The problem
A care home gets a steady stream of bills: food deliveries, continence products, cleaning supplies, laundry, maintenance and agency invoices. At 140 bills a month and 4 minutes each to key into the accounts, that's 560 minutes, more than 9 hours of administrator time.
What the AI does
Dext is a bill and receipt capture tool. Suppliers' emailed bills are forwarded to a Dext address, and paper ones are photographed on a phone. Dext reads the supplier, date, amount and VAT and publishes them to Xero, where the administrator checks and approves them. Dext's Business plan is priced by documents a month and users; the default of 250 documents and 5 users is $32.15£24.17€28.76A$46.41C$45.44 a month billed annually. It needs accounting software, priced separately.
A worked example
A 35-bed residential home in Durham receives about 140 supplier bills a month and already uses Xero. The administrator forwards emailed bills to Dext and photographs delivery notes and paper bills.
Before
140 bills at 4 minutes each: 560 minutes, about 9.3 hours a month
After
140 bills at 1 minute to check: 140 minutes, about 2.3 hours a month
What it's worth
About $166£125€149A$240C$235 a month of admin time saved (7 hours at $24£18€21A$35C$34 an hour), against about $32£24€29A$46C$45 to $40£30€36A$58C$56 for Dext. Dext's Business plan is $32.15£24.17€28.76A$46.41C$45.44 a month billed annually; monthly billing costs more, estimated at about $40£30€36A$58C$56. Xero is already in use here, so it adds nothing.
How to set it up
- Sign up for Dext Business and connect it to your Xero organization.
- Ask regular suppliers to send bills straight to your Dext email address.
- Set default categories for regular suppliers, such as food, continence products and maintenance.
- Check each bill in Dext before publishing it to Xero for the first two months.
- Ask your accountant how VAT should be handled on your bills, since care services are usually VAT exempt.
What goes wrong
- Pharmacy and some agency invoices list residents' or workers' names. Check what your data protection terms with Dext cover, and keep medication records out of it.
- Plans are priced by documents a month. A busy month over 250 documents may need a bigger allowance.
- Dext reads what is printed. A delivery short of items is still billed in full unless someone checks the delivery note.
- Extra options such as line item extraction cost more, from $21.95£16.50€19.63A$31.68C$31.02 a month.