Dext + ApprovalMax
Two subscriptions, and month-end still lands on one person.
Capture is solved. Approvals are solved. The jobs that belong to neither tool are the ones still being done by hand in the first week of the month.
This page is not an argument that Dext reads documents badly or that ApprovalMax routes approvals badly. Both do the job they were built for, and this stack is popular because it works.
It is an argument about the shape of the stack: what each tool is designed to own, and what is left over. Everything said here about another product describes what it is built to do, not a feature list — those move, and a page that pretends otherwise goes stale and starts lying.
The usual stack
Three tools, three jobs.
Dext
Capture and coding
Gets the document in and reads it. Forward it, photograph it, upload it, and it arrives in the ledger coded. The category more or less exists because of them, and at the job it is built for it is good.
ApprovalMax
Approvals
Routes a bill to the people who have to say yes before it is paid, and keeps the trail that proves they did. It is built for Xero and QuickBooks, and it does not capture documents itself — which is exactly why it is so often bought alongside Dext.
Xero
The ledger
Where all of it lands, and the system of record. Finio does not replace this and has no interest in trying.
Notice what the three of them describe: getting a document in, getting it agreed, and storing the result. That is the whole life of an invoice, as long as the invoice is correct and belongs to exactly one company.
What falls between them
Five jobs neither tool owns.
None of these are capture problems and none of them are approval problems, so they come back to a person — usually at month-end, usually the same person.
01
The delivery note nobody compares to the invoice
The site signs for eight cases and the invoice bills for ten. Capture reads the invoice accurately — ten cases is genuinely what it says. The error is not in the document, it is between the document and what turned up at the door, and it needs the site's copy to find it.
How Finio handles it →02
Credit notes that arrive after the invoice
Goods go back, the invoice is already raised, and the credit note follows days later. It has to be allocated against that specific invoice. Until it is, Operations and Finance are each working from a different number, and neither knows it.
How Finio handles it →03
The supplier statement
Once a month a supplier sends a list of everything it thinks you owe, and someone ticks it against the ledger by hand. It is the least automated job in accounts payable and reliably the one that eats the first week back.
How Finio handles it →04
Cross-charges between companies
Soho sends four cases to Shoreditch. Two separate legal entities, two separate Xero organisations, and today it surfaces when someone mentions it at month-end. Approvals tools route bills inside one organisation; this is a transaction that has to land in two.
How Finio handles it →05
Departmental transfers
One department to another, inside one company. The group total does not move, so nothing external ever catches it, and the department that got charged usually finds out from the P&L.
How Finio handles it →
The swap
What actually changes.
Finio captures and codes, and then keeps going through the five jobs above rather than stopping at the ledger. Xero stays exactly where it is: Finio posts into it and reads back from it.
Finio does not route ordinary supplier bills for approval yet. The approval loop exists — it is what a cross-charge is, and nothing posts until every side has agreed — but today it runs on transfers between sites and entities, not on every bill.
So on the title of this page: Finio replaces Dext today, and adds the five jobs above that neither tool does. It does not replace ApprovalMax yet. Bill approvals are being built, and until they ship, keep ApprovalMax. We would rather say so than sell you a gap.
Setting it up is an OAuth connection to the Xero organisation you want it running on. It reads your chart of accounts and your existing supplier records, so there is no supplier list to rebuild and no nominal code mapping to sit through — the part of switching that usually costs a fortnight.
Where this is the wrong answer
Four reasons not to switch.
- One site, one company. Most of what Finio adds is about goods and money moving between sites and between entities. If that is not happening, the stack you have is probably the right one.
- Employee expense claims. Dext handles receipts and mileage; Finio is supplier invoices and does not do this at all.
- A ledger other than Xero. Xero is what is connected today. Sage, QuickBooks and NetSuite are on the software partners page, marked as what they are — not live yet.
- Replacing your accountant, or your ledger. Finio sits in front of Xero and posts into it.
Written August 2026, and describing what each product is built for rather than what it shipped last week. Both change. If something here has gone out of date or reads unfairly, write to info@getfinio.co.uk and we will correct it.
Test the one that is hardest to believe.
Supplier statement reconciliation is the job on that list nobody automates. Bring a real statement and see what comes back.