Start with Hubdoc, because it is included in all four Xero NZ small business plans and costs you nothing extra. Move to Dext only if you code supplier invoices line by line, since line item extraction is the real difference between them. Under about 20 supplier documents a month, keying them into Xero yourself still wins.
What each does with a supplier invoice
Both tools do the same four things in the same order: get the document in, read it, code it, push it to Xero with the original attached. The differences sit inside each step.
Hubdoc takes documents by phone photo, email forward, scanner or upload, and you can set a rule in your mail client to forward supplier invoices in automatically. It pulls the header information back out, the supplier name, the date and the total, and once you connect it to Xero it imports your contacts and chart of accounts so the coding options are your own. Supplier rules let you say "this merchant always codes here", and auto-sync then publishes matching documents without you touching them. It also converts PDF bank statements from supported banks into CSV. Once published, the document is matched against the bank feed and reconciles with the original attached. Xero documents the ingestion side on Xero Central.
Dext does that job and then keeps going. Its extraction covers line items, not only the header, plus bank statement extraction and supplier statement extraction, which reconciles what a supplier says you owe against what you have entered. Supplier rules are deeper, there are expense and approval workflows on top, and it publishes into more than 36 accounting products rather than one. Add-ons cover document storage, payments and an AI assist layer. Dext sets the plan contents out in its business plans article.
| Step | Hubdoc | Dext |
|---|---|---|
| Capture | Phone, email, scanner, upload | Phone, email, scanner, upload, plus supplier fetch and commerce feeds |
| Extraction | Supplier, date, total | Header plus line items, with a monthly allowance per plan |
| Rules | Per-supplier coding rules with auto-sync | Per-supplier rules, expense workflows, approvals |
| Publishing | Xero, with the original attached | 36 or more accounting products, with the original attached |
| Statements | Bank statement PDF to CSV | Bank statement and supplier statement extraction |
What each costs a NZ business
Hubdoc is included with the Xero Ignite, Grow, Comprehensive and Ultimate plans in New Zealand at no extra cost, per Xero's document capture page, checked September 2026.
The exception is worth knowing. Hubdoc is billed separately for organisations on a Xero Cashbook or Ledger plan, which are the low-cost plans an accountant or bookkeeper holds on a client's behalf. If your Xero login came from your accountant rather than from you, check which plan you are on before assuming capture is free.
Dext does not publish a New Zealand dollar price list, and I am not going to convert a foreign figure and present it as an NZ price. The shape is a single business plan that starts at five users and 250 documents a month and scales with both, with each additional user adding 50 documents and a set number of line-item and statement extractions. Billing is monthly or annual, and the annual option carries a discount for paying the year up front. Get your own number from Dext in your own currency before you budget.
So the comparison is lopsided by design. Hubdoc has to be adequate. Dext has to be better than a tool you are already paying for, by enough to justify a new monthly line on the card.
The line item question decides it
One question separates the two products, and everything else is detail.
If you code a merchant invoice to one account, materials, say, and move on, Hubdoc does everything you need. Header extraction plus a supplier rule means most of your monthly bills publish themselves and you review a list rather than typing one.
If you split a single merchant invoice across several jobs, you need the lines. A plumbing merchant statement covering four jobs is one document to Hubdoc and eleven line items to Dext, and only one of those lets you push cost to the right job without retyping. That is the same timing and allocation problem I wrote about in the job costing post: the margin on a job stays wrong until its material cost lands against it, and header-level capture does not get you there.
Two caveats on that. Line item extraction has a monthly allowance rather than being unlimited, so a materials-heavy month can run past it. And a job management tool may already solve this without a capture app at all: Fergus, for instance, imports supplier invoices and splits one across several jobs and phases as part of the product. Check what your existing stack does before adding a fourth subscription to fix the second one.
Worked example: the volume where capture pays
Assumption, not a measurement. These timings are the shape of the sum, so swap in your own.
- Keying a supplier bill into Xero by hand, with the paper in front of you: about 2 minutes, including finding the document and filing it afterwards.
- The capture route: 15 seconds to photograph or forward it, then about 30 seconds to review and publish. Call it 45 seconds.
- Saving per document: 120 seconds minus 45, so 75 seconds.
- Add a fixed cost of 20 minutes a month tidying the documents that did not code themselves, because some never will.
- At 40 documents a month: 40 times 75 seconds is 3,000 seconds, or 50 minutes. Minus the 20-minute tidy, that is 30 minutes a month, about 6 hours a year.
- At 150 documents a month: 150 times 75 seconds is 11,250 seconds, or 187 minutes. Minus 20, that is 167 minutes a month, about 33 hours a year.
- At 20 documents a month: 20 times 75 seconds is 25 minutes. Minus the 20-minute tidy, you have saved 5 minutes. That is the floor.
The shape of that curve is the point. Capture is close to worthless at low volume and compounds fast above about 50 documents a month. Since Hubdoc costs nothing on a standard Xero plan, the 40-document business should still switch it on, because 6 hours a year for an hour of setup is a fine trade. The business at 150 documents a month is the one that should then ask whether line items are worth paying for on top. Run your own document count through the ROI calculator to turn those hours into a number.
When typing it in is still right
Three cases, and I see the first one most.
Low volume. Under about 20 supplier documents a month, the worked example above says the saving rounds to nothing. Key them in during your Friday reconcile and skip the app entirely.
Messy or handwritten dockets. Extraction reads printed invoices well and handwriting badly. A crew whose merchant dockets are carbon-copy scrawl will spend the review time they saved on correcting fields, and the error lands in your GST return rather than in a screen you were watching.
Bills that need a human decision anyway. If every supplier invoice gets checked against a delivery docket before it goes anywhere, capture moves the typing but not the checking, which is where the time went. Fix the checking step first.
There is a fourth, quieter case. If the real problem is on the sales side, invoices going out late rather than bills coming in slowly, receipt capture is the wrong end of the business. Start with how to stop retyping invoices into Xero instead.
Set it up this week
Count your supplier documents from last month. If it is over 20, turn Hubdoc on inside Xero, forward one month of supplier emails into it, and build a rule for your three biggest merchants. That is an hour, and it is the whole decision for most trade businesses. Everything else in Xero that costs nothing extra is in the features nobody switches on.
If you are past 100 documents a month and splitting merchant invoices across jobs, that is the case where the paid tool earns its keep, and it is worth twenty minutes with someone before you commit. Book a free 30-minute call and bring last month's merchant statement. If Hubdoc plus a supplier rule covers you, I will say so and you will have saved a subscription.
Common questions
Is Hubdoc free with Xero in New Zealand?
Yes, on the four small business plans. Xero includes Hubdoc with Ignite, Grow, Comprehensive and Ultimate in New Zealand at no extra cost. It is not included on Xero Cashbook or Ledger, the plans an accountant normally holds on a client's behalf, where Hubdoc is billed separately. If you are on a standard plan, receipt capture is already paid for.
What does Dext do that Hubdoc does not?
The main one is line item extraction. Hubdoc pulls the header information from a supplier invoice, the supplier, the date and the total. Dext can pull the individual lines, which matters if you code materials to jobs line by line rather than coding the whole invoice to one account. Dext also handles supplier statement extraction, deeper supplier rules and publishing to more than 36 accounting products rather than one.
How much does Dext cost in New Zealand?
Dext does not publish a New Zealand dollar price list. It sells a single business plan that starts at five users and 250 documents a month and scales with both, with each extra user adding 50 documents, billed monthly or annually with a discount for paying a year up front. Get the current figure in your own currency from Dext's pricing page before you budget.
At what volume is receipt capture worth setting up?
On a worked assumption of 75 seconds saved per document, 40 supplier documents a month nets about six hours a year after the monthly tidy-up, and 150 documents a month nets about 33 hours. Under roughly 20 documents a month the setup and review time cancels the saving out, and typing them straight into Xero stays the answer.
Receipts are one document type that chases itself once it lands in the right folder. The wider habit, a checklist that stops you asking a client for the same form twice, is in this post.