Dext are globally ceasing all unlimited packages as of today.
Email received saying subscription will be based on a per client basis, but of course no info anywhere on the website, email or FAQ's about what that charge is.
Anyone had a pricing update?
This is the email copied in full below
At Dext, we’re determined to improve the accounting process for all, in order to give time back to businesses, accountants and bookkeepers.
Over the last 12 months, we’ve reviewed our product offering. In order to continue our investment in R&D and product development – and to ensure we support you and your practice into the future – we will be updating our pricing for Dext Prepare.
This change will take effect at your next renewal, on or after 1st November 2023. From this date, we will be charging based on the number of clients added to your Dext subscription. As part of this, you will also have the option to move some of your clients to Dext Solo – a cost-effective solution, specifically designed to support the digital record keeping needs of individuals such as sole traders and landlords.
Based on valuable input from our customers, we have concluded that a client-based charging system is now the most transparent approach for Dext to take. This method ensures that your costs align with your own billing practices and the value we bring to the table. Most importantly, it allows us to offer you a customised plan that best suits your needs and those of your clients.
Your Dext Prepare plan is changing
- The name of your plan is changing to Dext Practice Essentials
- You’ll have access to all the features you use on your current Dext Prepare Streamline plan – accurate collection, extraction and categorisation of invoices and receipts with market-leading speed and accuracy
- You’ll have access to our new Dext Solo solution for sole traders and landlord clients
- Our unlimited, user bundles and all other legacy packages will formally cease. From your next renewal date, you will be charged on the number of clients you have added onto Dext
- You will benefit from a fairer allowance structure for Bank Statement Extraction and Line Item Extraction that increases your allowance in line with the number of clients you add
- You’ll be able to add as many practice users to your Dext account as you need, ensuring your whole team has access
What happens next?
Your new Dext Prepare subscription will take effect at your next renewal, on or after 1st November 2023.
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Replies (48)
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Only found prices for Dext Solo so far.
Not happy as they have just increased the costs and now look to moving the goalpost. I don't charge client to use dext as I think it is useful in getting the paperwork quickly but will now have to consider if I am staying with them or if I will pass on the costs.
Our email had a couple of extra bullet points.
Advising which "client bundle" would probably be most appropriate and a note of the new price being charged.
Call your account manager.
Can you share the bands?
I’m concerned (actually convinced) they will be charging different people different prices.
I’m just looking for transparency and to be armed with some info when I speak to our AM.
We have approx 100 clients on Dext and have seen solo at £5 + per client so if say twice that at £10 per client then we go from £400 per month to £1000 per month which frankly is devastating.
I also have these bullet points which advise it will cost me more in the new scheme (Currently on £325.00 per month)
• Based on your usage over the last 12 months we think that the 28 Client Bundle is the most appropriate. If you are concerned about client volume, then please contact your account manager
• Your new price will be adjusted to £345.00
I am sort of lucky as my renewal is 1/10/23 so I would have almost another year with the unlimited.
Thanks all so far for the updates.
I have been quoted from £325 to around the £900 per month which is 175% increase, and the same as other comments, I've never passed on the cost as it helped efficiency.
My practice is 100% Xero (about 200 clients) and they have Hubdoc for free. It's not as efficient as Dext for statements etc and combined, but at £10k a year its a challenge moving them all back but a no brainer at that cost.
They've also just lost a client who has switched there whole practice to digital as is expanding.
I got my renewal email and we're being charged £220 for 16 clients which is £13.75 per client per month. Based on what other users are being charged it seems that the price ranges are between £8.68 and £13.75 per month.
I'll probably keep one or two clients on Dext and move the rest to Hubdoc.
Thanks all so far for the updates.
I imagine we will be around the £900 per month mark based on those prices which is more than double where we are now. Phone call booked with our AM tomorrow.
My practice is 100% QuickBooks Online (about 150 clients) and they have receipt capture and extraction for free. It's a bit more clunky than Dext but at over £10k a year saving that's an easy decision to move away from Dext.
Well done Dext, you've just lost a client who has been with you for almost ten years.
Thanks all so far for the updates.
Well done Dext, you've just lost a client who has been with you for almost ten years.
I suppose they are banking on most practices not moving. I know a local firm that has been paying an unlimited fee of about £200 for about 500 clients, hate to think what they will be paying now.
Hi RedFive
Fortunately I don’t use Dext. I do use Quickbooks, and find their receipt capture capability pretty good. Obviously Dext offers more, but how much more?
Neil
We have some clients with 400 - 500 receipts per month. QB would struggle with that.
You can only drag and drop or email in a single receipt to QB - you can't upload a PDF with multiple receipts on (which we do via a batch scanner to Dext).
Once the receipt is extracted in QB you have to click on the VAT code EVERY TIME, it does not machine learn this. Fine for a couple of receipts a week, not for 300 +.
You can't set supplier rules up (eg for category and VAT code)
And most important of all you can't bulk upload all of a clients receipts as a PDF.
We had an enquiry on a client where they asked for all the client receipts for the 12 months in question. About two clicks in Dext uploaded every single receipt that had been scanned into one PDF.
That was sent to HMRC along with the other bits and bobs they needed and 3 weeks later they closed the case with no action.
AutoEntry does all of the above at a third of the new price of Dext but as far as I can tell does NOT allow bulk upload to PDF.
Would be interested to know if anyone using AutoEntry can confirm whether this can be done?
Regarding bulk downloads...
My understanding is this is only available to csv etc. through the 'dashboard'. However it is possible to request this through support on a one-off basis (I'll admit, I've never tried it) but the turnaround timescale seems pretty long (30 days!).
It is a pain downloading individual documents (no bulk select etc.), only made worse by the lack of integration with Dropbox, OneDrive etc. for backups (available in Dext and, if my memory serves HubDoc). If backup was possible, a simple 'merge' or 'combine' action in a PDF editor would suffice.
Maybe AE/ Sage will consider this function. However, it is Sage!
Like others, i had an extra two bullet points telling me what the new price will be.
We went with Dext due to the fixed cost. At the start we were definitely paying over the odds and having read some of the replies here (which confirm what i suspected/knew all along) it looks like we always were, as it appears that others were getting an unlimited package at less than we were paying, if exceljockey's post is correct and applies to the same package we had (at significantly less cost at £200/month unlimited).
It seems that Dext's pricing is a murky world and TBH I'm tempted to jettison it just on principle.
Not only is it murky, but they have now proven themselves to be completely untrustworthy. They will move the goalposts on a whim when it suits them.
We have been paying them a lot of money for many years and to have the rug pulled like this without even an individual contacting you, just a bulk email spammed out, is disgraceful customer service.
Very glad I didn't listen to them when they told us to have the clients do the receipt capture themselves. I'd be either stuck with a very big bill or a lot of angry clients asking why they are having to move to a new piece of software.
Hi everyone,
DOKKA is an alternative to DEXT.
We have been inundated with requests over the last 24 hours, so I thought I'd write here to give answers before companies contact us, as we don't have our pricing on our website.
Couple things:
1. The DOKKA platform has additional functionality that many of the other solutions don't have - such as document management and advanced chat functionality
2. Our processing / AI / recommended entry creation is VERY advanced. Usually when people see it for the first time, they express amazement
3. DOKKA has a module for approvals, which can be used, but there is an additional fee if you choose to use this module
4. We price our packages based on the number of documents that are processed monthly
5. We include unlimited companies and users for accounting companies - both accounting company team members, and users from your clients
6. Our packages are all month to month, unless you choose to take an additional discount on our yearly package. (but most clients opt for the month to month packages)
7. Our starter package includes unlimited companies & users, and an allowance of 1000 documents per month for GBP 350 per month. Additional bundles of documents can be added on, and the price per bundle gets cheaper the more bundles you add on.
If you have any questions, or would like to setup a demo or discussion (we do these via zoom), then please visit www.dokka.com
Have a good day.
Eric
Hi Eric
I appreciate your input to this thread and information.
Your cost would be prohibitive to us though.
We have 70 clients actively using Dext (all the vat registered ones) and on average we process 3000 to 3500 documents a month.
We are just a one man band and his wife business.
We can easily change to the free offering from QBO - all our clients are on this and we do all the bookkeeping in house.
Our fees earn us a nice income but margin is tight - our average fee is just £100 per client per month over roughly 150 clients.
Dext were charging us less than £400 per month inc vat which is our tipping point where it is nice to have at that cost. Double or triple that is a non starter. I’m already paying QB £1500 per month so getting fed up with software costs!
Hi "RedFive",
Just so you're aware, adding additional bundles for bookkeeping / accounting companies using DOKKA starts at GBP 150 for the first 1000 bundle "add-on" and then gets cheaper per additional bundle.
So 3000 documents at our rate card is around GBP 620. (350 + 150 + 120)
Having said this, I suggest you setup a demo with myself or one of our team, and if you like the DOKKA product, then we can see if we can agree on a long term win-win price that works for you and us.
Hi "RedFive",
Just so you're aware, adding additional bundles for bookkeeping / accounting companies using DOKKA starts at GBP 150 for the first 1000 bundle "add-on" and then gets cheaper per additional bundle.
So 3000 documents at our rate card is around GBP 620. (350 + 150 + 120)
Having said this, I suggest you setup a demo with myself or one of our team, and if you like the DOKKA product, then we can see if we can agree on a long term win-win price that works for you and us.
So another company with an "under the table" pricing system. Great.
Hi "SoftwareQuestions"
Our pricing for all our partners (accounting / bookkeeping companies) in the UK is on our ratecard.
But we don't publish our ratecard on our website.
I'm not understanding why you feel this is "under the table".
If you would like a breakdown of our pricing, contact us, and we'll send you all the pricing components.
Ive just had the conversation with Dext and our unlimited plan will increase by nearly 400% after moving to a pay per client model.
Totally unacceptable. I cannot understand the thinking at Dext HQ to implement such a huge increase on the very people who have promoted their software for years.
Needless to say, we will be looking at alternatives
Exactly. Well said and you won't be the only one.
I understand their pricing needed to change and they could have implemented this on a new customer basis and stepped exisiting ones of a period of time.
A unilateral price change of this magnitude will destroy them in the long run.
Very sad.
Please do post which software you will move to as I am also very inclined to move out of principle and would value knowing where other practices are moving too.
Hi everyone,
Hope you're having a better day today after the surprises this week.
Our team has had discussions / demo's with MANY of you over this week.
Following from the post from "JemsAccountancy" above, I'd appreciate if you could give a quick comment of what you thought of the DOKKA platform after our zoom demo / discussion.
(I realise you can't give a detailed opinion until after you have used it, but I'd appreciate if you can just give some initial thoughts on the user experience, functionality, first thoughts etc).
So that the bookkeepers and accountants on accountingweb, who haven't seen our platform yet, can decide whether to give us 30 minutes of their time seeing our platform.
Just had the renewal phone call with our Dext AM. Monthly fee set to increase from £325 per month ex vat to £1368 per month ex vat. Totally unsustainable and unacceptable increase. Only last week Sabby Gill and the new CTO were telling us how much they valued their accountant customers! That seems like a sick joke now.
I was also advised that most of our clients should be migrated to Dext Solo as they aren't VAT registered. Has anyone else discovered that Dext Solo only allows expenses to be categorised using the HMRC standard SA expense categories? It's not possible to change or add a bespoke category list in Solo. This will be completely unworkable for us and our clients who need categories that they can readily identify with and provide the right level of detail for their accounts.
Already started looking for alternatives - any recommendations would be gratefully received.
Sorry to hear that Ian. Thats crazy but I expect the same when I have my call at 3pm today.
I'm glad this is gaining traction now as I felt like a lone voice shouting into the wind when I first posted yesterday morning.
I'm not sure I can think of any other situation where a business raises it's prices to such an extent and I've been in business 30 + years.
Dext Solo is rubbish. It is a bookkeeping package which we all have our own solutions for thank you very much. For the price you are better using the Xero basic package or QB Essentials (£7 per month, not QB self employed which is also rubbish) which is much more comprehensive.
QB self employed only allows self employed tax return categories so sounds like Dext has just copied that.
All we need as a practice is a Receipt Bank (ring any bells anyone?) and we can do the rest.
In the process of cutting the low volume clients from Dext and moving them to the free offering in QB. I presume Xero has a similar option (I don't use Xero)?
I'm also talking to AutoEntry who offer 2500 credits per month for £385 + vat. We need about 1000 credits more than that though but by moving low use clients to the FREE QB offering I should be able to get beneath that.
One way or the other I will be closing our Dext account, might take a month or two but no way am I staying when they can increase the price this way overnight.
Ian and others I'm sure like me you would have grumbled but accepted a 15-20% uplift, but not > 400%
Interested to know how you got on with your Dext account manager if you're willing to share
To stay as we were with just under 100 clients the quote is £825 + vat per month. That's from our £325 + vat fee.
We asked for a quote on 70 clients as I can cull a decent chunk straight across to QBO and that is £650 + vat.
The price per client increases as you reduce your client bundle / decreases as you increase your client bundle.
50 clients would be £540 + vat per month.
I can get below 50 and will be about 1500 receipts a month at that level which makes Autoentry at £250 + vat per month very atractive as more than half the cost. The rest will be on the free QBO offering.
The ONLY thing stopping me moving is the monthly credit feature that AE and all the others do. We once had a client upload pages and pages of their childs homework by accident. That did not matter one jot on receipt bank but could be very costly on AE.
It is that lack of control I fear but the price difference is too much to ignore and to be honest would cover a lot of mistakes.
Thanks for the update. I could do without the hassle of moving clients onto a new system but as you say the price difference is now a real motivator.
Now, I'm not a user - but I was tickled by the "everything we bring to the table" comment.
It is a subversion of the value chain argument, that we can thank the tech industry for. They are doing us a favour by allowing us to pay them for something - and we should be grateful..
I believe that DEXT have shown a lack of commercial awareness by making such draconian increases in fees. A much better option was to continue with current status and inform that any further additions to the clients would attract additional fees, allowing existing to remain on the (in my case) free software status with new ones having to pay for DEXT services. Even better in my case to state that once I reach 100 clients than any additional clients would come under the 100-150 fee category.
Why are not fees charged by clients groups as other software companies do e.g. up to 50 , up to 100, up to 150 clients etc.
I am reducing my clients to 50 and moving others to another company maybe Auto -entry. With the AI revolution beginning I will be able to compare and contract developments between companies.
I believe that DEXT have shown a lack of commercial awareness by making such draconian increases in fees. A much better option was to continue with current status and inform that any further additions to the clients would attract additional fees, allowing existing to remain on the (in my case) free software status with new ones having to pay for DEXT services. Even better in my case to state that once I reach 100 clients than any additional clients would come under the 100-150 fee category.
Why are not fees charged by clients groups as other software companies do e.g. up to 50 , up to 100, up to 150 clients etc.
I am reducing my clients to 50 and moving others to another company maybe Auto -entry. With the AI revolution beginning I will be able to compare and contract developments between companies.
I agree 100% with this.
I understand the need to move to a per client pricing structure but they should have started with new customers first. Perhaps phased in loyal Dext customers over a period of time by offering us discounts. Same as Quickbooks do.
I had 98 clients using Dext. I have already moved around 40 low volume users to the free offering from QBO. Works fine for half a dozen invoices a week.
My deadline is 1st November for the price rise (if I had stayed at 98 clients would have been £800 + per month) so target is to reduce further to around 40 clients.
I am going to Accountex North next month and will see what is on offer but 90% certain I will move the remainder to Autoentry at roughly £250 + vat per month. I started out with AE but moved to Dext for the unlimited upload option. Now they have removed their USP then out of principal I won't be staying with Dext.
I can just imagine the private equity group Hg Capital sitting there post their 2021 buyout thinking, ooh look at all the clients, lets change the charging structure. Well overnight my tiny practice as gutted 40% of them and will end up being zero. Many others on this thread will do the same. If nothing else firms will be looking at their client list and realise there are multiple 'dead' clients still on their subscription list which didn't matter on the old charging structure but does now.
Thanks for the reply.
I don't think that DEXT realise that accountants in practice are not like solicitors or other professions. We have continuous work from the same client year after year. I have known quite a few of my clients for more than 20 years. This puts the relationship at the centre of the engagement. Trust and integrity become important. How am supposed go back on my word and charge clients when I said there was no fee. If this is level of DEXTs commercial awareness should I be wary and be prepared to move completely?
We have 500 clients, paying currently about £7k. This was sold to us as unlimited clients. We were told the idea was that we would be able to make good profits, hence paying for the top of the range product.
We substantially discounted the price for our clients and after a couple of years starting breaking even. Now we make a small profit.
The account manager refuses to give us a price. Although I can see this will now increase tenfold.
We will be moving.
Very disappointing
Presume that is £7k annual?
The bext you will get is about £8 per client based on what I know so far. They reduce the price per client in bands depending on the total. Our account manager said the band starts at £15 per client and reduces from there.
So your £7k annual goes to £48k.
You would need at least 18 months to re-price your own client base with all the risks that would come with that.
No thought or business sense at all from Hg Capital. They did the same to BrightPay so we should have seen it coming.
We've received the same email, word-for-word. Completely agree with everyone's comments so far. Increasing the packages a couple of % every so often would be perfectly acceptable, to reflect inflation, but a complete overhaul of the pricing structure to increase contracts by 400%+ is nonsense.
We also had the £199/m "unlimited" deal, offered to us by a sales rep who attended an Accounting Web MTD seminar once upon a time. We were told this was a 'lifetime' price as they were keen to introduce as many accounting practices as possible in the early days.
They've already tried moving the goalposts once before, when Dext became Receipt Bank - i complained so they said we could keep the same price, but limited our package to just 10 clients - even though we already had 19 at the time. Since then we've been unable to add any new clients to the system so we're stuck on 19 unless we upgrade to a more expensive package... even though we SHOULD have had 'unlimited' for £199.
Did anyone else have the same deal from the old Receipt Bank? I'd be curious to know if anyone has a copy of a contract with this in writing? I'm almost certain i had one, but i've not had time to trawl through all my old emails to find it.
Still waiting to see what 'new' price they give us, but based on everyone's comments i can see us moving over to Auto Entry or another competitor.
I have been following this discussion with great interest.
I don’t use Dext, but for quite a while I have been concerned about software users being powerless to stop software companies raising their prices dramatically.
I have been horrified by some of the stories on this thread where some users are going to see price rises of 300% or 400%. I have a couple of comments/questions:
1. The main issue here seems to be the fact that there has been no consistency regarding pricing. No two users seems to be on the same price structure. Perhaps this is due to how long you have been a user, or whether you just happened to come across an over-enthusiastic salesman?
2. Are you guys who have contributed to this discussion in a small minority? Have Dext reached a point where they can say ‘a good percentage of our users are now paying list price, and we are happy to lose the small percentage of users who are paying well below normal price’.
What responsibility do software companies have. I would say the following:
1. Morally - Should software companies reward customers who have been with them for a long time? I think they should.
2. Legally - In the discussion someone stated that, when they were quoted, they were told this was a ‘lifetime’ price. Surely this should be honoured.
So, to conclude, I sympathise with those of you who are going to have to look for another provider. I may be feeling a little smug that I am not in your position, but it is only a matter of time before this happens again.
This is private equity 101. They get in, take a good company and product and then milk the current customer base they've built up for all it's worth. If they succeed, they make a killing. If they don't, they have other ventures that will make a killing. They probably only need one success to really take off to pay for other failures.
I don't know what their numbers are like internally in terms of accountants using the software, but I can tell you that we are done with Dext. We have whittled our list down to users with active integrations and clients actually using the app and we will now be paying less when this pricing comes in. Anyone new will probably be going on Auto-Entry here, as we can gradually ramp up the costs as we go using their credit system.
The big selling point of Dext was you pay one fee and add as many clients as you like. They are not competitive with this new pricing model, unless you have small client numbers with very large amounts of document processing per client.
Within our practice that is not the case. We have a few big clients that use it heavily and many others that are very light users. So there is no value in their product any more - you can't make a profit on a £300+vat subbie if you have to pay dext £100 for the pleasure, when Auto Entry is charging probably £20 or less for the equivalent credits.
Even if they roll this back I will never trust them. And judging by the fact that my account manager (who has never bothered to speak to us despite us paying them nearly £5k+vat per year for many years) is fully booked with calls for the next two weeks, I'm guessing they have completely shot themselves in the foot and bitten off far more than they anticipated.
In response to your specific questions: I think the pricing per client is just a volume thing. The more you have the cheaper they are per client. I don't think they are wiggling on a customer level, but I don't know yet as I haven't been able to speak to anyone yet.
Morally, they have treated their biggest users like a cash cow. To not even pick up the phone and tell this in person is utterly pathetic. If we raised our clients' prices by 4x with a spammed out mass email, we would have ZERO clients left at the end of the day. And I hope the same thing happens to them.
Legally, they have the lawyers, good luck arguing with them.
After the initial shock I am actually quite happy that they have forced me to look at the bloat that we have, as it will save us money in the long run. We were probably overpaying for what we were using and they have woken me up to this. When I look at our actual monthly numbers for document processing across the board, we are now miles better off on Auto-Entry, in terms of payments for credits versus payments per client.
In short, they are dead to us as a company and I look forward to the day when I can cancel in full.
This is private equity 101. They get in, take a good company and product and then milk the current customer base they've built up for all it's worth. If they succeed, they make a killing. If they don't, they have other ventures that will make a killing. They probably only need one success to really take off to pay for other failures.
I don't know what their numbers are like internally in terms of accountants using the software, but I can tell you that we are done with Dext. We have whittled our list down to users with active integrations and clients actually using the app and we will now be paying less when this pricing comes in. Anyone new will probably be going on Auto-Entry here, as we can gradually ramp up the costs as we go using their credit system.
The big selling point of Dext was you pay one fee and add as many clients as you like. They are not competitive with this new pricing model, unless you have small client numbers with very large amounts of document processing per client.
Within our practice that is not the case. We have a few big clients that use it heavily and many others that are very light users. So there is no value in their product any more - you can't make a profit on a £300+vat subbie if you have to pay dext £100 for the pleasure, when Auto Entry is charging probably £20 or less for the equivalent credits.
Even if they roll this back I will never trust them. And judging by the fact that my account manager (who has never bothered to speak to us despite us paying them nearly £5k+vat per year for many years) is fully booked with calls for the next two weeks, I'm guessing they have completely shot themselves in the foot and bitten off far more than they anticipated.
In response to your specific questions: I think the pricing per client is just a volume thing. The more you have the cheaper they are per client. I don't think they are wiggling on a customer level, but I don't know yet as I haven't been able to speak to anyone yet.
Morally, they have treated their biggest users like a cash cow. To not even pick up the phone and tell this in person is utterly pathetic. If we raised our clients' prices by 4x with a spammed out mass email, we would have ZERO clients left at the end of the day. And I hope the same thing happens to them.
Legally, they have the lawyers, good luck arguing with them.
After the initial shock I am actually quite happy that they have forced me to look at the bloat that we have, as it will save us money in the long run. We were probably overpaying for what we were using and they have woken me up to this. When I look at our actual monthly numbers for document processing across the board, we are now miles better off on Auto-Entry, in terms of payments for credits versus payments per client.
In short, they are dead to us as a company and I look forward to the day when I can cancel in full.
Agree 100% with this and is exactly what we have done / are doing.
I'm now down to 49 clients from 98 a week ago. All moved to the free offering from QB. Once below 40 then will move the remaining to AutoEntry as will be cheaper but mainly out of principle.
On Hg Capitals website they say they have >10,000 accountants and more than a million end users.
Imagine the board room. Hey guys we have 10,000 x £250 per month across our partners. That's £2,5M, doesn't even buy us lunch. Let's take our 1 million users and charge each of them £10 per month and we make £10M per month without even trying. Trebles all round!!
Well guys you need to go back to the board room because apart from the million end users being made up of old out of date clients (that Accountants didn't have to worry about when not being charged for them) your user base is currently imploding.
So, looks like good news for AutoEntry. Wonder what their next price rise will look like.
I always thought the cost of tech came down with mass adoption, a flat screen TV was £3000 when I first bought one, I bought a bigger and better one last week for £300.
For small jobs who pay say £250 pm they now carry 20% overhead of xero and dext subscription, thats a big chunk each month.
Small firm accountants carry the can for the big firms as there deals are so better priced than ours. Its a bitter pill to take when we have been advocates for these products from day 1 before they were fashionable and championed them and signed clients up to their platforms.
Software vendors do not seem to value what we bring to them, ie opening up our hard won client banks to them, and supporting their software FOC.
Dext are really bad at managing customer relations and are very Iris in their approach as the rely on the fact its a pain to change, but this time it would seem they have lost a lot of their core users over the handling of this.
They contacted me recently to do an account review so they could tell me what me new pricing was going to be, not really an account review if the outcome has already been decided without my input so pointless wasting a meeting on it.
Moving pricing from £300 to £1000 for a small firm is a shambles, no one is going to accept that.
Looks like there is a few more alternatives coming now also, so maybe dext might regret how they handled this.
I am glad I found this thread as now I know I am not alone in feeling incensed.
I had my meeting with Dext yesterday after I received the generic email, only been using Dext for 1 year which was at a cost of £325+vat every month which I already thought was too expensive (and know others that are paying half), we absorb some of the cost as a practice because it was high and yet during my meeting he advised that we were using for 42 clients at £7.34 that we only need 38 clients but will need to be a bundle of 40 clients which will now be £430.00+vat, so £10.75 per client - this is outrageous particularly as we are using 50 so not sure where the 42 count has even come from! basically advised to move out two clients (or 10 in reality) and pay an extra 32% for what is now NOT unlimited, what a joke. When I told him these fees were extreme he (Tom) told me that the vast majority of accountants thought it was more than very reasonable and were in fact happy that everyone was now paying the same! he also went on to tell me that I was the minority and that most others are simply recharging on to their clients and so didn't affect them. He kept saying this until I told him that whether or not I recharge or absorb was none of his business and not relevant to the price increase and that I found him saying that offensive. Dext my clients are not cash cows and neither am I! I told Dext to be careful as there are going to lose accountants!
When people say pass on the cost, ultimately to do this means a drop in our own income because there is only so much we can increase to our own clients before they get fed up with us, this week alone Xero and Dext have both advised increases however this affects our own fees as we tend to keep that lower to fund these software's that ease us in and then ramp up the cost so now I we feel somewhat trapped/lured into it. What a hassle now to move my clients to something else :(
Another point is that now they have done this, I can forsee an increase on the 'per client' model every year, this year £10.75 next year £11.5 and so on....
Also why the secrecy, be open and transparent about the cost if everyone is paying the same!
You can't trust what the sales reps are saying. They will swear blind that everything is fine hours after they've hit the iceberg and the ship is split in two. I don't think I'm going on a limb when I say that I can't imagine a single accountant in the country looking at a far above inflation price increase and saying "great, I'll pass that onto my clients. Thanks Dext for the value you're providing me".
"Another point is that now they have done this, I can forsee an increase on the 'per client' model every year, this year £10.75 next year £11.5 and so on...."
This is 100% going to be the case. They are losing money and this is their dash for profitability. Those that remain and soak up these extortionate increases will be milked for all they are worth i the coming years. They will know that if you can take this, you can take more.
I had a look at their December 2021 accounts. They make for interesting reading and were filed over 3 months late.
I am thinking of moving clients that are on Xero Standard plans to Hubdoc from Dext as it is already included in the Xero price. Previously I have found Dext far superior to Dext when I first looked at Hubdoc. Hopefully Hubdoc have made some improvements since then. Does anyone on here use Hubdoc?
I am also trying to find the UK Hubdoc price for Xero cashbook and ledger plans.
Alas this is a common practice.
CPANEL and WHMCS did the same thing.
they used to be very cheap and the most widely used hosting control panel and billing system in the world. CPANEL purchased WHMCS, and then put the prices up massively.
The price increase only affected larger users as it was based on your number of clients, so it didn;t have any affect on all the small businesses, which was obviously the plan.
A large hosting company moving thousands of customer base and hundreds of servers to a new platform is a gigantic task, fraught with issues. So they really had everyone over a barrel.
Even if cpanel lost half their users, they would still be laughing all the way to the bank.
Our cost will go up by 330% which is just unacceptable in my opinion. It speaks volumes as to how DEXT value their partners and makes me unwillingly to continue the relationship on a long term basis or have as many eggs in the DEXT basket.
Initially the DEXT sales rep advised us not to charge each customer for DEXT, but soak it up as a practice and just provide it as an added benefit to client so I feel like I’ve been totally conned!
We are going down the route, if the client is happy to pay the additional fee then that’s their choice to stop with DEXT and will incur what charges DEXT decide to throw at them going forward. If they don't we have agreed to cover over the DEXT cost for 12 months and come up with an alternative solution in that time period.
Just wondering if anyone has looked at legally challenging DEXT to see if they are allowed to just force us out of an existing contractual agreement like they are intending to do?
