Supercharge Your Finance Function With Automated Supplier Statement Reconciliations

In this blog, we highlight Dexts new Supplier Statement Extraction feature - streamlining bookkeeping by automating reconciliation

August 23, 2024
Supercharge Your Finance Function With Automated Supplier Statement Reconciliations

At Gow and Partners, we believe that It’s an exciting time to be a Dext user. During the Global Product Update in June, Dext unveiled the Evolution of the Dext Platform, showcasing plans to upgrade the Dext Prepare platform and integrate features from their other two products, Precision and Commerce, into one seamless experience.

As part of this evolution, the team at Dext announced new and innovative features to help further automate bookkeeping processes, freeing up business owners to focus on the work (or other things) they’d rather be doing. Among these is the Supplier Statement Extraction feature, now available to all current Dext Prepare users.

This feature includes a free allowance as part of your Dext subscription. Additional usage is subject to overage charges or available to buy prepaid top-up bundles.

Why Do You Need to Streamline Supplier Statement Reconciliation?

First of all, what actually is supplier statement reconciliation? In brief, it is the process of comparing transactions in your accounting records to a supplier's statement to ensure that they match. This is important, as it allows one to identify any discrepancies, as well as preventing any unrecorded transactions in the accounts payable process.

Like so much of bookkeeping, supplier statement reconciliation is an essential yet time-consuming, manual task for accountants, bookkeepers and businesses. You may not love matching and processing invoices and credit notes, but it is critical if you’re to maintain precise financial records and pay suppliers on time. So, with that in mind, why not try to speed that process up?  

“Reflecting on my days as a practice manager, I would always speak to my clients about supplier payments and managing cash flow. Supplier statement reconciliation was such an important part of that conversation. Traditional methods of reconciliation – or manual processes – regularly led to human error and were incredibly time-consuming. You run the risk of over or undercounting invoices and amounts owed, which could end up delaying payments and even the potential for fraud.” – Max Whiteley, Product Domain Expert

Why Are Dext Introducing Supplier Statements?

After rigorous testing from Dext users around the globe, dext say that the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, and users invited to the early access have already processed over 7,000 supplier statements. Here’s what one of them had to say:  

“Supplier Statements is the best thing ever. I’ve waited so long for this feature and Dext did it so well.” – Reino Barkema, Founder of Fynbos Accounting

How Does Supplier Statements Help Business Owners?

Collecting, matching and processing invoices and credit notes is a well known chore for business owners. There’s the risk of losing track of your invoices and payments – which can cause problems between you and your suppliers. And, when you don’t have a clear picture of what’s been paid and what’s outstanding, you can quickly lose control of your cash flow. So, how can we use Dext to help?

Supplier Statements puts you in control of your supplier management. By automating the extraction and cross-referencing of supplier statements, Dext reduces the risk of discrepancies and manual errors. As a business owner, you can save yourself ample amounts of time and improve data accuracy, and as accountants, we can strive to give you the most precise services possible, getting you more out of your hard earned cash!

How it works

Dext extracts all the essential information from a supplier statement, including the statement date, payable balance, and details of invoices and credit notes. It then scans for any missing information and assigns a status to each line, giving users a clear view of which invoices are already in the system and what still needs to be added. In essence, it works to eliminate as much opportunity for human error as possible.

If there’s any missing information, Dext allows you to send a message directly to your supplier to request paperwork from within the platform. And, once reconciled, you can securely store a record of your statements within your Dext archive.  

Below, we've attached a simple demonstration to show you in depth how this works in practice:

Seamless Xero integration

For Xero users, the feature also includes the ability to cross-reference invoices already in Xero with those in Dext, as well as those that aren’t in Xero yet. Dext can flag any potential matches and list any differences ensuring that the balance due on the supplier statement is reconciled back to the balance outstanding in Xero.

“Having Dext’s supplier statement extraction means accountants, bookkeepers and the businesses they serve can automate as much of this reconciliation process as possible now, significantly reducing those risks of discrepancies. This means accountants can now spend time doing the more important stuff like advising their clients and less time spent on manual data entry”. – Max Whiteley, Product Domain Expert

To Conclude...

At Gow and Partners, we pride ourselves on keeping up to date with the latest technologies the accounting world has to offer. Not only does this help us ensure you get the most precise services possible, but also to allow you to spend less time worrying about your finances, and more time doing the things that matter the most to you.

For more information about Dext and other accounting softwares, please do not hesitate to get in touch with one of our expert accountants here at Gow and Partners!

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