Who This is for
Invoices are in email, receipts are in a drawer, and the bank statement is the only real record of what happened.
The request has a date on it, and the books have to exist before anything else can start.
Registration without records simply moves the problem to the filing date.
Nobody currently knows what state the ledger is in, and there is a period nobody can account for.
You know it needs untangling and have been putting it off.
What's Included
How it Works
Establish what exists
Which bank accounts the company holds, what has been recorded to date and by whom, whether a prior provider is holding files or software access, and where the gaps are. This is often the point at which an owner learns that the last six months were never posted at all.
Set the chart of accounts and the closing calendar
The ledger is structured for the reporting the entity will actually need — the corporate tax position, VAT treatment, cost centres, entities in a group. A close date is fixed for each month, along with what has to reach us before it.
Bring prior periods current, where required
Reconstruction runs from the bank statements outwards. Every line is identified and matched to a document; where the document does not exist, it is chased or the item is flagged as unsupported rather than quietly assumed.
Run the monthly cycle
Documents in, transactions posted, bank accounts reconciled, control accounts agreed, ledgers closed. The month is either closed or it is not; there is no partial close.
Report and flag
The accounts go to you with a note on what moved, what is unusual, and anything needing a decision — an unsupported payment, an unreconciled balance, a customer ageing past collectability.
Feed the filings and the audit
The same ledger supports the VAT return, the corporate tax return and the year-end audit file. Nothing is prepared twice, and the auditor receives a file rather than a box.
What We Need from You
If most of this is missing, the engagement still starts. Establishing the real position is the first stage of the work, not a precondition for it.
Timeline and Cost
The monthly cycle runs to a fixed close date agreed at engagement, so the accounts arrive on a schedule rather than on request. Reconstruction of prior periods is scoped separately, and its duration depends on transaction volume, the number of bank accounts and currencies, and how much supporting documentation still exists. Where documents are gone, the constraint is retrieval — from banks, suppliers and counterparties — rather than the posting itself. We do not quote a duration before seeing the statements.
Our fee is fixed and agreed in writing against a defined scope — transaction volume, bank accounts, entities, currencies, VAT status and reporting frequency — anchored to the work rather than to the size of the balance sheet.
Reconstruction is quoted as a separate defined piece rather than absorbed into a monthly rate.
Get a Fixed QuoteWhere it Goes Wrong
The single most damaging habit in owner-managed entities. Rent, school fees and personal cards paid from the company account; company costs settled personally and never recorded. It corrupts the profit figure, produces a shareholder balance nobody can explain, and it is the first thing an auditor and a bank both look for. It also weakens the separation between owner and company that the structure exists to create. Untangling it retrospectively costs several times what recording it correctly would have.
A ledger built in three weeks to meet an audit deadline reads exactly like one built in three weeks. Balances are forced, cut-off is wrong, the same expense appears twice, and there is no document behind the entries that matter. The information needed to record a transaction correctly decays quickly after it happens.
Money in is not revenue and money out is not cost. Loans, shareholder transfers, refunds and transit balances all cross the account. An entity that reports from its bank movement misstates both profit and tax, usually in its own disfavour.
Duplicate supplier payments, a receipt applied to the wrong invoice, a standing charge that continued after the service stopped, an unauthorised card. Monthly reconciliation is how these surface within weeks. Annual reconciliation is how they surface after a year, when the counterparty is gone.
Cash sales, staff paid outside payroll, an owner’s undocumented advances, a supplier settled personally. Anything omitted is a difference somebody will eventually find, and unexplained differences are treated far less charitably than disclosed ones.
Software access, historic files and working papers sit with a provider who has stopped responding or is owed money. Data ownership is settled at engagement, not after the relationship breaks down.
Questions
We have never kept books. How far back do we need to go?
Far enough to support what will be asked of you — the periods covered by your filings, your audit if one applies, and any facility or transaction in prospect. We assess the position against your licence date and filing history before scoping the work.
Can prior years really be reconstructed from bank statements?
Yes, and it is routine. Statements give the transaction; the work is matching each one to a document. Where a document cannot be recovered, we flag the item as unsupported rather than inventing a treatment for it — a disclosed gap is manageable, a fabricated entry is not.
How long must accounting records be kept?
A defined retention period applies under UAE tax and commercial legislation. We confirm the period applicable to your entity type at engagement.
Is monthly necessary, or would annual do?
Annual bookkeeping is a reconstruction exercise with a nicer name. It costs more, produces weaker records, and leaves you without information during the year, when decisions are made.
Do you use our software or your own?
Either. If you have a working system we take it over; if not, we set one up in your name with your ownership of the data. The corporate tax and VAT filings are scoped alongside.
Our free zone company claims 0% corporate tax. Do we still need books?
Yes, and arguably to a higher standard. Qualifying Free Zone Person status depends on conditions being met continuously through the tax period, and the evidence for that lives in the accounting records. Income that does not qualify is taxed at 9% without the benefit of the AED 375,000 band.
Can you take over mid-year from another bookkeeper?
Yes. We reconcile the position as handed over, identify what is unposted or unsupported, and take the calendar forward from a known point.