The short answer
Hubdoc and Dext are document capture tools: they read your receipts and invoices and send the data to your accounts software. OmniPATH is procurement and accounts payable automation: it captures invoices too, then checks every line against agreed prices, routes approvals by site and role, raises purchase orders and monitors spend continuously. Capture tells you what you were charged. Procurement automation tells you whether you should have been.
What is the difference between document capture and procurement automation?
Document capture digitises a document. Procurement automation controls a decision.
Capture answers: what does this invoice say? It saves typing, which is valuable. But a perfectly captured invoice for the wrong price is still the wrong price, paid faster.
Procurement automation answers the questions that follow. Did we order this? At what price? Did it arrive? Who approved it? Is it more than we paid last month? Is it a duplicate?
What do Hubdoc and Dext do well?
Both are good at what they are built for, and many accountants rely on them.
Hubdoc is included with Xero’s UK plans, from Ignite to Ultimate, when connected to your Xero subscription (Xero). It captures bills and receipts and publishes them to Xero. Xero has also added its own AI-powered smart document capture inside Xero from July 2026.
Dext captures receipts and invoices by app, email, WhatsApp or desktop, and supports expenses, document storage and supplier payments (Dext). It offers approval workflows of up to five stages (Dext help) and can link an invoice to a purchase order already created in Xero or QuickBooks Online, matching on totals (Dext help). Its UK pricing is a single configurable plan; 250 documents a month for five users is shown at £24.17 a month excluding VAT, with line-item extraction as a paid add-on (Dext pricing).
How does OmniPATH compare with Hubdoc and Dext?
| Capability | Hubdoc | Dext | OmniPATH |
|---|---|---|---|
| Invoice and receipt capture | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Line-item extraction | Not a core feature | Paid add-on | Included, every invoice |
| Raise purchase orders | No (in Xero) | No, links to existing POs | Yes |
| Match invoice to PO | No | Totals only | Line by line, price and quantity |
| Approval routing | No (in Xero) | Up to 5 linear stages | By site, role and spend limit, with no self-approval |
| Supplier price history | No | No | Every item, every supplier |
| Cross-Supplier Price Comparison | No | No | Yes |
| Continuous duplicate, fraud and price-rise checks | No | No | 27 monitoring agents, every 30 minutes |
| Site and cost-centre coding | Via Xero | Category and supplier rules | Site drives cost centre, budget and visibility |
| Plain-English finance questions | No | AI Assist add-on | Ledge, with the rows to prove it |
Why does line-level detail matter?
Because that is where the money is.
An invoice total of £840 tells you nothing about whether the price of chips went up 8%. Line-level data does. It is how you spot price creep, duplicate lines, short deliveries and the supplier who charges more than another for the same product.
The benchmark gap is wide. Ardent Partners’ State of ePayables 2025 found best-in-class AP teams process an invoice for $2.65 in 2.9 days, against $12.42 and 13.5 days for everyone else. Their exception rate is 11.1% against 20.9%. The difference is not faster typing. It is matching, routing and control.
When is document capture enough?
Capture alone can be the right tool when:
- you are a sole trader or single small site with a handful of suppliers;
- your accountant does the bookkeeping and wants receipts digitised;
- you don’t use purchase orders and don’t need approvals beyond the owner.
It stops being enough when you have several sites, several buyers, a budget to hold, or suppliers whose prices move.
Key trends
- Capture is becoming a commodity. Xero now builds AI capture natively, alongside Hubdoc. The value is moving to what happens after capture.
- AI is moving from extraction to judgement. Ardent’s 2026 report found 58% of AP teams using or piloting AI. The leaders use it to check and decide, not just to read.
- UK finance teams are still largely manual. In a June 2026 survey of 200 UK finance leaders, 85% still rely on manual input at some stage of AP, and 26% report duplicate or wrong payments.
- E-invoicing will change the input. As structured e-invoices replace PDFs, capture matters less and control matters more.
Where OmniPATH fits
OmniPATH does the capture, then does the job capture leaves undone. Connect Xero or QuickBooks, forward invoices to your OmniPATH inbox, or upload a bank statement. Your suppliers, spend and bills appear on their own. From there, every line is checked, every approval is routed, and every price is tracked.
Already using Dext or Hubdoc? You don’t have to rip anything out. Keep your capture habits and add the control layer on top.
Related reading
FAQ
Is OmniPATH an alternative to Dext?
Yes, for operators who need more than capture. OmniPATH extracts every invoice line like Dext’s add-on does, then adds purchase orders, line-level matching, site-based approvals, supplier price history and continuous fraud and duplicate checks.
Is Hubdoc still free with Xero?
As of October 2026, Xero’s UK pricing page lists Hubdoc as included with its Ignite, Grow, Comprehensive and Ultimate plans when connected to your Xero subscription. Xero has also launched its own smart document capture.
What is the difference between Dext and Hubdoc?
Both capture receipts and invoices. Hubdoc is included with Xero and focuses on publishing documents into it. Dext is a standalone paid product with broader capture channels, approval workflows, payments and optional add-ons such as line-item extraction.
Does Dext do purchase orders?
Dext can link an invoice to a purchase order already created in Xero or QuickBooks Online and match on totals. It does not create purchase orders or match line by line on price and quantity.
Can I use OmniPATH alongside Dext or Hubdoc?
Yes. OmniPATH reads invoices from your accounts software, email or uploads, so you can keep your existing capture tool while adding procurement control, approvals and price monitoring.
Why isn’t document capture enough for multi-site operators?
Capture records what you were charged. It doesn’t check whether the price was agreed, whether the goods arrived, which site the spend belongs to or who should approve it. Those checks are where multi-site operators lose or save money.