The books are more than 30 days behind
You are managing the business on bank balance rather than on financial position, which hides both margin erosion and receivable problems until they are large.
ACCOUNTING & BOOKKEEPING
Accounting and bookkeeping that survives a tax audit.
Monthly bookkeeping, reconciliations and IFRS-ready financial statements for growing Dubai and UAE businesses — built so that Corporate Tax filings, VAT returns and bank applications never become emergencies.
From AED 1,500 / month · Fixed fee agreed in writing before work starts
AT A GLANCE
Indicative scope. Final deliverables confirmed after the diagnostic.
Close byDay 7
ReconciliationsMonthly
Tax schedulesMaintained
StatementsIFRS format
THE PROBLEM
Most UAE businesses do not have an accounting problem. They have an accounting timing problem. The books exist, but they are three months behind, the bank balance has never been formally reconciled, VAT was filed from a spreadsheet, and nobody can produce a balance sheet that a bank, an auditor or the Federal Tax Authority would accept without questions.
That is survivable at AED 2 million of revenue. It becomes expensive at AED 10 million, and it becomes a genuine risk once Corporate Tax filings, a funding round, a franchise agreement or a licence renewal depends on numbers you cannot defend. The cost is rarely a penalty notice. It is the six weeks of your finance team's time spent rebuilding a year of history under deadline pressure, and the decisions you postponed because you did not trust the report in front of you.
F&B Performance runs the accounting function as a monthly operating rhythm with a fixed calendar, named owners and documented evidence. You get books that close on a predictable day, reconciliations that leave an audit trail, and financial statements prepared in a format your auditor, your bank and the FTA already recognise.
IS THIS YOU?
You probably need this if any of these are true.
If two or more of these are true, the diagnostic is the cheapest place to start. It is a fixed fee and it ends in a written findings note you own.
Nobody formally reconciles the bank
Unreconciled cash is the single most common finding in UAE accounting clean-ups, and it is the fastest way for duplicate payments and missing revenue to go unnoticed for months.
VAT is prepared from a spreadsheet
If the return does not reconcile back to the ledger, you cannot substantiate it under review, and input tax gets disallowed on documentation grounds rather than on principle.
Your accountant left and took the context
Sole-dependency on one bookkeeper is a continuity risk. Process, access and documentation should sit with the business, not in someone's head.
You cannot produce a balance sheet on request
Banks, landlords, franchisors and investors all ask for one. Taking two weeks to produce it tells them something about how the business is run.
Corporate Tax registration is done but the records are not ready
Registration is administrative. The filing is the part that requires reconciled, IFRS-aligned accounting records and supportable adjustments.
HOW WE RUN IT
A fixed monthly calendar, not an open-ended engagement.
Days 1–3: capture and coding
Bank feeds, supplier invoices, sales data and payment records are captured and coded against a chart of accounts that we design around how you actually report — by outlet, by branch, by project or by revenue channel. A chart of accounts built for a filing cabinet produces reports nobody can act on. We build it for management first and make it compliant second, because compliance is a subset of good structure, not the other way round.
Days 4–5: reconciliation
Every bank account, credit card, payment gateway, delivery aggregator settlement and petty cash float is reconciled to a statement, not to a guess. Supplier and customer sub-ledgers are agreed to control accounts. This is where errors surface — duplicated invoices, missing settlements, aggregator commissions posted gross, personal expenses that need reclassifying to director's account.
Days 6–7: close and review
Accruals, prepayments, depreciation, provisions and payroll journals are posted. Balance sheet accounts are supported by a schedule — every single one. A balance sheet where three accounts are 'plugs' is a balance sheet that will not survive an audit or a tax review. We close, then a second person reviews before anything is issued.
Day 8: reporting
You receive the profit and loss, balance sheet, cash flow, and a short written commentary on what changed and what needs a decision. Not a PDF dump — a note from someone who looked at the numbers.
WHAT WE FIX FIRST
Clean-up before rhythm.
Historical catch-up
If you are behind, we do not start monthly service on top of a broken base. We scope a catch-up as a separate fixed-fee project, rebuild the ledger, agree opening balances, and only then move to the monthly cycle. Building a reporting function on unreconciled history just makes the eventual clean-up more expensive.
Chart of accounts redesign
Most UAE SME charts of accounts were set up by whoever installed the software. We restructure so that the P&L answers management questions directly — gross margin by channel, controllable cost by site, overhead separated from cost of sale — without needing an analyst to rebuild it in Excel each month.
Systems and access
We work in Zoho Books, QuickBooks Online, Xero, Odoo and Tally, and we integrate with the POS and payroll systems you already run. Access is set to least privilege, and approval rights stay with you. We do not ask for bank passwords, and no legitimate provider should.
WHAT YOU RECEIVE
Deliverables, listed — so scope is never a debate.
Everything below is included as standard at the scope agreed in your engagement letter. If something falls outside it, we tell you before we do it, not after.
Included as standard
- Monthly bookkeeping and transaction coding
- Bank, card, gateway and aggregator reconciliations
- Accounts payable and receivable sub-ledgers
- Month-end close with accruals and prepayments
- Balance sheet schedules for every account
- IFRS-format profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow
- VAT-ready and Corporate Tax–ready supporting records
- Fixed asset register and depreciation
- Written monthly commentary
- Year-end file prepared for your auditor
HOW WE START
Four stages. The first one is small on purpose.
Diagnose
Review current ledger quality, systems, volumes and open risks. You get a written findings note.
Clean up
Fixed-fee catch-up and reconciliation to an agreed opening balance sheet.
Stabilise
Run the monthly calendar with named owners and a defined close date.
Advance
Add management reporting, cash forecasting or CFO support when the foundation holds.
QUESTIONS
Before you engage.
Clear scope is a feature. Where work requires a separately licensed professional — a registered tax agent, a licensed auditor, a lawyer — the engagement says so in writing.
How much does outsourced bookkeeping cost in Dubai?
Recurring bookkeeping for a small single-entity UAE business typically starts around AED 1,500 per month. Mid-size businesses with multiple bank accounts, payroll, VAT and higher transaction volumes generally fall between AED 3,000 and AED 8,000 per month. Multi-entity groups and multi-outlet F&B operators are usually AED 8,000 to AED 25,000. Fees are driven by transaction volume, number of entities and bank accounts, payroll headcount, reporting depth and system quality — not by revenue alone. We confirm a fixed monthly fee in writing after a scoping call.
Is bookkeeping mandatory for a UAE company?
Yes. UAE Corporate Tax law requires taxable persons to prepare and maintain financial records, and to keep supporting records for seven years. VAT-registered businesses have parallel record-keeping obligations. Free zone entities relying on Qualifying Free Zone Person status face additional substantiation requirements. In practice, the standard is not 'do you have records' but 'can you support the figures you filed'.
Do I need audited financial statements in the UAE?
It depends on your legal form, free zone and turnover. Many free zones require audited statements annually for licence renewal, and mainland LLCs are generally expected to maintain audited accounts. Under Corporate Tax, taxable persons above the revenue threshold set by the Ministry of Finance must prepare audited financial statements. We prepare the accounting records and audit file; the statutory audit itself is performed by an independent UAE-licensed audit firm, which we coordinate with but do not replace.
Which accounting software do you work with?
Zoho Books, QuickBooks Online, Xero, Odoo and Tally. For F&B we integrate with POS platforms and delivery aggregator settlement reports. If you have no system, we will recommend one based on entity count, VAT complexity and whether you need inventory or multi-outlet reporting — not based on a partner commission.
Can you fix books that are a year behind?
Yes. Catch-up can be scoped as a separate fixed-fee project with a defined end point: a reconciled opening balance sheet you can rely on. We tell you upfront what is recoverable and what will need to be estimated and disclosed, rather than quietly plugging differences.
Will you deal with my auditor and the FTA?
We prepare the audit file, respond to auditor queries, and maintain the schedules and documentation needed to support VAT and Corporate Tax positions. Where a matter requires formal representation by an FTA-registered tax agent, that role must be handled by an appropriately registered agent; we can prepare the accounting file and support the hand-off without acting outside permitted scope.
How do you keep our financial data secure?
Role-based access limited to what each team member needs, multi-factor authentication on every system, no shared logins, and no request for banking credentials. Approval rights for payments stay entirely with you. We document who has access to what, and review it quarterly.
NEXT STEP
Start with the actual problem, not a proposal.
Tell us the current setup — entities, systems, transaction volume, what is going wrong. We aim to reply within one business day with a scoped next step and an indicative fee range.