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Accounting and bookkeeping for UAE companies.
We keep your ledgers current, reconcile every bank account, close each month on a fixed date and hand your auditor a file they can actually work from. Kept to IFRS, and structured so your VAT and Corporate Tax returns fall out of the books rather than being rebuilt from scratch each quarter.
What is included
Everything that keeps a set of books defensible.
A standard monthly engagement covers the work below. Volumes vary, so the fee is quoted once we have seen a month of transactions.
General ledger maintenance
Chart of accounts designed for your business and your reporting needs, with every transaction classified consistently month to month.
Bank and cash reconciliation
Every account reconciled monthly, with unmatched items investigated rather than carried forward indefinitely.
Payables and receivables
Supplier and customer ledgers kept current, with ageing reports so you can see what is genuinely due and what is overdue.
Monthly close
Accruals, prepayments, provisions and cut-off applied properly, so each month stands on its own rather than being corrected later.
Fixed asset register
Additions, disposals and depreciation tracked in a register that reconciles to the ledger and satisfies your auditor.
Financial statements
Profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow prepared to IFRS, with comparatives and notes ready for audit.
Why the books matter more than they used to
Corporate Tax turned bookkeeping into a filing obligation.
Before June 2023 a UAE company could run loose records and suffer little more than inconvenience. That is no longer true. Your Corporate Tax return is built directly from the financial statements, and the FTA can ask for the records behind it.
Taxable income starts from accounting profit, then adjusts. If the accounting profit is wrong, every adjustment after it is wrong too.
Supporting documents must be retained for seven years after the end of the tax period and produced if the FTA asks. Reconstructing them later is expensive and rarely convincing.
If you are claiming the zero per cent rate as a Qualifying Free Zone Person, your books have to demonstrate which income is qualifying and which is not. That is a bookkeeping design question, not a year-end one.
Output and input VAT in your returns should tie back to the ledger. Where they do not, the difference is the first thing an FTA reviewer will ask about.
Backlog and cleanup
If your books are behind, that is the first conversation.
A large share of the companies that come to us are not starting fresh. They have a partial ledger, an unreconciled bank account and a filing deadline approaching. This work is scoped and quoted separately from the monthly service.
Opening balance reconstruction
Where prior year figures cannot be relied on, we rebuild them from source documents and agree a defensible opening position.
Catch-up bookkeeping
Backlogs brought current, typically working backwards from the most recent period so that upcoming filings are protected first.
System migration
Moving from spreadsheets or an unsuitable system to something that will still work in three years, with a clean cutover and no lost history.
A note on timing
Cleanup work takes longer than most people expect, and it cannot be compressed indefinitely. If you have a Corporate Tax filing deadline or an audit date approaching, start the conversation early. Nine months after your financial year end is the Corporate Tax return deadline, and the audit usually needs to be complete before that.
How the engagement runs
Five stages, then a monthly rhythm.
Review of current position
We look at the last complete year, the current ledger and your filings, and tell you plainly what condition the books are in.
Scope and fixed quote
A written scope covering monthly work, any cleanup needed, and the reporting you will receive. One fixed monthly fee.
Handover and setup
Chart of accounts agreed, system access arranged, opening balances verified and the document flow established.
First close
The first month run end to end, with a review call so the reporting format matches what you actually want to see.
Monthly operation
Books closed on the agreed date each month, management accounts delivered, and VAT and Corporate Tax data prepared as it accrues.
Year end and audit
Statutory financial statements prepared and the audit file assembled, with us handling auditor queries directly.
Who this suits
Where outsourcing the books makes sense.
Companies with no in-house finance team
Below roughly fifteen staff, a full-time accountant is usually hard to justify and hard to supervise. Outsourcing gives you the function without the hire, and without the single point of failure when that person resigns.
Groups with several entities
Multiple licences, intercompany balances and consolidation are where in-house bookkeeping most often breaks down. We keep each entity clean and the intercompany positions agreed.
Businesses that failed an audit or a review
If your auditor has raised repeat findings, or an FTA query exposed gaps, the underlying issue is almost always bookkeeping design rather than effort. That is fixable.
Common questions
Questions we are asked most often.
Is bookkeeping mandatory for companies in the UAE?
Yes. UAE Corporate Tax law requires every taxable person to keep records and supporting documents that substantiate the information in their tax return. Records generally must be retained for seven years following the end of the relevant tax period.
VAT-registered businesses have separate retention obligations under the VAT legislation, and many free zones additionally require audited financial statements as a condition of licence renewal.
Which accounting standard applies in the UAE?
International Financial Reporting Standards, commonly known as IFRS, are the accepted framework. Smaller businesses may apply IFRS for SMEs where they meet the eligibility conditions.
Some free zones specify the framework and the audit requirement in their own regulations, so this is worth confirming at the point of setup rather than at the first year end.
How long does it take to take over an existing set of books?
For a company with clean records and a standard chart of accounts, handover usually takes two to four weeks. That covers system access, verification of opening balances and agreeing the document flow.
Where there is a backlog, or the opening balances need to be reconstructed, the cleanup is scoped and quoted separately before the monthly service begins.
Do you work with our existing accounting software?
In most cases yes. We work with the systems commonly used in the UAE, including Zoho Books, QuickBooks, Xero, Tally, Odoo and ERPNext.
If the current system cannot support the upcoming e-invoicing requirements, or cannot produce the reporting you need, we will tell you and set out the options rather than working around it quietly.
Will you also handle our VAT and Corporate Tax filings?
Yes, and it is usually more efficient to combine them. When the same team keeps the books and prepares the returns, the return is generated from the ledger rather than reconstructed, which removes a common source of error.
Filing services are covered on our VAT and Corporate Tax page.
What do you need from us each month?
Bank statements, sales and purchase invoices, expense receipts, payroll details and any contracts or agreements signed during the period. Most clients share these through a folder or directly from their system.
We set the document flow up once at the start. After that the monthly effort on your side is usually under an hour.
Related services
What clients usually add next.
Enquiry
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Tell us what you need and we will come back with the scope and a fixed fee. No obligation.
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We will review them and tell you what condition the books are in, what the monthly work involves and what it will cost. No obligation to proceed.
Important
This page is general information about our services and about UAE accounting obligations. It is not accounting, tax or legal advice, and it does not take account of your circumstances. Retention periods, thresholds and filing deadlines are set out in the relevant UAE legislation and may be amended. Confirm your specific obligations with Finaxil or with the Federal Tax Authority before acting.