Expense management is the processing, management and organisation of employee expenses within a business. Managing these expenses often falls to accounts payable officers or bookkeepers to perform. However, as businesses grow and scale and the amount and value of employee expenses increase, approval levels change. It's no longer as simple as just asking your manager to approve emergency office supplies or a team meeting coffee run. Instead, it can take weeks for accounting teams to receive approvals and, as a result of human error and other more conflicting priorities, things can get missed.
The solution? Expense management applications and software that automate expense data-entry, streamline approval reviews, eliminate paper trails and reduce administrative efforts. Many have functions that allow for full visibility of employee expenses through to department or branch expenses. These are great tools for senior managers to understand where they can cut down on expenses within the business.
But which expense management application or platform is worth investing in?
In this blog, we compare two industry leaders: Hubdoc and Dext, touching on the features, pricing, ease of use, integration into accounting software, and their customer support functions.
Features
| Hubdoc |
Dext |
- Vendor account creation is limited to 1,000, which can be an issue for larger organisations but a positive for smaller businesses.
- Optical character recognition (OCR) technology that enables you to convert documents into searchable and editable data, is fair but not strong. It's prefill doesn't cover as many areas as it's competitor, Dext. However, you can still ensure that vendor expenses go to the same account, saving a lot of manual allocation work.
- Able to code bills to recurring suppliers successfully, allowing users to process multiple transactions through your accounting software.
- Monthly and yearly statement reports are easy to produce for audits or end of year tax time.
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- Able to scan and input photos with a simple 'drag and drop' option from your computer into the application, automatically syncing your banking software.
- Can split expenses within bills into different categories before transferring to your accounting software; even goes as far as including a line-item extraction feature to make this even easier; point and click.
- Supplier rule creation accounts for repetitive expense tracking.
- Granular access controls, which means you can limit what each user of the platform can see, export or edit AND includes a tracking log to see who has done what in each document.
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Pricing
| Hubdoc |
Dext |
- Monthly payment plan and a free trial option before buying the software.
- USD $20 per month per business simple payment plan.
- No limitation to the number of items processed per month.
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- Monthly payment plan and a free trial option before buying the software.
- Complex payment plan with different levels depending on business requirements.
- Business package: USD$10 per month for single-user access limited to 50 items processed per month
- Business Plus package: USD$20 per month for 5 users limited to 300 items processed per month
- Premium package: USD$40 per month for 20 users limited to 3,000 items processed per month
- If you require 20+ users or 3,000+ items to be processed per month, then you will require an individual quote.
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Ease of use
| Hubdoc |
Dext |
- High success rate with their OCR, so businesses will not need to perform many corrections.
- The dashboard is structured in a folder format and less data-heavy than its counterpart, clearly outlining actions to take from uploading documents to exporting.
- While its OCR is great, it's ability to allocate documents to the right accounts functions is not perfect, and users may have to double-check the postings.
- Reported lag issues when posting to accounting software.
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- The dashboard is structured like Hubdoc, summarises documents and receipts entered in the system, and notifies you of any documents that need attention to review others and save on time quickly.
- No lag issues when posting to accounting software.
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Accounting software integration
| Hubdoc |
Dext |
- Works with QuickBooks Online, Xero and Bill.com, directly linking up data with these accounting platforms. If you do not use any of the aforementioned accounting software, then you'll need to export data to a CSV file to import into your system manually.
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- Works with QuickBooks Online, Xero, SageOne, Freshbooks, MYOB Essentials, Kashflow and Gusto payroll. Like Hubdoc, if your business uses other accounting software not mentioned, it will need to follow the export-import manual process.
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Customer support functions
| Hubdoc |
Dext |
- Provided through Xero Central, so great for existing users of Xero, but requires account creation for new users.
- Customer service is also accessible through the company website during business hours.
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- Accessible in the online application and also mobile-friendly.
- Customer service can also be directly contacted during business hours through the company's website.
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So, which expense management platform is right for your business?
Dext can implement user controls and split invoices where Hubdoc can’t. However, Hubdoc's pricing matrix is simple and unlimited, while Dext has different levels and associated item limitations. It completely depends on your organisational requirements. On a small business level, Hubdoc does the job. But, when your expense management function starts to get a bit more progressive and complicated, Dext offers additional functionality extras that come at a higher price point.
In 2021, remote working is still very much normal in most businesses worldwide, with technology industries investing more and more into R&D for digital work practices improving efficiencies and productivity levels. With the travel and expense management software market set to grow at an annual compound growth rate of 12.4% from 2020 - 2027, businesses must keep up with applications like Hubdoc and Dext that can help them maintain a competitive advantage in this up and coming digital-reliant world.
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