AutoEntry alternatives (2026): what to use instead, and when to stay
The main AutoEntry alternatives are Dext, Hubdoc or Xero's Smart Document Capture (both included with Xero), QuickBooks Online's own receipt capture, DocuClipper for bank statements, and pay-per-use tools such as Utilly. Which one fits depends on whether credits for statement pages, expiring credits or the subscription itself is the problem.
Who wrote this: Utilly, which sells a pay-per-use receipt extractor and a PDF bank statement converter, so we're one of the options below. Utilly isn't a capture service: it has no email-in address, no phone app, doesn't publish to your ledger and doesn't keep your documents. AutoEntry's plans and help pages, and each alternative's prices, were read on the vendors' own sites on October 28, 2026 and are linked where we quote them. Plans change, so check the current page before you switch.
See what a pay-per-use batch looks like first
Open a set of fictional sample receipts in the extractor, or upload your own: you check every field before downloading CSV, Excel or a QuickBooks Online or Xero bill file, and batches of up to 3 receipts are free. Statements go through the converter instead (downloaded PDFs, or scans read with OCR).
What AutoEntry charges, credit by credit
AutoEntry (owned by Sage) sells a monthly allowance of credits, and every document you upload uses some. US plans from its pricing page on October 28, 2026, excluding tax:
| Plan | Credits a month | Price a month | Per credit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bronze | 50 | $13 | $0.26 |
| Silver | 100 | $24 | $0.24 |
| Gold | 200 | $46 | $0.23 |
| Platinum | 500 | $103 | $0.21 |
| Diamond | 1,500 | $298 | $0.20 |
| Sapphire | 2,500 | $469 | $0.19 |
What a document costs, from the same page:
- Purchase or sales invoice: 1 credit, or 2 credits with line items.
- Expense receipt: 1 credit.
- Supplier statement: 2 credits per statement.
- Bank or credit card statement: 3 credits per page.
Every plan includes unlimited users, unlimited clients for accountants and bookkeepers, unlimited cloud storage and all features. You can upload in the web portal, auto-forward to an email address or snap documents in the phone app, and the trial comes with 25 free credits. Payment is by card only. If you run out, AutoEntry lets you go up to 200% over your allowance and adds the extra credits to your next bill; its credits help article says those overage credits carry a 10% extra charge. You can cancel up to 24 hours before the monthly renewal.
For bank statements, AutoEntry's bank statement page says it reads scanned paper statements as well as PDFs downloaded from online banking, groups transactions by account number, lets you code them with Fast-code, and downloads Excel or CSV with layouts for Xero, Sage 50, Sage Accounting and QuickBooks Online. Credits for a statement it rejects are refunded. The page doesn't mention .QBO (Web Connect) or IIF files.
Why people look for an AutoEntry alternative
- Statement pages are the expensive part. At 3 credits a page, one 8-page monthly statement uses 24 credits, about half of the Bronze allowance. Firms doing catch-up work feel this first.
- Credits now expire even when you pause. AutoEntry's help centre says unused credits roll over for at most 90 days after purchase, and that before July 2025 pausing a subscription stopped them expiring; now they expire even on a paused plan (it says the change doesn't apply in Canada). On a cancelled plan, remaining credits expire 30 days after cancelling. Seasonal or year-end-only work used to fit the pause button better than it does now.
- Line items double the price. An invoice with line items is 2 credits instead of 1, so a product-heavy supplier list costs twice as much to capture.
- Usage is hard to predict. A mix of receipts, line-item bills and multi-page statements makes the monthly credit count move around, and overage is billed afterwards.
- You only needed the data once. If the job is one backlog of receipts or a year of statements in a spreadsheet, any monthly plan is a subscription you then have to remember to cancel.
Competitors have noticed: Dext, Datamolino, Pulsify and tofu all publish AutoEntry comparison or alternative pages. Most of them sell another capture subscription, which is the right answer for some readers and not for others.
AutoEntry alternatives compared
Read on each vendor's site on October 28, 2026. US dollars excluding tax unless marked.
| Option | How it charges | Bank statements | Best for AutoEntry switchers who… |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dext (business plans) | By documents a month and users, not credits: from $25.21/month billed annually ($302.50 a year) for 250 documents and 5 users; annual billing is up to 20% cheaper than monthly. Over the limit, uploads wait unextracted until the next bill date or an upgrade. 14-day free trial, no card. Pricing | 10 sheets of bank statement extraction included, then an add-on from $13/month or pay-as-you-go from $0.32 a document. 5 line-item and 5 supplier statement documents included too. | …want a fixed monthly document allowance, mobile capture and publishing to the ledger, and can commit to a plan. |
| Hubdoc | $12/month on its own after a 30-day free trial; Xero's App Store listing says it's included in Xero Starter, Standard and Premium plans (Early, Growing and Established in the US). Syncs to Xero and QuickBooks Online. Pricing, Xero App Store | Not covered here; see our Xero converter comparison. | …are on Xero and mainly capture bills and receipts. |
| Xero Smart Document Capture | Built into Xero; Xero's FAQ says you can use it free whatever your plan. Snap a receipt in the Xero app, email it to your Xero address or drag files in. Xero | No. | …are on Xero with light volume and want nothing extra to pay for. |
| QuickBooks Online receipt capture | Part of QuickBooks Online (limited on the Free and Lite plans): upload from your computer or Google Drive, forward by email, or snap in the mobile app; one receipt per file, PDF, JPEG, GIF or PNG. QuickBooks creates a transaction to review or match. Intuit help | Separate feature; see uploading a PDF statement to QuickBooks Online. | …are on QuickBooks Online and match receipts to the bank feed one at a time. |
| DocuClipper | By pages processed: Starter from $29/month for 60 pages ($39 for 120, $79 for 300), 30% off billed annually, unlimited users. The 14-day trial covers up to 120 pages with no card, and its FAQ says exporting or syncing needs an upgrade. Pricing | Yes, 1 page = 1 page, so statements cost the same per page as an invoice. Also invoices and receipts. | …mostly process bank statements and want them priced like any other page. |
| Datamolino | UK-priced (GBP, excl. VAT; other currencies need JavaScript on its page): Start £17/month for 100 documents, Build £29 for 250, extra documents £0.25 each, unlimited users, invoice approvals included. Pricing | £0.70 a page, paid from unused credit. | …want invoice approvals and line items in one plan. |
| Utilly (pay per use) | No subscription needed: $9 one-time for 5 credits that never expire, or $19/month unlimited. Receipt batches of up to 3 are free; 4 to 25 receipts use 1 credit. Previews are free. | Text-based PDFs only: 1 credit per statement however many pages, checked against the opening and closing balance, as CSV, Excel, .QBO, .IIF, QIF, OFX or Xero CSV. | …have occasional batches or catch-up statements and want a checked file to import themselves. |
Three workloads priced out
Illustrations using the published prices above, not quotes.
- A six-month statement catch-up: 6 checking statements of 5 pages each, 30 pages, done once.
- AutoEntry: 30 pages × 3 = 90 credits, which fits Silver (100 credits, $24) for one month.
- DocuClipper: 30 pages fit Starter's 60, so $29 for a month, then cancel.
- Utilly: 6 credits, so two $9 packs ($18, 4 credits left that don't expire), whether the PDFs are downloaded or scanned (scans of up to 10 pages are read with OCR).
- A steady month of receipts: 60 expense receipts, header totals only, every month.
- AutoEntry: 60 credits, so Silver at $24 (with 40 credits to roll over for up to 90 days) or Bronze plus overage.
- Dext: well inside the 250-document entry plan, $25.21 a month billed annually.
- Utilly: three batches (25 + 25 + 10) use 3 credits, about $5.40 of pack credit a month, but you upload each batch and import the file yourself: no email-in, no phone app, no images attached in the ledger. If that's what you rely on, a capture service is worth its fee.
- Supplier bills with line items: 80 bills a month that need every line.
- AutoEntry: 80 × 2 = 160 credits, so Gold (200 credits, $46).
- Dext: 5 line-item documents are included; beyond that its Line Item Extraction add-on starts at $20.50 a month or $0.50 a document.
- Utilly: not an option. It reads header totals only.
When AutoEntry is still the right tool
- You work in Sage. AutoEntry is Sage's own capture tool, with export layouts for Sage 50 and Sage Accounting.
- You run many clients with uneven volume. Unlimited users and clients on every plan, a partner portal and month-to-month plans suit a practice where one client sends 5 documents and another 500.
- You need scanned statements read. AutoEntry reads scanned paper statements and refunds the credits for one it rejects; Utilly reads scanned PDFs of up to 10 pages with OCR (since November 2026) and its free preview shows whether a scan balances before you pay, but long or rough scans suit AutoEntry better.
- You use its workflow features: purchase order matching (QuickBooks and Xero), supplier statement reconciliation, expense claims with approvals, custom publishing rules. A batch tool replaces none of these.
Leaving AutoEntry without losing anything
- Use up or write off your credits. On a cancelled plan, remaining credits expire 30 days after cancelling, so time the cancellation after your last big upload.
- Download what you need. AutoEntry says your account and data stay accessible for 13 months after cancelling, but don't count on remembering; export statement data and check every published bill has its image in the ledger.
- Cancel at least 24 hours before renewal, the cut-off on its pricing page.
- Turn off auto-forwarding to the AutoEntry email address, and tell clients and suppliers the new route.
- Don't import the overlap twice. A bill AutoEntry already published and the same bill from a CSV make a duplicate; see duplicate transactions after an import.
Where Utilly fits, and where it doesn't
- Receipts and invoices: up to 25 files per batch, PDFs (text or scanned) and photos (JPG, PNG, WEBP, TIFF, BMP, GIF), one document per file. It reads vendor, date, number, subtotal, tax, tip and total, flags rows where the numbers don't add up, and you edit anything before downloading CSV, Excel, a QuickBooks Online bills CSV or Xero's bill import template (see importing bills into QuickBooks Online and the Xero bill template).
- Bank and card statements: text-based PDFs downloaded from online banking, converted and checked against the statement's own opening and closing balance, so a dropped or doubled row shows up before import. Outputs include .QBO and .IIF for QuickBooks Desktop, which AutoEntry's statement page doesn't list. Start at bank statement to Excel or bank statement to QuickBooks, and see the QuickBooks converter comparison for other statement tools.
- Doesn't: read phone photos of bank statements (scanned PDFs of up to 10 pages are read with OCR since November 2026), extract line items, give you an email-in address or phone app, publish to Xero, QuickBooks or Sage, attach images in your ledger, connect bank feeds, match purchase orders, run approvals, or store documents (results are deleted after 1 hour). iPhone HEIC photos need saving as JPG first.
- Price: previews free; receipt batches of up to 3 free; otherwise 1 credit per statement or per batch of 4 to 25 receipts, from a one-time $9 pack of 5 credits that never expire, or $19/month for unlimited use.
Comparing capture services rather than AutoEntry specifically? See Dext, Hubdoc and AutoEntry alternatives and Hubdoc vs Xero Smart Document Capture.
Try one batch before you renew
Upload up to 25 receipts, or one text-based statement PDF, and check the preview first. Receipt batches of up to 3 download free, and nothing to cancel afterwards.
Going into your books as bills? Use receipts to QuickBooks or invoices to Xero.
Sources, all read October 28, 2026: AutoEntry pricing and FAQ, https://www.autoentry.com/pricing ; AutoEntry Help Center, Manage AutoEntry credits, https://help.autoentry.com/en/articles/15705158-manage-autoentry-credits ; AutoEntry bank statement extraction, https://www.autoentry.com/bank-statement-extraction-software ; Dext business pricing, https://dext.com/us/business/pricing ; Hubdoc pricing, https://www.hubdoc.com/pricing ; Xero App Store Hubdoc listing, https://apps.xero.com/us/app/hubdoc ; Xero Smart Document Capture, https://www.xero.com/us/accounting-software/hubdoc/ ; Intuit, Upload your receipts to QuickBooks, https://quickbooks.intuit.com/learn-support/en-us/help-article/import-transactions/upload-receipts-bills-quickbooks-online/L862MmZHn_US_en_US ; DocuClipper pricing, https://www.docuclipper.com/pricing/ ; Datamolino pricing, https://www.datamolino.com/pricing/ . AutoEntry, Sage, Dext, Hubdoc, Xero, QuickBooks, DocuClipper and Datamolino are trademarks of their owners; Utilly isn't affiliated with any of them.
FAQ
What is the best AutoEntry alternative?
It depends on what's pushing you away. For a fixed monthly document allowance with publishing to the ledger, Dext (from $25.21 a month billed annually for 250 documents). On Xero, Hubdoc and Smart Document Capture are included. If statement pages are the cost, DocuClipper prices a statement page like any other page (from $29 a month for 60 pages). For occasional receipt batches or text-based statement PDFs with no subscription, Utilly ($9 one-time for 5 credits). Prices checked October 28, 2026.
How much does AutoEntry cost in 2026?
AutoEntry's US plans run from $13 a month for 50 credits (Bronze) through $24 for 100, $46 for 200, $103 for 500 and $298 for 1,500 to $469 for 2,500 credits (Sapphire), excluding tax. An invoice or receipt is 1 credit, an invoice with line items 2, a supplier statement 2, and a bank or card statement 3 credits per page. The trial includes 25 free credits. Checked October 28, 2026.
Do AutoEntry credits expire?
Yes. AutoEntry's help centre says unused credits roll over for up to 90 days after purchase and then expire, including on a paused subscription; before July 2025, pausing stopped them expiring. It says the change doesn't apply in Canada. If you cancel, remaining credits expire 30 days after the cancellation date.
Why are bank statements expensive in AutoEntry?
Because they're priced per page: 3 credits for every page of a bank or credit card statement, against 1 credit for a receipt. A 5-page statement uses 15 credits, so a few months of statements can use most of a small plan. DocuClipper counts a statement page as one page, and Utilly charges 1 credit per statement whatever its length (text-based PDFs only).
Is there an AutoEntry alternative without a subscription?
Yes. Utilly sells a one-time $9 pack of 5 credits that never expire: 1 credit converts one text-based PDF statement or one batch of 4 to 25 receipts, and batches of up to 3 receipts are free. You download a CSV, Excel or import file and bring it into your books yourself; it doesn't publish to the ledger or store documents.
Can I pause AutoEntry instead of cancelling?
Yes, AutoEntry lets you pause or downgrade your plan at any time, but its help centre says credits still expire 90 days after purchase while paused. For work that comes once a year, pausing no longer keeps your credits for the next season.
Who should stay with AutoEntry?
Sage users, practices with many clients and uneven volume (every plan has unlimited users and clients), anyone who needs scanned statements read, and anyone using its purchase order matching, supplier statement reconciliation, expense approvals or auto-publishing rules. Those are workflows a pay-per-use extractor doesn't replace.
Related guides
- Dext, Hubdoc and AutoEntry alternatives: an honest comparison (2026)
- Hubdoc vs Xero Smart Document Capture: which should you use? (2026)
- DocuClipper alternatives (2026): an honest comparison for bank statements
- Receipt OCR without a subscription: turn receipts into a CSV for QuickBooks or Xero
- How to bulk upload receipts to QuickBooks Online
- Bank statement to QuickBooks converters compared (2026): prices, file formats and free options
Related tools
- Bank reconciliation checker: compare a bank statement to your books and list missing, duplicate and mismatched transactions.
- Receipt to CSV: turn PDF or photo receipts and invoices into CSV, Excel, or QuickBooks and Xero bill imports.
