Last year produced material adjustments
Adjustments mean the numbers management used during the year were wrong. That is a reporting problem, not an audit problem.
AUDIT READINESS
Make the audit boring.
Audit file preparation, balance sheet substantiation and auditor liaison for UAE businesses — so the audit is a review of work already done rather than three weeks of emergency reconstruction.
Fixed-fee project, typically AED 15,000–60,000 · Fixed fee agreed in writing before work starts
AT A GLANCE
Indicative scope. Final deliverables confirmed after the diagnostic.
SchedulesEvery balance
AdjustmentsMinimised
TimelinePredictable
AuditorIndependent
THE PROBLEM
A difficult audit is almost never caused by the auditor. It is caused by arriving at the audit with balances nobody can substantiate, a year of transactions coded inconsistently, and a finance team that has to reconstruct evidence under time pressure while also running the current month.
The cost is not only the fee. It is management time, the audit adjustments that change your reported result after you have already told shareholders what it was, and — increasingly under Corporate Tax — a filing position built on figures that shifted after the return was prepared.
Audit readiness is unglamorous preparation done in advance: every balance sheet account supported by a schedule that agrees to the ledger, every significant judgement documented, and every likely auditor question answered before it is asked.
IS THIS YOU?
Signs your audit will be painful.
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.
The audit takes more than four weeks
Extended audits usually indicate the evidence did not exist when the auditor arrived.
Balance sheet accounts have unexplained balances
Any account that cannot be explained line by line will be questioned, and rightly.
Revenue recognition has never been documented
Cut-off, deferred revenue, contract terms and multi-element arrangements are standard focus areas and standard sources of adjustment.
Related party transactions are undocumented
These attract attention under both audit and Corporate Tax, and informal arrangements are hard to defend retrospectively.
Free zone licence renewal depends on the audit
When the licence timeline depends on the audit, a delayed audit becomes an operational problem rather than an accounting one.
WHAT WE PREPARE
The file, before the auditor asks.
Balance sheet substantiation
A schedule for every single balance sheet account, agreeing to the general ledger and supported by third-party evidence where it exists: bank confirmations, receivable ageing with subsequent receipts, inventory counts and valuation, fixed asset register with additions and disposals, accruals with basis, and provisions with calculation. No account left as an unexplained balance.
Judgements and estimates memo
Written documentation of every significant judgement: revenue recognition policy, expected credit loss provisioning, inventory obsolescence basis, useful lives, lease treatment and any impairment consideration. Documented at the time, with the reasoning, rather than reconstructed nine months later.
Related party schedule
Full listing of transactions with connected persons and related parties, terms, balances and the commercial rationale — aligned with what you will disclose for Corporate Tax purposes, so the two do not contradict each other.
Prior year follow-through
Every point in last year's management letter, with what was done about it. Auditors check. Unaddressed repeat findings escalate in tone and in the eventual opinion.
The PBC response pack
The auditor's 'prepared by client' request list, answered in advance and indexed. This single item typically removes a week from the audit timeline.
HOW WE WORK WITH YOUR AUDITOR
And why we are not your auditor.
Independence
We prepare accounting records and the audit file. The statutory audit and the opinion are performed by an independent UAE-licensed audit firm. A firm cannot audit its own work — that is not a technicality, it is the point of an audit. If an auditor has not yet been appointed, that appointment remains a separate decision and any commercial relationship or referral arrangement must be disclosed before you rely on it.
Liaison
We handle the auditor's queries directly, which keeps your operational team out of the process and shortens the audit. Where a query requires a management position rather than an accounting answer, it comes to you.
Post-audit
We take the management letter, convert it into a remediation plan with owners and deadlines, and implement it — so next year's audit starts from a better base rather than the same one.
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
- Complete balance sheet schedule pack
- Significant judgements and estimates memorandum
- Revenue recognition policy documentation
- Related party transaction schedule
- Fixed asset register and reconciliation
- Inventory valuation support
- Prior year management letter follow-through
- PBC request list response pack
- Draft financial statements in IFRS format
- Auditor query liaison throughout fieldwork
- Post-audit remediation plan
HOW WE START
Four stages. The first one is small on purpose.
Assess
Review prior audit outcome, current records and known problem areas.
Prepare
Build schedules, document judgements, close evidence gaps.
Support
Handle auditor queries through fieldwork.
Remediate
Convert the management letter into a fixed action plan.
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.
Do you perform audits?
No. We prepare accounting records and audit files. The statutory audit must be performed by an appropriately licensed independent audit firm; our role is to prepare the records, schedules and responses that support that process. Independence requires that the person preparing the records is not the person auditing them.
Does my UAE company need an audit?
It depends on legal form, free zone and size. Many free zones require audited financial statements for licence renewal. 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, and Qualifying Free Zone Persons must have them regardless of size. We confirm your specific obligation as part of the assessment.
How long should an audit take?
For a well-prepared UAE SME, two to four weeks from fieldwork start. Audits running six weeks or more usually indicate that preparation was incomplete rather than that the business is complex.
Can you help if the audit has already started badly?
Yes. We can step in after an audit has begun to organise schedules, evidence and query ownership. The objective is to reduce operational disruption and give the audit team a clearer response path.
Will this reduce our audit fee?
It can. Audit fees often reflect audit effort, and a well-prepared file can reduce avoidable back-and-forth. More importantly it reduces adjustments, which is the outcome that actually matters to your reported numbers and your tax position.
What if we have never been audited before?
First audits are more work because opening balances need substantiating and policies need documenting from scratch. We scope the first year accordingly and it gets substantially easier from year two.
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.