Product information checked on 21 September 2026. Pricing below uses published GBP rates. Features, payment availability and commercial terms depend on the plan, region and configuration.
Dext and Expensify both help businesses reduce expense administration, but choosing between them requires more than comparing receipt scanners. Your finance team may need better bookkeeping data, a smoother employee claims process, or clearer control over spending across departments.
The most useful comparison starts with the work you need to remove. Where does information go missing? Who chases it? What still needs correcting before an expense reaches the accounts?
This guide compares the providers’ documented capabilities and current UK pricing, then explains when ExpenseOnDemand deserves a place on your shortlist.
Dext is a bookkeeping automation platform with roots in Receipt Bank. Businesses may also recognise the Dext Prepare name from earlier versions of its offering. Its current platform connects financial document capture with the work needed to prepare accounting records.
Receipt and invoice extraction remain central, but Dext also advertises employee expense management, approvals and mileage tracking. Its UK offering includes a Payments add-on for eligible setups.
For a buyer, the practical question is how well those capabilities connect with the way employees, finance staff and external accountants already work together.
Expensify is an expense management platform built around capturing expenses and moving them through company workflows. Employees can submit receipts and distance claims, while businesses configure workspaces for coding, review and payment.
Its wider offering includes company card connections, bill payment and travel functionality. Expensify publishes separate help documentation for Classic and New Expensify, so check that the features being demonstrated belong to the experience your business will use.
When assessing it, follow a claim beyond the employee’s submission. Look at what the manager receives, how finance resolves exceptions and what reaches the accounting system.
Dext and Expensify use different pricing models, so the lowest advertised price won’t necessarily tell you which will cost your business less.
Dext’s UK entry package costs £290 a year, excluding VAT, equivalent to £24.17 per month when billed annually. This includes five users and 250 documents per month.
Your overall cost depends on the number of users, the documents you process and any additional services you need. Higher allowances and optional add-ons can increase the price.
For a useful quote, work out how many receipts and invoices your business processes in a typical month, alongside how many people need access.
Expensify takes a different approach, with two main business plans:
Collect starts at £5 per member per month. Under its current pricing model, every unique workspace member counts towards the bill, including inactive members. That means your cost depends on who belongs to the workspace, rather than simply who submits an expense that month.
Control offers two billing options:
For Control, an “active member” can include someone who approves or otherwise works with expenses, so it is worth checking which activities count before estimating your bill.
Card-related discounts may reduce subscription costs where applicable, but eligibility and spending conditions apply.
Dext’s cost is primarily a question of capacity: how many users and documents do you need your package to cover?
Expensify’s cost is primarily a question of membership and commitment: which plan do you need, how many members will be billable and can you confidently commit to an annual seat count?
Compare quotes using the same team size, expected usage and required features. For Expensify in particular, ask for a worked example covering both a typical month and a busier month before choosing your billing option.
Dext prices its business plans around users and monthly document volumes. Higher extraction requirements and add-ons can affect the total. Documents uploaded after the monthly allowance is exhausted will not be extracted until the next bill date or an upgrade.
Expensify distinguishes unique members from active members. Activity can include approving or exporting expenses, not just submitting claims. An annual Control subscription is a 12-month seat commitment that cannot be reduced until renewal. Expensify also advertises conditional card-related discounts. Establish eligibility and the required spending mix before including those savings in your budget. GBP prices are regional rates, not daily currency conversions.
Give each provider the same forecast: users, approvers, document volumes, monthly claimants, entities and payment requirements. A small Dext document package and a company-wide expense subscription are not automatically equivalent purchases.
Dext accepts financial documents through mobile capture, upload and email, and can retrieve invoices from supported suppliers. It extracts document data and supports categorisation automation.
Expensify supports receipt scanning through SmartScan, including mobile photos, web uploads and forwarded receipts. Manual entry is also available, but it is an option rather than the platform’s only way to record expenses.
To compare accuracy, use the same sample documents in both demonstrations: a faded receipt, a multi-page invoice, a foreign-currency purchase and a document containing several tax treatments. Count the corrections needed before the record is usable.
Also test the information a receipt cannot reliably supply, such as the business purpose, project or person who authorised the purchase. Capturing an amount correctly does not establish that an expense is properly allocated or approved.
Dext features approval rules based on factors such as the submitter, supplier or amount, with multi-step chains and the ability to return rejected items with comments.
Expensify provides workspace workflows for submission, approval and payment, including assigned approvers and escalation for reports above a specified amount. It's important to confirm the settings supported by your selected plan.
The useful distinction is not whether a platform has an approval button. It is whether the workflow reflects your organisation without creating extra administration.
Ask both providers to demonstrate a department manager approving a routine claim, a higher-value expense requiring finance sign-off, and an approver being absent. Check what happens when an employee corrects an item that has already been reviewed.
Finally, distinguish approval before reimbursement from permission before purchase. If you need to control planned spending, request a separate demonstration of that exact process. An expense approval workflow alone does not prove that a purchase can be prevented.
Dext's platform includes supplier and employee payments, approval controls and connections to Xero and QuickBooks Online.
Expensify supports direct reimbursement for UK businesses with a verified UK business bank account and a GBP workspace. This requires onboarding and verification, so do not assume that payment is available immediately after opening an account. Expensify also has connections to existing commercial card programmes. Feed eligibility depends on the bank and card arrangement.
Its Bill Pay offering includes invoice capture, approval and payment functions. However, its Bill Pay page describes direct vendor payments to US bank accounts. Do not assume that UK employee reimbursement support establishes equivalent UK supplier-payment coverage.
For either provider, establish payment fees, supported currencies, who releases funds and how failed payments are handled. Agree realistic reimbursement timing rather than promising employees universal next-day payment.
Dext provides GPS mileage tracking, while Expensify uses map-based and GPS distance capture alongside configurable reimbursement rates.
For a UK workforce, test your own vehicle categories, rate changes, journey evidence and approval requirements. Ask what employees must enter and what finance needs to check before payment.
Give the app to someone who submits expenses infrequently.
Can they record a journey, add a business purpose and correct an error without training? A workflow that makes sense to a daily administrator may still confuse an occasional claimant.
Dext offers integrations with products including Xero, QuickBooks and Sage.
Expensify covers QuickBooks Online, Xero, NetSuite and Sage Intacct.
Ask for your exact accounting product and edition, then follow a transaction through the connection. Check the cost centre, project, tax code, reimbursable status and supporting document.
Find out which fields synchronise, in which direction, and what happens when an export fails. If finance must regularly correct data or reattach receipts after export, include that work in your assessment.
Dext includes expense records containing receipt, category, VAT and approval information.
Expensify lets users filter, inspect and export expense data.
Both warrant a full product demonstration.
An expense report submitted by an employee is also different from a management report showing spending across the business.
Request three outputs you already use: spending by department or project, outstanding approvals, and exceptions requiring finance attention. Check whether you can trace totals to individual records and whether the output still needs spreadsheet preparation.
Our assessment of the documented capabilities is that Dext merits close consideration where financial document collection and bookkeeping preparation dominate the workload. It also deserves a proper expense-workflow evaluation, given its broader current offering.
Expensify merits close consideration where employee claims, approval routing, card transactions and reimbursement are central. Review the intended product experience, regional availability and billing terms together.
Neither is automatically the right choice based on company size or a headline price. Ask both to demonstrate the same complete process and compare how much work remains for your team.
For example, follow a project expense from submission through correction, approval, payment and accounting. Then repeat the exercise with a supplier invoice. These two examples reveal whether the platform handles the work you actually need to simplify.
Explore ExpenseOnDemand’s spend management software and arrange a demonstration around your own approval and reconciliation requirements.
Dext evolved from Receipt Bank. Earlier product names such as Dext Prepare still appear in older comparisons, so evaluate the current offering and subscription rather than relying on historic descriptions.
Yes. SmartScan supports automated receipt capture.
Yes. Dext documents configurable approval workflows, including multi-step approval chains. Test the rules and exceptions your own business needs.
Compare the same workload and required features. Document allowances, workspace membership, annual commitments, payment services and extras can all affect cost. The lowest advertised entry price does not establish the lowest total cost.
Expensify documents direct reimbursement for eligible UK businesses after bank verification and GBP workspace setup. Confirm onboarding, fees and expected payment times.
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