Eight business services Dubai companies need, under one roof, delivered by chartered accountants and licensed auditors. One firm accountable for your company's whole lifecycle — not a licence agent who hands you off.
Pick the sentence that sounds most like your situation. We will point you at the right place to start.
You need the right jurisdiction, activity codes and licence type before anything else. Get that wrong and everything downstream costs more to fix.
Every service below has a dedicated page with its own process, timeline, pricing and FAQs. Nothing is summarised twice.
Mainland, free zone and offshore incorporation with the right activity codes and structure from day one.
External, internal and compliance audits signed by UAE-licensed auditors and accepted by the major free zones.
Monthly bookkeeping, management accounts, payroll and WPS — records built to support tax and audit.
Registration through to quarterly filing, refunds, voluntary disclosures and penalty review.
FTA registration, relief elections, transfer pricing and annual filing by chartered accountants.
goAML registration plus the policy, risk assessment and training an inspection actually tests.
In-Country Value certification and score improvement, calculated from audited figures we prepare.
Closing a company properly — liquidator, clearances, final audit and licence cancellation.
No lengthy onboarding, no scope creep, no partner you meet once and never again.
Thirty minutes to understand your entity structure, current state and what is actually causing you pain right now.
A written scope with a fixed monthly or project fee. You see exactly what is included before anything starts.
System access, record handover, opening-balance reconciliation and an agreed cut-off with your previous provider.
Monthly reporting, a live compliance calendar and one named contact who knows your business without needing a briefing.
Activity codes, approval routes and audit expectations differ sharply by sector. These are the ones we handle weekly, so the pitfalls are already known.
Import-export licensing, customs code registration, VAT on cross-border supplies and the inventory records auditors ask for first.
Professional licences, free zone qualifying income tests and the substance evidence that decides whether 0% corporate tax actually applies.
E-commerce licensing, payment gateway compliance, place-of-supply rules and revenue recognition across multiple marketplaces.
RERA registration, goAML obligations for property brokers, escrow handling and the AML file an inspection will ask to see.
DMCC licensing, dealer AML registration, UBO disclosure and the transaction reporting thresholds that apply from day one.
Industrial licensing, ICV certification for ADNOC and government tenders, WPS payroll and project-based revenue recognition.
Most disputes with an accountant start with a scope nobody wrote down. Here is ours, in the same words we put in the engagement letter.
Roughly a third of the clients we take on each year are leaving someone else. It is a routine handover, not a disruption.
We never ask clients to justify the move, and we do not contact your existing provider until you have told us the timing suits you. Most handovers are simply a business outgrowing a bookkeeper who was right at the start.
We write to your existing provider for the trial balance, ledgers, VAT filings and supporting schedules, then tell you honestly what is missing and what it will take to fix.
Your closing position becomes our opening position only once it reconciles. Where it does not, we document the difference rather than inherit an error silently.
EmaraTax, free zone portal and bank access transferred or re-granted, so nothing sits waiting on a login nobody has.
First monthly pack issued, compliance calendar live, and a clear list of any historic exposure with a plan and a cost against each item.
Nobody wakes up wanting an accountant. They call because something specific has gone wrong, or is about to. These are the four we hear most.
Usually corporate tax registration, sometimes a VAT return, occasionally an audit that was due before a renewal. The instinct is to wait until the numbers are perfect before speaking to anyone. That instinct is expensive — penalties accrue monthly, and voluntary disclosure costs a fraction of being assessed. Call first, tidy the books second.
Emails unanswered, filings you cannot see, and no idea whether last quarter was submitted. It happens more than the industry admits. We take the handover from where it actually is, reconcile the opening position rather than inherit it, and tell you honestly what is missing before quoting anything.
A facility, a tender, an investor, or simply a renewal — and suddenly you need statements signed by a licensed auditor for a year that closed months ago. It is doable. It is faster when the bookkeeping already supports it, which is why we would rather do both than inherit someone else’s trial balance under time pressure.
A free zone licence does not grant the 0% corporate tax rate. Qualifying Free Zone Person status has conditions — substance, qualifying activities, de minimis limits, transfer pricing — and most companies assuming they qualify have never tested them. Better to find out now than in an FTA assessment.
Hourly billing rewards slowness and makes clients ration their own questions. Neither is good for the work.
Almost everything we do monthly is a fixed fee, set on transaction volume and entity complexity rather than on your revenue. A company turning over AED 20 million with 60 invoices a month is less work than one turning over AED 2 million with 900 — and it should not cost more simply because it can afford to.
The fee is agreed in writing before anything starts, and it includes unlimited questions. That last part matters more than it sounds. When clients are billed for every call, they stop calling, and the small question that would have taken five minutes to answer becomes a problem that takes a week to unwind. We would rather hear from you too often.
Three things sit outside a monthly fee, and we say so upfront rather than discovering them together later:
What we will not do is quote low to win the engagement and then bill for scope we always knew was coming. If your situation needs more than a standard monthly service, we will say that in the first conversation — even when it costs us the sale.
Free zone authorities, the Department of Economy and Tourism and the Federal Tax Authority — relationships built over twelve years, not a logo wall.
Not FAQs about how we work — those are further down. These are the actual technical questions UAE business owners call us about, answered properly rather than teased.
Yes — they are inside the regime and must register and file. The 0% rate applies only to a Qualifying Free Zone Person, and only on qualifying income. A free zone licence is not an exemption, and revenue from mainland UAE customers generally does not qualify.
Nine months after your financial year end. For the common 31 December year end that is 30 September. The date moves with your year end, so two companies in the same building can have deadlines six months apart.
If you are in DMCC, JAFZA, DAFZA, DIFC or ADGM, almost certainly — they require audited financial statements at renewal. Separately, every Qualifying Free Zone Person needs them for corporate tax regardless of revenue. Most free zone companies are caught by one rule or the other.
No. Most zones maintain their own approved auditor register, and an audit signed by a firm that is not on it can be rejected at submission. Check the register before appointing — see what each zone requires.
A realistic free zone first year with one visa is AED 18,000–25,000; mainland runs AED 18,500–40,000+ once office and visas are included. The advertised "from AED 12,500" packages are genuine but zero-visa. Full breakdown in our Dubai setup cost guide.
Decide on where your customers are, not on licence price. Selling to UAE mainland customers from a free zone produces non-qualifying income that can cost you 0% status entirely. Our mainland vs free zone comparison works through the decision.
If you broker property, deal in precious metals, audit or account, practise law, or form companies for clients, you are in scope and goAML registration is mandatory. Non-registration starts at AED 50,000 — but banks usually act first, freezing accounts pending evidence of compliance.
Inconsistency rather than size. The most common trigger is VAT-declared turnover that does not agree with audited revenue. See the full list of triggers and the quarterly reconciliation that prevents most of them.
With bank reconciliation, not with the tax return. The bank is the only record you did not create, so it fixes the perimeter of the business. Work oldest year first, because opening balances cascade — the correct recovery sequence matters more than speed.
Voluntary from 1 July 2026, mandatory from 1 January 2027 for businesses with revenue of AED 50 million or more, and 1 July 2027 for the rest. The binding earlier date is appointing an accredited provider — see the e-invoicing timeline.
The term chartered accountant is not protected in the UAE the way it is in the UK or India, and that has consequences. Anyone here can describe themselves as an accountant. What is regulated is who may sign an audit opinion — that requires Ministry of Economy registration, and free zones maintain their own approved auditor lists on top of it.
So when comparing chartered accountant firms in Dubai or CA firms in Dubai, the questions that separate them are practical: is the firm registered to sign audits, is it on your free zone’s approved list, and are the individuals qualified through a recognised body. All three are checkable, and worth checking.
Published lists of the top accounting firms in Dubai mostly rank by headcount, which tells you very little about whether a firm will serve a business your size well. A practice built around large groups will price you as an inconvenience and respond to you accordingly. We are deliberately mid-sized: on the approved lists that matter, with a partner who reads your file.
We form and audit companies across IFZA, Meydan, DMCC and DWTC in Dubai; SHAMS and SPC in Sharjah; RAKEZ in Ras Al Khaimah; Ajman Media City; UAQ Free Zone; and Masdar City in Abu Dhabi. Each page sets out the licence cost, the activity list, the banking reality and the audit requirement for that specific zone, because those four things differ far more between zones than the marketing suggests.
If you are still deciding, the honest short version is this: Dubai zones cost more and buy you address and banking credibility; the northern emirates and Sharjah zones cost less and ask more of your bank application. Which is right depends on whether anyone in your business chain will ever look at your address. We will tell you what we actually think, including when the cheap option is the correct one.
How we work, how we price, and how we take over from an existing provider.
One service is fine. A large share of our accounting, audit and tax clients were formed by someone else entirely. We take on existing companies regularly, including ones with backlogged books or a compliance position that needs regularising. The first step is a short diagnostic review so you know the true state of the records before committing to anything.
Ongoing services — bookkeeping, payroll, VAT and corporate tax compliance — are quoted as fixed monthly or annual fees based on transaction volume and entity count, so your cost is predictable. One-off projects such as backlog reconstruction, ICV submissions or liquidations are quoted as a fixed project fee after scoping. We do not bill open-ended hourly rates on compliance work.
Yes. Audit engagements are signed by auditors licensed to practise in the UAE and registered with the relevant authorities, and we are accepted by the free zones where our clients operate. Because audit sits in-house alongside bookkeeping and tax, your financial statements, tax return and audit file all derive from a single set of records.
Zoho Books, QuickBooks Online, Xero, Tally and Sage. We can operate within your existing setup rather than forcing a migration. If you have no system yet, we will recommend one based on transaction volume, VAT position and reporting needs — and configure the chart of accounts to support corporate tax reporting from the start.
Typically two to four weeks for a clean handover. We request your trial balance, ledgers, prior returns and system access, run a reconciliation to establish an opening position we are comfortable signing off, then take over from an agreed cut-off date. Where the incoming records are incomplete, we tell you before the handover rather than after.
Yes. Group work is a significant part of our practice — consolidated reporting, intercompany reconciliation, transfer pricing between related entities, and coordinating tax positions across mainland, free zone and offshore companies. One relationship partner covers the whole group rather than each entity dealing with a different contact.
In-Country Value is a scoring framework used by government and semi-government buyers — ADNOC among them — to weight suppliers on their contribution to the UAE economy. If you sell to those buyers, or to large contractors in their supply chain, your ICV score affects whether you win work. The score is calculated from audited financial data, which is why it sits naturally with an audit firm.
Yes, and the sooner the better. A lapsed licence continues to accrue penalties and leaves visa and banking status exposed. Depending on the situation we either regularise and renew, or run a proper liquidation so the entity is closed cleanly and the obligations stop.
Backlogged books, an approaching deadline, a tender that needs an ICV score, a company that needs closing — start with a free diagnostic call and a clear plan.
Tell us your entity type, transaction volume and what you need covered. We will send a fixed-fee scope, usually within one business day.
Takes under a minute. No obligation, no sales script.
Practical, non-promotional guidance on appointing an adviser: how to choose an audit firm in Dubai, audit firms in Abu Dhabi including the ADGM and ICV differences, accounting firms in Dubai and the independence question nobody explains, tax consultants in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, and what a registered tax agent can do that a consultant cannot.
