Updated July 2026 · written by a vendor, every price checked at the source
Xero Smart Document Capture vs Hubdoc: what you get, what's still missing
If you scan your own receipts into your own Xero, the free one is probably enough. If you keep books for other people, each covers a slice of the document job and neither touches the practice side of it.
Xero sells both. Hubdoc is $12 USD a month with a 30-day trial and publishes to Xero and QuickBooks Online (checked on hubdoc.com/pricing, July 23, 2026). Smart Document Capture is the native scanner, free on all Xero plans.
We make Sorted Receipts, which does the part Smart Document Capture leaves out. Everything below is as published or as practitioners describe it in July 2026. The rollout is still moving, so check what your own region actually has. Corrections to [email protected].
What Smart Document Capture does
Inside a Xero organization it reads an uploaded or emailed document and drafts the transaction (supplier, date, amount) into that organization's books. Free for now, sitting where the ledger already is, nothing extra to buy or bolt on. For a business owner doing their own books in Xero, that is genuinely enough.
Two things practitioners keep running into. The rollout is uneven between regions: UK users report line-item extraction while US users get a single line and no GL suggestions, which looks like a staged rollout. And it is Xero-only by definition, so your QuickBooks clients, Desktop clients and plain-folder clients get nothing from it.
How Hubdoc differs
Hubdoc gives every client somewhere to send things, whichever way they prefer, and keeps each client's documents in their own inbox. It also publishes to QuickBooks Online. That is what the $12 buys you over the free scanner: your clients who aren't on Xero are covered too.
The practice-facing jobs neither one does
- Knowing what's missing. Both process what arrives. Nothing flags that a recurring vendor's invoice hasn't arrived this month.
- A cross-client sorted view. Smart Document Capture works per organization, so thirty clients means thirty places to look. Hubdoc's inboxes are per client as well. Neither gives you one pile sorted by month and vendor across the whole practice.
- Chasing. Neither reminds a client about a gap. The "any receipts for March?" emails stay yours to write.
Side by side, for a practice
| Hubdoc | Smart Document Capture | Sorted Receipts | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $12/mo, 30-day trial | Free (for now) | $8/mo flat |
| Client upload point | Yes, a per-client inbox | Per-org email/upload | One private link per client, no login |
| All clients in one view | No, per-client inboxes | No, per organization | Yes, sorted by month/vendor/type |
| Chases missing documents | No | No | Yes, reminders under your name |
| Works outside Xero | QBO too | No | Yes, CSV + renamed originals for QBO, Desktop, Xero, folders |
| Extraction | Header-level | Region-uneven, improving | Header-level, confidence-flagged review pile |
The practical read
Leave Smart Document Capture switched on for your Xero clients. It's free and it drafts transactions you'd otherwise type. Treat it as the extraction layer. What it leaves open for a practice is the collection layer: one place per client to dump things, one sorted view across all of them, and something chasing the gaps. That's what Sorted Receipts does, and the two sit together fine because our export is a CSV plus renamed originals you can feed to any ledger, Xero included.
Questions people search
Is Xero Smart Document Capture free?
As of July 2026, yes, it's included with Xero, though most practitioners assume that changes eventually. Features differ noticeably by region while the rollout continues.
Do I still need Hubdoc if I have Smart Document Capture?
If everything lives in one Xero org and the free scanner works properly in your region, maybe not. What the $12 buys is a per-client inbox, clients sending documents whichever way they like, and QuickBooks Online support as well as Xero.
Does either one collect from clients or chase?
No. Both process what arrives. Neither flags what's missing across a client list, and neither reminds anybody. That collection layer is what Sorted Receipts adds at $8/month flat, alongside either one.