Professional Bookkeeping Services

It covers five interlocking workstreams: the sales and purchase ledger for both domestic and export/import transactions, accounts payable and receivable tracking and ageing, tax-record bookkeeping structured specifically for VAT and Corporate Tax purposes, the cashbook recording every cash and bank movement, and the general ledger into which everything ultimately posts. Each of these needs its own discipline — a business that only records sales and purchases without tracking AP/AR ageing or maintaining a clean cashbook has incomplete bookkeeping, even if the trial balance technically balances.

Yes, if you are VAT-registered or subject to Corporate Tax. VAT-registered businesses must maintain accurate books and records supporting every VAT return filed with the FTA under Federal Decree-Law No. 8 of 2017. Corporate Tax taxable persons must maintain records sufficient for the FTA to verify their tax position under Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022. Beyond these specific tax obligations, maintaining accurate books is also a practical precondition for a bank facility, an audit, or investor due diligence.

Export and import transactions carry an additional evidence layer that domestic transactions do not — customs declarations, bills of lading, certificates of origin, and, for exports, the specific documentation the FTA expects to support zero-rated VAT treatment. Recording an export sale as a routine sale without capturing this supporting evidence leaves the zero-rating position undocumented, which is exactly what an FTA review will test if it looks at your export sales.

Recording a sale or purchase captures that the transaction happened. AP/AR tracking goes further — it monitors the outstanding balance owed to or by each counterparty, ages that balance against payment terms, and flags items becoming overdue. A business can have perfectly recorded sales and purchases and still have no visibility into which customers are late paying or which supplier terms are about to be missed, because that visibility only comes from active AP/AR management, not passive transaction recording.

A ledger can be accurate for internal management purposes — showing the business made a certain profit — without being structured at the transaction level VAT returns and Corporate Tax computations actually require. VAT categorisation (standard-rated, zero-rated, exempt, out of scope), input VAT recoverability, and the specific expense classifications Corporate Tax computations need are granular requirements that generic bookkeeping does not automatically satisfy unless it is built with those filings in mind from the start.

Ideally continuously, as transactions occur, and no less frequently than weekly for an active business. A cashbook updated only at month-end, from a pile of receipts and a bank statement, makes it far harder to trace an unusual transaction back to its source while the memory of it is still fresh, and it delays discovery of any personal-business fund mixing that needs to be formalised.

We work across the accounting platforms commonly used by UAE companies, including Zoho Books, Tally, QuickBooks Online, and Xero, as well as ERP-integrated accounting modules for larger clients. Where a client has no accounting software yet, we advise on selection during onboarding, factoring in bank feed integration, multi-currency support for export/import businesses, and AP/AR functionality.

Yes, this is a common transition point. We verify the opening position as at the transition date by reconciling the existing ledger to bank statements and supporting documents, flag any unresolved or unverified balances immediately rather than silently carrying them forward, and take over ongoing processing from that agreed baseline.

The core bookkeeping methodology is the same regardless of licensing jurisdiction. What differs is the surrounding regulatory context — free zone companies have their specific free zone authority's licence renewal and audit requirements, and where a free zone entity's Corporate Tax position depends on Qualifying Free Zone Person status, bookkeeping needs to support the qualifying-income analysis, including clear tracking of transactions with mainland UAE entities and other free zone persons.

We reconstruct AP/AR ledgers from available supplier and customer invoices, payment records, and bank statements, working back to the earliest point we can confidently confirm balances. Where this gap spans a significant historical period, it often overlaps with what we describe under backlog accounting, and we typically recommend combining a catch-up engagement with the transition to ongoing bookkeeping rather than treating them as separate projects.

The VAT return is built directly from the sales and purchase ledger, with each transaction already categorised by VAT treatment (standard-rated, zero-rated, exempt, or out of scope) at the point of recording. Because bookkeeping captures export/import documentation alongside the transaction, zero-rating positions on export sales are already evidenced, not reconstructed at filing time. This means the VAT return preparation team works from figures that are ready to file, not raw data that still needs classification.

The Corporate Tax computation starts from the accounting profit shown in the general ledger and financial statements, adjusted for specific tax treatments under Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022. A general ledger that has been maintained accurately and consistently throughout the year, with expenses correctly classified and AP/AR balances properly stated, gives the tax computation a reliable starting point. A ledger reconstructed hastily at year-end carries a materially higher risk of misclassified or missed items flowing into taxable income.

Cost depends on transaction volume, the number of bank accounts and business locations, whether export/import activity is involved, and the complexity of AP/AR relationships. Bookkeeping is typically priced as a fixed monthly retainer once these variables are understood from the scoping call, rather than quoted generically upfront.

For a company with organised existing records and moderate transaction volume, initial setup — chart of accounts, opening balance verification, and the first month's close — typically takes two to four weeks. Companies with a larger transaction backlog, multiple entities, or disorganised source documents will take longer, and may need a dedicated backlog accounting phase before ongoing monthly bookkeeping can run cleanly.

Bookkeeping is available as a standalone monthly retainer and is also the foundation most other PNPC accounting services build on — VAT and Corporate Tax return preparation, bank and intercompany reconciliation, inventory and petty cash reconciliation, and Virtual CFO services all depend on accurate, current bookkeeping. Many clients start with bookkeeping alone and add these other services as their needs grow.

Bookkeeping is the transaction-level recording function — capturing every sale, purchase, cash movement, and the resulting ledger postings. Accounting is the broader discipline that interprets those records — preparing financial statements, analysing performance, applying accounting standards to complex transactions, and advising on financial strategy. Bookkeeping is the raw input; accounting (and, at a more strategic level, CFO advisory) is what is built from it. PNPC's Professional Accounting Services sit alongside bookkeeping for clients who need this broader interpretive layer.

Each bank account is maintained in its own cashbook ledger and reconciled individually, with foreign-currency accounts translated to AED at a consistent, documented exchange rate at each period-end. Transfers between the company's own accounts are matched and eliminated so they do not appear as unexplained income or expense in either account's records.

At minimum: sales and purchase invoices for the period, bank statements or online banking access, any existing chart of accounts or trial balance, and details of any export/import activity requiring customs or trade documentation. The full document checklist is set out earlier on this page, covering sales, purchases, banking, ledger access, tax cross-reference, and governance sign-off.

Auditors substantively test sales, purchases, receivables, payables, and cash as core year-end procedures. A company with clean, monthly-closed bookkeeping and organised supporting documentation typically faces a faster, less costly audit, because the auditor's team is testing an already-organised ledger rather than reconstructing figures from scratch during fieldwork.

Beyond the trial balance, we provide AP/AR ageing summaries flagging collection or payment risk, a covering note on material or unusual monthly movements, and direct coordination with the VAT/Corporate Tax filing team and the statutory auditor so bookkeeping output flows cleanly into every downstream deliverable without rework.

The recording and ledger maintenance work can be fully outsourced to PNPC, but an internal contact is still needed to supply invoices and bank access, answer transaction queries, and approve classification decisions where judgement is required. Full autonomy without any internal sign-off is not advisable, since some transactions need business context only management has.