Data-health monitoring for practices, including the closest thing anyone else ships to post-filing change detection. Here's exactly where Data Health & Insights and Postlock overlap - and where they don't.
Genuinely the nearest competitor, and we'd rather say so than have you find out. Besides the data-quality checks (unreconciled items, duplicates, VAT codes), Dext ships a Lock date history check - it logs lock-date changes Xero itself doesn't record - and a Historical changes check that flags transactions posted or modified into a period already filed at Companies House. UK and Xero only, same as us. If you already pay for Dext, you have some of this.
Two differences, and the second is the one that matters. You may not be able to buy it: Dext's practice plans are priced per client per month "with a minimum of 10 clients", so a single business isn't a customer at all - which is most of who we're for. And Dext finds transactions entered after a date; it has no record of what you reported, because nothing wrote the figures down when you signed off. Postlock snapshots every balance at your sign-off, so it says "Trade Debtors was £45,200 in the pack you sent and is £46,750 now" rather than "something was posted late". That is also why this works for monthly management accounts and not just the filed year: your sign-off is the anchor, and you sign one every month. If the filed year is your only worry and you already pay for Dext, Dext covers it - buy the one you'll actually open.
| Feature | Postlock | Dext |
|---|---|---|
| Post-lock change detection (auto watchdog) | - | |
| Real Excel export · working-paper quality | - | |
| Per-line institutional memory (carry-forward notes) | - | |
| Supporting schedules | - | |
| Board-figure tracking | - | |
| Read-only Xero · no write access | ||
| Who-changed-it attribution | - | |
| Audit trail + adjustment register | - | |
| Named-user roles + approval workflow | ||
| Practice multi-client view | ||
| Price (early access) |
"?" = not confirmed from public docs; check Dext's current site before deciding.
Post-lock monitoring: we haven't found another tool that watches closed periods and names the document and person behind a change - check us on it in the table below. The Excel pack: the tools we've compared keep reconciliations in their own dashboards; Postlock exports a real file because auditors and accountants live in files, not dashboards.
If you need multi-entity consolidation, driver-based forecasting, deep workflow, or client data-hygiene monitoring, look at ScaleXP, Numeric or Dext - they go further in those specific areas. Postlock is deliberate and narrow.
We request only read-only Xero access - technically incapable of changing your ledger. If Postlock were ever compromised, an attacker could see but never touch your numbers. That's a trust decision we won't trade away.
Every check here is deterministic and re-performable - the same inputs give the same answer, which is what audit evidence requires. Your ledger is never read by a model, and there's no metered AI cost under the price. If a tool's pitch leans on AI reading your transactions, ask two questions: what does it find that a written rule couldn't, and what happens to their costs when model pricing moves. Our full reasoning →
See how Postlock compares to the rest of the market on the full comparison hub.