A suggestion appears in your costs inbox or suppliers list when you've published documents from a supplier over the last 3 months without editing them. It also estimates the time auto-publish would save you, based on an estimate of 1 minute to review a document.
To act on a suggestion:
Select Review suppliers in the costs inbox. This opens your Suppliers list with the Auto-publish: Suggested filter applied.
Check each suggested supplier and the rules already set against it, such as Category.
Select Turn on for this supplier, or turn on the Auto-publish toggle in a supplier's row to enable them one at a time.
A sparkle icon next to a supplier's Auto-publish toggle marks it as suggested by Dext. To go back to your full supplier list, select Reset next to the filter.
Documents you've published without editing are already being coded correctly by your existing rules. Turning on auto-publish for those suppliers removes a review step without changing what reaches your accounting software.
Set each rule at the right level
Auto-publish can be set at 4 levels, and the level you choose decides how wide the rule reaches. Picking the narrowest level that covers what you need is the safest approach.
Supplier or customer: every future document from one supplier or customer. Go to Costs or Sales, then the Suppliers or Customers tab.
Payment method: every cost item paid with that method. Go to Business settings > Lists > Payment methods.
Account: every cost and sales document in the account. Go to Business settings > Connections, then Manage > Settings > Automatic publishing.
AI Assist guidance: documents matching conditions you describe in writing, such as a supplier and an amount together.
When more than one rule applies to the same document, Dext follows a fixed order:
AI Assist guidance
User rules
Payment method rules
Supplier and customer rules
Account-level defaults
Note: Account-wide auto-publish is the setting behind most cases of a document publishing when nobody expected it to. Unless you want every document published without review, set auto-publish per supplier or per payment method instead.
Use payment method rules for cards and accounts
Payment method rules are the most direct way to control publishing, because they override supplier and customer rules for the same field. They suit company cards, petty cash, and any account where the payment route decides how the item should be handled.
For each payment method, you can set:
Auto-publish: Always, Never, or None
Publish to: the destination in your accounting software
Bank account: the account the item is matched against
Always publishes every item paid with that method. Never blocks auto-publish for those items, overriding supplier, customer, and account-level rules. Use Never when a broader rule is publishing items you'd rather check. None leaves the decision to the other rules.
Supplier rules and payment method rules work together rather than against each other. A supplier rule can assign the payment method, and the payment method rule then applies its own publishing settings. Setting a supplier rule that assigns a card with Auto-publish set to Always gives you supplier-level coding with payment-level publishing.
For the full setup steps, go tо How to set up payment method rules in Dext
Code documents fully before they publish
Auto-publish only publishes documents that are complete, so the rules that fill the fields are what make it work. Set these up first, then turn auto-publish on.
Supplier and customer rules set the category, tax rate, payment method, due date, paid status, description, and currency for every document from that supplier or customer. Go tо How to use supplier and customer rules in Dext
Auto-categorisation fills the category where no supplier rule has set one, based on how you've coded similar items before.
Smart Split splits a supplier's documents across categories automatically, for suppliers you always split the same way.
Line Item Extraction pulls out each line on a document rather than treating it as a single total.
User rules set a default payment method or project for documents uploaded by a specific person.
Check Business settings > Automation > Categorisation before you start. If Auto-categorisation is set to Never, no category is applied automatically, and documents without a category can't be published.
Keep some documents back for review
Not every document from an auto-published supplier needs to go straight through, and there are 3 ways to hold specific documents back.
Exclude document types with Cost items exceptions
Cost items exceptions let you name document types that should never auto-publish, such as credit notes or supplier statements.
Set them in Business settings > Connections > Manage (next to your Bookkeeping connection) > Settings. These exceptions apply to every auto-publish rule in the account, at every level. If a supplier sends invoices and a monthly statement, auto-publish the supplier and list supplier statements as an exception. The invoices publish, and the statement stays in your inbox.
Hold documents with an approval workflow
Approval workflows hold a document until it's approved, and they take priority over every auto-publish rule.
Build the workflow around what you want to check, using criteria such as supplier, category, or document owner, then turn on Auto-publish once approved. Everything else on that card keeps publishing automatically, and only the documents you've flagged wait for a decision.
For setup steps, go tо How to set up approval workflows for cost and sales documents
Block a payment method entirely
Setting a payment method's Auto-publish to Never blocks auto-publish for everything paid with that method. This suits a card you always want to review before anything reaches your accounting software.
Use AI Assist for conditions rules can't handle
Dext AI Assist publishes documents based on conditions you describe in writing, which covers the cases supplier and payment method rules can't.
A supplier rule treats every document from that supplier the same way. AI Assist guidance can combine conditions instead, such as a supplier and an amount, a document type, a project code in the submission email, or the person who uploaded the document.
Examples that work well:
"If the document is from Adobe and the total amount is below £100, publish the document."
"If the document is a supplier invoice from a utility supplier and the category is Utilities, publish the document."
"If the uploader's email domain is @example.com and the total amount is below £50, publish the document."
Write guidance as an instruction to publish, not an instruction to hold back. AI Assist has a publish action, but no equivalent action for stopping a document from being published. "Publish Apple invoices under £100" works, where "don't publish Apple invoices over £100" doesn't. To stop documents from being published, use Cost items exceptions, an approval workflow, or Never on the payment method.
Name each guidance rule for the action it performs, and keep the name consistent with the description. Set new guidance to Manual review first, so you can see what it would have done. Switch it to Auto-apply once the suggestions look right. Guidance takes priority over supplier rules, auto-categorisation, and extraction, so a rule that's slightly too broad has a wide reach.
For what guidance can check and change, go tо What can Dext AI Assist guidance search for and update?
Why a document didn't auto-publish
A document only auto-publishes once every field required to publish it is complete. If anything is missing, the document stays in your inbox with a To review status instead. Hover over the status to see what needs fixing.
For cost documents, the required fields usually include Supplier, Category, and Total amount. Additional requirements depend on your accounting software, the document type, and the publishing destination. Go tо What do "To review" and "Ready" mean in Dext?
Other reasons a document stays in the inbox:
Its document type is listed under Cost items exceptions
An approval workflow applies, and the document hasn't been approved yet
Auto-categorisation is set to Never, so no category was applied
Auto Expense claims is turned on for the user who submitted it, so the document was added to their open claim instead. Go tо How to set up Auto Expense claims in Dext
The document was submitted before the rule was created, since auto-publish rules only apply to new documents
Essential details couldn't be extracted, or the document was flagged as suspicious
Some items can't be auto-published at all. This includes accounts connected to desktop accounting software such as Sage 50 and QuickBooks Desktop, mileage claims created with Dext’s Mileage feature, and items created through a Commerce lite connection. Publish these manually or add them to an expense claim.
Start narrow and check what published
Published items can't be unpublished, so start with a small set of suppliers and check the results after a week. If something publishes incorrectly, you can correct it and publish it again, but you'll need to clear its publishing data first to avoid creating a duplicate in your accounting software. Go tо How to republish an item
To check how an item was published, open it and go to the History tab. An automatically published item shows "This item was published via autopublish and archived by Dext", and a manually published one names the user who published it.
Once the first few suppliers are running cleanly, widen the rules one supplier at a time rather than switching on account-wide publishing.