Audit assistance — workpapers ready, queries answered.

We provide internal audit support and audit-readiness services in Dubai. We prepare your business so the external audit runs cleanly and quickly. That covers internal control reviews and reconciliation of every balance-sheet account. We also build schedules for fixed assets, accruals, prepayments and provisions. We prepare related-party and revenue-recognition workpapers, plus the full supporting file your appointed auditor will request. We are an accounting and advisory practice, not a licensed audit firm, so we don't sign the audit opinion. Instead we liaise directly with your registered auditor (including DMCC, JAFZA, DIFC and ADGM-approved firms). Management stays focused on the business while the audit closes on time.

Most do. DMCC, JAFZA, DIFC, ADGM, DAFZA, RAKEZ, IFZA, Meydan, SHAMS and Hamriyah all require audited financial statements as a precondition for annual licence renewal. The auditor must be approved by the specific free-zone authority — DMCC and DIFC publish maintained lists, others operate on a registered-auditor basis. Some smaller free zones permit unaudited statements for very small entities below a revenue threshold, but the trend across the UAE is towards mandatory audit. Mainland LLCs are required to maintain audited accounts under the UAE Commercial Companies Law and are increasingly required by banks and the FTA on request.

No. We are the books-and-records firm. We prepare your accounting records, schedules, workpapers and IFRS financial statements. Your external auditor is a separate UAE-approved audit firm that signs the audit opinion. UAE audit independence rules (and free-zone authority requirements) explicitly prohibit the same firm preparing the records and auditing them. The separation is a feature, not a limitation. Your auditor gets independent assurance from a firm that has no incentive to overlook misstatements. Our work is reviewed by a third party every year.

Yes. We prepare the audit pack in the format your existing audit firm wants and handle queries directly throughout the engagement. The workpapers are built around the IFRS-for-SMEs framework most UAE auditors expect, indexed to the trial balance, and tailored to the working-paper style your audit firm prefers. The audit engagement is faster, cleaner and typically cheaper when the audit pack is delivered ready, because the audit firm's billable hours drop materially.

Audit-assistance fees start from AED 2,999 per year for clean clients with monthly bookkeeping already in our retainer. That covers workpaper preparation, IFRS financial statements and auditor liaison through to sign-off. Fees are higher for new clients arriving cold (where prior-period bookkeeping may need a one-time cleanup before audit work can begin). They're also higher for multi-entity group audits, for free zones with more demanding documentation (DIFC, ADGM, DMCC), and for entities preparing for a first audit by a Big-4 firm. The audit firm's own fees are separate and billed by them directly.

Two to four weeks from kickoff to delivering the audit pack to the auditor, for a clean set of books with current monthly close. It takes longer if backlog accounting is required first. Backlog projects on top add another four to eight weeks before audit work begins. Best practice is to maintain audit-ready workpapers monthly, so the year-end work is minimal. That's what our monthly bookkeeping retainer is designed to deliver. The audit pack is effectively complete on the first business day after year-end.

Yes. We prepare the annual Economic Substance Notification and the Economic Substance Report where required. It applies to UAE entities undertaking 'relevant activities' — banking, insurance, fund management, lease-finance, headquarters, shipping, holding company, intellectual property, distribution and service centre. The ESR filing is submitted on the Ministry of Finance portal alongside the audit. Late or inaccurate ESR filings carry AED 20,000 to AED 50,000 penalties per offence. So the documentation and substance evidence (employees, expenditure, core income-generating activities) is built into the year-end pack.

Yes. We attend year-end physical stock-takes and supervise the count procedures. We perform sample test-counts, reconcile the physical count to the perpetual inventory records, and prepare the count workpapers for the auditor. For retail, trading and manufacturing clients we also coordinate the count timing with the auditor's attendance requirements. Auditors typically need to observe a sample of counts to provide audit evidence. We also prepare the obsolete-and-slow-moving stock provision workings the auditor will challenge during testing.

External audit is a statutory engagement performed by an independent UAE-approved audit firm. It issues an opinion on whether the financial statements give a true and fair view under IFRS. It is required by company law, free-zone authorities and tax purposes. Internal audit is a management-tool engagement focused on testing the design and operating effectiveness of internal controls. It identifies process weaknesses, fraud-risk hotspots and operational improvement opportunities. It typically reports to an audit committee or board, not to shareholders externally. We support both. External audit is mandatory; internal audit is value-add.

A qualified audit opinion (where the auditor flags a material concern they couldn't resolve) is a serious matter. It can trigger free-zone enquiries, bank facility reviews and FTA scrutiny on corporate tax substantiation, plus investor or partner concerns. Common causes are inability to verify opening balances (typical for new audit relationships with incomplete prior records) and unresolved going-concern issues. Other causes are scope limitations on inventory or related parties, or material weaknesses in internal controls. We work with the auditor to address the underlying issues, prepare the management letter response and build the remediation plan. So the next year's audit returns to a clean opinion.