Dext launches Time Spent to track practice workloads

Dext has launched Time Spent for accounting and bookkeeping firms. The feature is available on its Advanced plan.

Located in the Insights section of Dext's platform, the tool is designed to show how teams distribute time across clients and internal workloads. It launches as firms face pressure to meet higher client demand without a matching increase in staff.

Many practices have already reduced time spent on manual data entry through automation, but still struggle to see where time goes elsewhere in their workflows. That lack of visibility can make it harder to manage workloads, measure efficiency and identify clients that take more time than expected.

Dashboard views

Time Spent brings several layers of information into a single dashboard. Users can view a practice-wide overview, a monthly heat map of activity, client-level activity and user-level activity.

The practice overview shows how time is spent across a firm. The monthly heat map highlights busy and quieter periods, while the client and user activity views show which clients and team members account for the most and least time.

Each view includes drill-down options, allowing firms to move from broad patterns to more detailed information. The aim is to help practices identify where time is being lost or concentrated, rebalance work across teams, prepare for peak periods and support pricing or scope discussions with data.

Productivity pressure

The launch reflects a wider issue in the accountancy sector, where firms are trying to deliver more work with limited resources. Talent shortages and rising client expectations have made it harder to expand simply by hiring more people.

Against that backdrop, software suppliers have focused on automating repetitive work, especially document capture and data extraction. Dext is positioning the new feature as a way to extend that effort beyond basic processing by helping firms understand how work is distributed across the rest of the practice.

Dext also pointed to the scale of work handled on its platform. In January 2026, it processed 31.4 million receipts and invoices globally.

Using an estimate of three to four minutes to process each document manually, that volume would amount to more than two million hours of administrative work. According to Dext, users completed the same work in about 206,000 hours through its platform, cutting processing time by more than 90%.

The company argues that automation alone does not answer the question of how firms allocate effort across clients and teams. Time Spent follows the rollout of Dext AI Assist, which is intended to automate routine bookkeeping decisions.

"Dext has already helped automate large parts of the bookkeeping workflow, from document capture through to data extraction. With Time Spent, we're solving a different but equally important problem: visibility," Sabby Gill, Chief Executive Officer at Dext, said.

"Firms have made huge strides in automating data processing, but many still don't have a clear picture of how time is spent across their practice. Time Spent brings that insight into Dext, helping accountants and bookkeepers make better decisions about workloads, efficiency and client relationships," Gill continued.

Dext, part of IRIS Software Group, serves more than 12,000 accounting and bookkeeping firms and 700,000 businesses worldwide, according to the company. The new feature is included at no extra cost for accountants and bookkeepers using the Advanced plan.