Revenue is the easy number. Contribution after everything is the real one.
Accounting, marketplace reconciliation, contribution margin and inventory reporting for Dubai and UAE e-commerce and D2C businesses.
E-commerce produces more data than any other SME sector and less clarity. Platform dashboards report gross sales. Payment processors report net settlements. Advertising platforms report their own attributed revenue. Fulfilment and returns costs sit in a different system again. None of them reconcile to each other, and none of them tell you contribution per order.
The failure mode is specific: a business scales revenue aggressively on paid acquisition while contribution after ad spend, payment fees, fulfilment, packaging and returns is negative. Growth accelerates the loss. It stays invisible for as long as revenue is the headline metric, and it becomes obvious only when working capital runs out.
The reporting this sector actually needs.
Standard accounting produces a compliant P&L. These are the views that change decisions, and they require the underlying data to be structured for them from the start.
Contribution per order, per SKU, per channel
Product cost, inbound freight and duty, payment processing, fulfilment, packaging, returns and refunds, and channel-specific fees — netted down to contribution. Reported by SKU and by channel, because the aggregate always hides both the winners and the losses.
Marketplace settlement reconciliation
Amazon, Noon, Talabat, Shopify Payments and the rest each settle net of fees on their own cycle. Recording the net settlement as revenue understates both revenue and cost, distorts your VAT position and makes contribution impossible to calculate. We reconcile gross to net for each channel every month.
Returns and refunds as a real cost line
Returns are not a rounding adjustment in D2C — in apparel and similar categories they are frequently the second largest cost after product. Provisioned, tracked by SKU, and fed back into the pricing and merchandising decision.
Inventory and working capital
Stock cover by SKU, obsolescence identification and reorder points. In e-commerce, cash is usually trapped in inventory rather than receivables, and overstocking a slow SKU is how profitable businesses become illiquid.
Blended versus true CAC
Customer acquisition cost calculated against contribution rather than against revenue, and against the actual repeat behaviour of the cohort rather than an assumed lifetime value. Most LTV assumptions we review are optimistic by a wide margin.
VAT on cross-border sales
Place of supply, exports, designated zone treatment and imported services under reverse charge are the recurring error sources for UAE e-commerce. Getting these wrong is the most common cause of voluntary disclosures in the sector.
The diagnostic, then the layer you need.
Most clients in this sector begin with the AED 4,500 Finance Health Diagnostic — a two-week fixed-fee review ending in a written findings note you own. It tells you what is broken, what it is costing, and what to fix first.
Commonly engaged services
- Accounting & bookkeeping — the foundation
- Management accounting — the reporting layer
- Corporate Tax & VAT — compliance
- Cash & working capital — 13-week control
- Cost & margin optimisation — where the leaks are
- Virtual CFO — senior judgement on top
How should e-commerce businesses record marketplace sales?
Gross sales as revenue and platform fees as a cost, not the net settlement as revenue. Netting understates your revenue base, hides the true fee burden, complicates VAT substantiation, and makes contribution analysis impossible. Each platform's settlement report should be reconciled to the POS or store data and to the bank monthly.
What is contribution margin in e-commerce?
Revenue less all variable costs of fulfilling that order: product cost, inbound freight and duty, payment processing, fulfilment and last-mile, packaging, returns and channel fees. It is the number that determines whether acquisition spend is building a business or funding a loss.
Do I charge VAT on sales outside the UAE?
Treatment depends on place of supply and whether the transaction qualifies as an export, with specific rules for designated zones and for services. Digital and cross-border services have their own rules. This is the highest-error area for UAE e-commerce and worth getting reviewed rather than assumed.
How do you handle inventory across multiple warehouses and 3PLs?
We reconcile system inventory to physical counts by location, value it consistently including landed cost, and report cover and obsolescence by SKU. Discrepancies between platform stock, 3PL reports and the ledger are near-universal and worth resolving before they compound.
Can you tell me which products actually make money?
That is usually the first thing we build. SKU-level contribution nearly always shows a small group of products carrying the business and a long tail that destroys value while consuming working capital and warehouse space.
Tell us where the numbers stop being useful.
Describe the current setup, the systems you run and what you cannot currently see. We aim to reply within one business day with a scoped next step and an indicative fee range.