The problem
Each funeral brings third-party invoices that the funeral director pays and passes on: crematorium or cemetery fees, the celebrant or minister, flowers, newspaper notices, catering. With 8 funerals a month and about 70 invoices in total, typing each into the accounts at 4 minutes takes over 4.5 hours, and a missed disbursement means asking a family for money weeks later.
What the AI does
Dext is bookkeeping software that captures receipts and supplier invoices from a phone, email or WhatsApp, reads the details and sends them to accounting software such as Xero for you to approve. You forward emailed invoices to your Dext address or photograph paper ones, add the family's case reference in the description, and approve them into Xero weekly. Before the final account goes to the family, you check every disbursement for that case is there.
A worked example
An independent funeral director in Devon arranges about 8 funerals a month and receives about 70 supplier and disbursement invoices. It uses Dext with its existing Xero account.
Before
About 70 invoices a month typed in at 4 minutes each: 280 minutes, about 4.7 hours
After
About 70 invoices captured and checked at about 1 minute each: 70 minutes, about 1.2 hours
What it's worth
About $117£88€105A$169C$165 a month in time saved: 3.5 hours (4.7 down to 1.2) at an assumed $33£25€30A$48C$47 an hour. Dext's default plan is $32.15£24.17€28.76A$46.41C$45.44 a month billed annually ($386£290€345A$557C$545 a year) excluding VAT, and monthly billing is estimated at about $40£30€36A$58C$56. Xero is assumed to be in place already.
How to set it up
- Sign up for Dext, connect it to Xero and give your regular suppliers the Dext email address for invoices.
- Photograph paper invoices on the day they arrive.
- Add the family's case reference to every disbursement so it can be matched to the right account.
- Approve invoices into Xero weekly and check what Dext read.
- Before sending a family's final account, check every expected disbursement for that funeral is included.
What goes wrong
- Dext reads invoices; it doesn't know which funeral they belong to. Without the case reference, a disbursement can be missed.
- Dext needs accounting software, priced separately; the cost here assumes you already use Xero.
- If your funeral management software also keeps a sales ledger, agree which system holds disbursements so they aren't entered twice.
- Check the plan's document allowance against your monthly invoice count before choosing.