Bookkeeping Services in Dubai and the UAE: What the Records Must Show, and How Long They Must Last

Article 59(1) requires all of the following, and an invoice missing any of them is not a tax invoice:

1. the words "Tax Invoice" clearly displayed;
2. the name, address and Tax Registration Number of the supplier;
3. the name, address and TRN of the recipient, where the recipient is a registrant;
4. a sequential or otherwise unique invoice number that identifies the invoice and its order in a sequence;
5. the date of issue;
6. the date of supply, where it differs from the date of issue;
7. a description of the goods or services supplied;
8. for each good or service, the unit price, quantity or volume, rate of tax and amount payable in AED;
9. the amount of any discount offered;
10. the gross amount payable in AED;
11. the tax charged in AED, together with the exchange rate applied where the currency has been converted from something other than the dirham;
12. where the recipient must account for the tax, a statement to that effect and a reference to the relevant provision of the Decree-Law.

Point 11 is the one that quietly breaks foreign-currency ledgers. Article 69 of the Decree-Law requires conversion at the Central Bank exchange rate at the date of supply, so the rate on the invoice is a fact about a specific day, not a month-end average a bookkeeper can apply retrospectively.

A simplified tax invoice carries five particulars only: the words "Tax Invoice", the supplier's name, address and TRN, the date of issue, a description of what was supplied, and the total consideration with the tax charged, expressed in AED.

Article 59(5) permits it in two situations: where the recipient is not a registrant, or where the recipient is a registrant and the consideration does not exceed AED 10,000. It is expressly not available where the reverse charge mechanism under Article 48 applies. Retailers and food service businesses live almost entirely in the first case, which is why point-of-sale configuration is a compliance decision rather than an IT one.

Three variations are worth knowing because they change who holds the evidence.

Self-billing. Under Article 59(9) a recipient may raise the invoice on the supplier's behalf where the recipient is a registrant, both parties agree in writing that the supplier will not issue one, the document carries all twelve particulars, and the words "Tax Invoice raised by buyer" are clearly displayed. Any invoice the supplier then issues for that supply is deemed not to be a tax invoice.

Agents. Article 59(11) lets a registrant agent invoice as if it made the supply, provided both agent and principal retain records identifying the other's name, address and TRN.

Electronic issue. Article 59(8) allows electronic invoicing where the registrant can securely store a copy in compliance with the record-keeping requirements and can guarantee the authenticity of origin and integrity of content. That is the requirement the national e-invoicing programme industrialises rather than invents.

Capital assets. Article 60(2) of the VAT Law requires a taxable person to keep records relating to capital assets for at least 10 years — a consequence of the Capital Assets Scheme, under which input tax recovered on a qualifying asset is adjusted over its period of use. A fixed asset register that is purged on the general seven-year cycle destroys the evidence for adjustments still running.

Real estate. Article 71(2) of the Executive Regulation requires records relating to real estate to be held for 15 years after the end of the tax period they relate to. Article 71(1) otherwise defers to the Tax Procedures Law and its Executive Regulation, which set a separate seven-year period for real-estate records for tax procedure purposes. Where two provisions cover the same document, the longer one is the one that governs what you can safely delete.

Article 72 of the Executive Regulation requires records of goods and services supplied to be detailed enough for the Authority to readily identify the goods, services, suppliers and agents — and requires a taxable person making supplies in the State to keep records proving the emirate in which the fixed establishment related to the supply is located. Without a fixed establishment, the test moves to the place of establishment, and failing that to the emirate where the supply was received.

Clause 4 reverses the default for anyone whose electronic commerce supplies exceeded AED 100,000,000 in a calendar year: those transactions must be recorded so as to prove the emirate in which each supply was received. That changes what the ledger must capture at line level, so it is expensive to retrofit and cheap to configure in advance.

Wage and salary records are named as accounting records in Article 2(1)(a) of Cabinet Decision No. 74 of 2023, but the payment itself is a labour obligation administered by the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation through the Wages Protection System. The instrument now cited by the UAE Government Portal is Ministerial Resolution No. 340 of 2026; the great majority of third-party pages still quote Ministerial Resolution No. 43 of 2022 as amended by No. 346 of 2022, which the Portal's own older pages also still link.

On the current rules as published by the Portal, wages for the preceding month fall due on the first day of each Gregorian month, an establishment must transfer at least 85% of total wages due on time, and the first hard consequence of a late payment is the suspension of new work permits from the fifth day after the due date. We do not state an administrative fine amount: the Portal points to Cabinet Resolution No. 21 of 2020 without publishing a figure, and we could not open that instrument.

For bookkeeping the practical point is sequencing. The WPS file is generated from payroll before the payment run, and the ledger entry follows it. A provider who prepares payroll monthly in arrears, after the salary transfer has already happened, is reconciling a decision rather than supporting one.

"E-invoicing services in the UAE" now has a precise meaning: an Accredited Service Provider connected to the national system, which the Ministry of Finance implements through Ministerial Decision No. 243 of 2025 and Ministerial Decision No. 244 of 2025, as amended by Ministerial Decision No. 66 of 2026. Businesses with revenue of AED 50,000,000 or more must appoint an accredited provider by 30 October 2026, with phase one going live on 1 January 2027; businesses below that threshold appoint by 31 March 2027 and go live on 1 July 2027; government entities follow on 1 October 2027. Under Ministerial Decision No. 243 of 2025 each invoice must be transmitted within 14 days of the transaction.

Accreditation is checkable and it is not a marketing claim: the Ministry publishes the list of accredited and pre-approved providers on its own site, and a bookkeeping firm is not an accredited service provider unless it appears there. What a bookkeeper is responsible for is the data the system will consume — customer TRNs, item descriptions, units of measure, credit notes following the same path — because master data errors that a human previously fixed at year end will be transmitted.

Transaction volume, not revenue. Two hundred small invoices take longer to process than four large ones at identical turnover.

Bank accounts and currencies. Every account is another reconciliation, and every non-dirham transaction carries the Central Bank rate at the date of supply into the ledger.

VAT registration. Registration converts bookkeeping into a filing cycle and brings the whole Article 78 record list with it.

Inventory. A stock count with quantities and values at the end of each tax period is a physical exercise, not a ledger entry.

Payroll. Wage records are a named accounting record and the WPS run has to be sequenced before the month closes.

Fixed and capital assets. A fixed asset register is required, and capital assets carry their own ten-year record.

Whether the books arrive reconciled. This is the driver nobody quotes on. Catch-up work on prior periods, unreconciled bank balances or a chart of accounts that has to be rebuilt is normally priced separately, and it is the most common reason a fee moves after signature.

Whether an audit is required. An auditable file costs more to prepare than a management one, and Ministerial Decision No. 84 of 2025 makes audited statements compulsory above AED 50,000,000 of revenue and for every qualifying free zone person.

A quote that excludes catch-up, excludes the audit file and excludes the VAT cycle is not cheaper. It is a smaller scope wearing the same words.

Alongside the price refusal, four more. We publish no salary figure for bookkeepers or accountants — no accessible UAE survey publishes one, and the recruitment guides in circulation are lead-gated or blocked to automated access. We publish no ranking of bookkeeping companies in Dubai, Abu Dhabi or the UAE, because no authority ranks them and every published list omits its methodology. We endorse no software: no UAE law requires a specific package, and the only checkable list is the Federal Tax Authority's register of accredited tax accounting software vendors, which carries per-product validity dates — read the list itself, not the landing page that points at it, and note that using an unlisted package is not in itself a breach. And we make no claim about this firm's own clients, track record or fees, because none is published.

Cloud bookkeeping is permitted and is not a separate legal category. Article 4 of Cabinet Decision No. 74 of 2023 allows the obligation to be met by keeping the original documents or the information in them, provided the retained information is identical to the original, is available throughout the retention period, can be reproduced as an easily readable copy on request within the time the Authority specifies, and is stored so the Authority can verify the person's tax obligations. Article 26(3) of the Commercial Companies Law separately permits an electronic copy of the originals kept at the head office, under controls issued by ministerial decision.

Two things do not move offshore with the processing. Article 26(2) still requires the registers to be at the company's head office for at least five years, so agree in the engagement letter how that is satisfied when the ledger sits on a provider's tenancy. And Article 5 of the Tax Procedures Law keeps Arabic as the default: another language is permitted provided a translated Arabic copy is supplied if the Authority asks, the translation must be certified, and Article 5(3) puts the accuracy and the cost on the person who submits it. Failing to produce records in Arabic on request is the separate AED 5,000 penalty noted above.

One clock belongs to the provider and outlasts the contract: Article 19(1) of Federal Decree-Law No. 41 of 2023 requires an accounting firm to keep the data and documents of contracted work for at least ten years from the date the report was issued, and Article 19(2) transfers that duty to the partners personally if the firm's licence is cancelled.

A large share of searches in this space are attempts to evaluate one specific company — a brand name followed by "reviews", or a request for photographs of its premises. Those are brand searches for businesses we have no verified basis to describe, endorse, compare or rank, so this page carries no star ratings, no review counts, no premises photographs, no client list and no opening hours, and it publishes no address or telephone number of its own.

The same applies to review searches aimed at payroll and WPS providers. WPS is a government system operated through MoHRE and the banking channel, not a product with a published quality ranking; what can be verified about any provider is whether the business is licensed, whether the individual is on the Ministry's practising auditors register, and whether the person offering to deal with the FTA on your behalf is on the FTA's register of tax agents. Those three registers are free, and they answer more than a review page does.