Dext vs HubDoc: CPA Comparison for Xero Users (2026)

If you use Xero for your business accounting, you already have access to HubDoc — a receipt scanning and document capture tool included free with every Xero subscription. The question most Canadian business owners eventually face is whether that free tool is enough, or whether it is time to upgrade to Dext, a paid alternative that offers deeper automation, better Canadian tax extraction, and workflow features that HubDoc does not have. This is a practical, CPA-tested comparison of both tools, based on years of configuring them for Canadian small businesses running Xero.

At LedgerLogic, we set up both HubDoc and Dext for our bookkeeping clients depending on their volume and complexity. We have tested every feature discussed here across dozens of Canadian businesses, from solo consultants to growing teams with 15+ employees.

Affiliate Disclosure: LedgerLogic is a Dext partner. We may earn a commission if you sign up through our links at no extra cost to you. We only recommend tools we use with our own clients. HubDoc is a free Xero product — there is no affiliate relationship.

The Core Question — Is Free Good Enough?

HubDoc is included free with Xero. For many small businesses, that alone makes it the default choice. There is no additional monthly cost, no separate login to manage, and no integration to configure — it is built right into the Xero ecosystem. For solo operators processing a handful of receipts each month, HubDoc handles the basics competently.

But "free" and "sufficient" are not the same thing. The question is not whether HubDoc works — it does. The question is whether the time you spend manually correcting, re-coding, and chasing receipts every month costs more than Dext's subscription fee. For a business processing 20 or more receipts per month, with recurring vendors and multiple team members submitting expenses, Dext's automation features can save 2-4 hours of bookkeeping time monthly. At typical bookkeeper rates, that time savings pays for the subscription several times over.

The decision framework is straightforward: if you spend less than 15 minutes per month on receipt management, stay with HubDoc. If you spend more — or if you find yourself fixing the same coding errors repeatedly — it is time to evaluate Dext seriously.

HubDoc — What You Get for Free

HubDoc became part of the Xero ecosystem in 2018 and is now included with all Xero subscription plans at no additional cost. Here is what it does well, and where it falls short.

Receipt capture via mobile app. The HubDoc mobile app lets you photograph receipts on the spot. Point your phone at a receipt, snap a photo, and HubDoc uploads the image and attempts to extract the vendor name, date, and total amount. The interface is clean and simple — there is minimal learning curve for team members who need to submit expenses.

Email forwarding. You can forward digital receipts (PDF invoices, email confirmations) to a dedicated HubDoc email address. The system processes the attachment and extracts key data. This works well for recurring digital receipts from suppliers who send invoices by email.

Web fetch from select suppliers. HubDoc can automatically pull bills and statements from some major suppliers — utilities, telecoms, and certain financial institutions. The Canadian supplier list is more limited than you might expect. Many Canadian-specific vendors are not supported, which means you still need to manually upload those documents.

Auto-attachment to Xero transactions. Once a document is processed, HubDoc can push it to Xero and attach the source document to the corresponding transaction. This is valuable for CRA audit trails — you have the original receipt linked directly to the accounting entry.

Basic OCR. HubDoc's optical character recognition reads vendor names, dates, and totals from receipts. It handles clean, printed receipts reasonably well. Handwritten receipts, faded thermal paper, and receipts with complex layouts give it more trouble.

Where HubDoc Falls Short

No supplier coding rules. This is the single biggest limitation. HubDoc cannot learn that receipts from Tim Hortons always go to "Meals and Entertainment" or that Staples receipts always map to "Office Supplies." Every receipt needs manual account coding, even if you have purchased from the same vendor 50 times. For businesses with recurring vendors, this creates repetitive manual work every single month.

Limited automation. Beyond basic OCR and document forwarding, HubDoc does not offer workflow automation. There are no conditional rules, no automatic categorisation based on amount thresholds, and no way to set up approval chains for expenses above a certain dollar value.

No approval workflows. If you have employees submitting expenses, there is no built-in mechanism for a manager or business owner to review and approve expenses before they are posted to Xero. Everything flows through without a gate.

Fewer Canadian suppliers in web fetch. The automatic document fetching feature works best for large international vendors. Canadian-specific suppliers — regional utilities, provincial insurance providers, local service companies — are often missing from the fetch library.

No multi-currency OCR. HubDoc does not reliably extract amounts from receipts in foreign currencies. If you travel for business or purchase supplies from U.S. vendors, you will need to manually enter the amounts and currency details.

Dext — What You Get for the Paid Upgrade

Dext (formerly Receipt Bank) is a dedicated document capture and expense management platform that integrates with Xero, QuickBooks, and other accounting software. It costs approximately $24 CAD per month for the standard plan. Here is what that subscription buys you over and above HubDoc's free offering.

Advanced OCR reads GST/HST from Canadian receipts. This is a meaningful upgrade for Canadian businesses. Dext's OCR engine is trained to identify and extract GST, HST, and provincial sales tax amounts from Canadian receipt formats. It reads the tax registration number, the tax breakdown, and the total including and excluding tax. This means your bookkeeper spends less time manually verifying tax amounts on each receipt — Dext captures them automatically. For a complete walkthrough of setting this up, see our Dext and Xero setup guide for Canadian businesses.

Supplier rules for auto-coding. This is the feature that justifies the subscription for most businesses. Once you code a receipt from Tim Hortons to "Meals and Entertainment," Dext remembers. The next time a Tim Hortons receipt arrives, it is automatically coded to the same account, with the same tax treatment, without any manual intervention. Over time, your supplier rules library grows, and the percentage of receipts that require manual coding drops toward zero. For businesses with 20+ recurring vendors, this eliminates hours of repetitive work each month.

Approval workflows. Dext includes a built-in approval system. You can configure rules so that expenses above a certain threshold, or from certain categories, require manager approval before they are published to Xero. This is essential for businesses with employees submitting expenses — it creates a review layer that HubDoc simply does not offer.

Fetch from 1,400+ supplier portals. Dext's automatic document fetching pulls invoices and statements from over 1,400 supplier portals globally, with significantly better Canadian coverage than HubDoc. This includes Canadian telecoms, utilities, insurance providers, and financial institutions. Once connected, Dext automatically retrieves new documents as they become available — no manual downloading required.

Multi-currency support. Dext handles receipts in multiple currencies, extracting amounts and identifying the currency automatically. For Canadian businesses that purchase from U.S. suppliers or travel internationally, this removes the manual data entry step that HubDoc requires.

Bank statement extraction. Dext can process bank and credit card statements, extracting individual line items and matching them to receipts. This is particularly useful during month-end reconciliation when you need to ensure every transaction has a supporting document.

Better bulk processing. When you have a stack of receipts — common during month-end catch-ups or after business trips — Dext handles bulk uploads more efficiently. You can photograph multiple receipts in succession using the mobile app, email a batch of PDFs, or drag and drop a folder of files into the web interface. Dext processes them in parallel and applies supplier rules automatically, so a stack of 30 receipts might require manual attention on only 3 or 4.

Feature-by-Feature Comparison

The following table compares HubDoc and Dext across the features that matter most for Canadian small businesses using Xero. We have tested each feature extensively with real Canadian receipts and real Xero accounts.

Feature	HubDoc (Free)	Dext (Paid)
OCR Accuracy (Printed Receipts)	Good	Excellent
Canadian Tax Extraction (GST/HST)	Basic — often requires manual verification	Advanced — reads tax reg numbers and breakdowns
Supplier Auto-Coding Rules	Not available	Full supplier rules with learning
Approval Workflows	Not available	Configurable approval chains
Auto-Fetch from Suppliers	Limited Canadian coverage	1,400+ portals, strong Canadian coverage
Bulk Processing	One at a time	Batch upload with parallel processing
Mobile App	Functional, basic interface	Polished, supports multi-capture
Xero Integration Depth	Built-in — seamless attachment	Deep — pushes coded transactions with tax
QuickBooks Support	Not available (Xero only)	Full QuickBooks Online integration
Multi-Currency OCR	Not available	Automatic currency detection
Bank Statement Extraction	Not available	Available — extracts line items
Pricing (CAD)	Free (included with Xero)	~$24/month (standard plan)

For a broader comparison that includes other receipt management tools beyond these two, see our best expense management apps for Canadian businesses roundup.

When HubDoc Is the Right Choice

HubDoc is the right tool when simplicity and cost matter more than automation. Here are the profiles that fit HubDoc well.

Solo operators with simple expenses. If you are a freelancer, consultant, or sole proprietor with straightforward business expenses — a few subscription services, occasional office supplies, the odd business meal — HubDoc handles this volume without friction. You snap a photo, it uploads, and your bookkeeper codes it during the monthly reconciliation.

Fewer than 20 receipts per month. At this volume, the time difference between manual coding (HubDoc) and automatic coding (Dext) is negligible. You might save 10 minutes per month with Dext — not enough to justify a $24 monthly subscription.

No employees submitting expenses. If you are the only person submitting receipts, you do not need approval workflows. The absence of this feature in HubDoc is irrelevant when there is only one person in the loop.

Budget-conscious startups. When every dollar counts, free is a powerful argument. HubDoc gets the receipt into Xero with the source document attached — that is the minimum viable outcome, and it achieves it at zero cost.

Businesses already tight on software subscriptions. If you are already paying for Xero, a bookkeeping service, and other business tools, adding another $24 per month needs to deliver clear value. For low-volume businesses, it does not.

When Dext Is Worth the Upgrade

Dext earns its subscription fee when your receipt volume, team complexity, or automation needs exceed what HubDoc can handle. Here are the signals that it is time to upgrade.

20+ receipts per month. This is the threshold where supplier auto-coding rules start saving meaningful time. With 20 or more receipts from recurring vendors, Dext's automatic categorisation eliminates 10-15 minutes of manual coding per receipt batch. Over a month, that adds up to 1-2 hours — enough to offset the subscription cost if your bookkeeper charges $40-60 per hour.

Multiple employees submitting expenses. The moment you have employees or contractors submitting expense receipts, you need a review layer. Dext's approval workflows let you set thresholds (for example, auto-approve expenses under $100 but require manager review for anything above). This prevents coding errors and catches questionable expenses before they hit your books. If you have 5 or more team members submitting expenses, Dext is effectively mandatory.

Recurring vendors you buy from every week or month. If you purchase from the same 10-15 suppliers regularly — think fuel, supplies, a regular lunch spot for client meetings — Dext's supplier rules eliminate all repetitive coding for those vendors after the initial setup. Once coded correctly the first time, every subsequent receipt from that supplier is processed automatically.

You want automated document fetching. If your monthly reconciliation involves logging into 5-10 supplier portals to download invoices and statements, Dext's fetch feature automates this entirely. Connect your supplier accounts once, and Dext pulls new documents automatically. This is particularly valuable for utilities, telecoms, and insurance where the monthly invoice is predictable but still needs to be captured.

Multi-currency transactions. Canadian businesses that purchase from U.S. suppliers, travel internationally, or deal with foreign vendors need accurate multi-currency extraction. Dext handles this; HubDoc does not. If you are regularly entering currency amounts manually, Dext removes that step.

CRA audit trail requirements. While both tools store source documents, Dext's more granular tax extraction provides a stronger audit trail for CRA purposes. Having GST/HST amounts accurately extracted and attached to each transaction demonstrates a higher standard of record-keeping. For context on building your chart of accounts in Xero to support clean audit trails, see our dedicated guide.

Our Recommendation

Start with HubDoc. It is free, it is already connected to your Xero account, and it handles the basics of receipt capture and document storage. There is no reason to pay for Dext on day one if you are not sure you need it.

Monitor three signals over the first 2-3 months:

• Are you manually coding the same vendors repeatedly? If you find yourself selecting "Office Supplies" for Staples or "Fuel" for Petro-Canada for the third or fourth time, that is repetitive work that Dext eliminates.
• Are you spending 30+ minutes per month on receipt management? If receipt processing takes more than half an hour monthly — including photographing, uploading, coding, and correcting errors — Dext's automation features will cut that time significantly.
• Has your team grown past 5 people? With 5 or more people submitting expenses, the lack of approval workflows in HubDoc becomes a real problem. Expenses can be miscoded, duplicated, or submitted without proper documentation. Dext's approval layer solves this.

When any of these signals appear, make the switch. The transition from HubDoc to Dext is straightforward — Dext can import your historical documents, and your bookkeeper or CPA can configure supplier rules during the migration. We handle this transition as part of our bookkeeping services, typically completing the setup in a single session.

For businesses that are clearly past the HubDoc threshold — 50+ receipts per month, multiple employees, recurring vendors — skip HubDoc and go straight to Dext. The time you spend configuring HubDoc is time you could spend building supplier rules in Dext that will pay dividends every month going forward.

If you are evaluating whether Xero itself is worth the investment, the availability of HubDoc at no extra cost is a meaningful point in its favour — it effectively gives you a basic receipt scanner as part of the package.

Frequently Asked Questions