Backlog accounting — books rebuilt, filings caught up.

It can — which is precisely why you want it handled properly rather than left alone. If the backlog surfaces under-declared VAT or a missed VAT-201, the FTA's voluntary disclosure (VAT-211) route fixes it at far lower penalties than waiting for an audit to find it. Same logic with a missed corporate tax registration or an unfiled return. As we rebuild your prior-period books and bank reconciliations, we flag every exposure, prepare the voluntary disclosures with full workings, and bring you current with both the FTA and your filing calendar. You end up in a clean, defensible position instead of sitting on a ticking backlog.

We handle 6 to 24-month backlogs routinely, and we've gone back 36 months for clients up against a free-zone renewal or audit deadline. The FTA's retention requirement is 5 years (15 for real-estate transactions), so anything inside that window is defensible. Beyond it, we scope first. Our rule of thumb: rebuild what's still inside the FTA period and what the auditor or licence authority actually needs — there's no point reconstructing periods that carry no compliance exposure anymore.

We file each outstanding VAT-201 in chronological order on EmaraTax — output VAT broken out, input VAT backed by reviewed tax invoices, reverse-charge entries on imported services captured, and the late-filing penalty calculated up front so there are no surprises. If a prior return has an error above AED 10,000, we get a voluntary disclosure (VAT-211) in before an audit catches it, where the penalties are materially lower. Clearing the returns also unlocks EmaraTax so your subsequent filings can go through.

Yes. We read the notice properly first — the article cited, the period, the basis of the penalty, the evidence the assessor leaned on — then build a voluntary disclosure or a formal reconsideration request around the FTA's actual concerns. Outcomes vary, no one can promise otherwise. But walking in with clean rebuilt records, a defensible position and a clear story of what went wrong and what's now in place to stop it repeating moves the odds of a reduction or full waiver in your favour. Where the FTA's first-round answer isn't good enough, we've taken cases to the Tax Disputes Resolution Committee.

A 6 to 12-month gap usually takes 4 weeks from kickoff to a clean monthly cycle; 12 to 24 months runs 6 to 8. Past 24 months, we confirm scope and timeline after the source-document recovery phase. What actually sets the pace is how fast we can pull bank statements and supporting documents, whether the accounting software is set up or needs migrating, and whether overdue VAT-201 returns or a late corporate-tax registration are running alongside. We lock fixed timelines into the scope document, so there's no drift.

It's quoted per project, priced off the length of the gap, the transactions per month, how many bank accounts, multi-currency complexity, and whether overdue VAT returns or a late corporate-tax registration are in scope too. The fixed price goes in the scope document up front — no hourly billing, no surprise invoices. Once you're caught up, you move onto our fixed monthly bookkeeping retainer, quoted alongside the cleanup, so you know the total across both the cleanup and the cycle that follows it.

You move onto a standard monthly close. Books closed by the 5th business day, VAT-201 prepared and filed inside the 28-day deadline, corporate-tax provision tracked monthly so the year-end return is a non-event, management reports out every month, and audit-ready workpapers kept current rather than rebuilt in a panic at year-end. The whole point is that the backlog engagement is the only catch-up you ever pay for. After that, every downstream filing and audit is already sitting ready.

Yes — provided it's done right. The rebuild has to be backed by source documentation, the accounting policies have to be consistent, and the opening balances have to reconcile to the prior auditor's closing trial balance (or be formally restated where the old records were incomplete). We build the audit workpaper pack alongside the rebuild: fixed-asset register, debtor and creditor ageing, accrual workings, prepayment amortisation, VAT control reconciliation, bank confirmations. That way the auditor tests indexed evidence, not a reconstructed story. We've worked with most UAE audit firms and free-zone-approved auditors and liaise with them directly through the audit.

Yes — often it's the trigger event. DMCC, DAFZA, DIFC, JAFZA, RAKEZ and other UAE free zones require audited financial statements for annual licence renewal. The auditor cannot sign off accounts when the bookkeeping is incomplete. Backlog accounting rebuilds the missing periods and prepares the audit pack. We support the auditor through the year-end engagement. We ensure the audited financial statements are filed with the free-zone authority before the renewal deadline. That protects both the licence and the visa quotas attached to it.

Late corporate-tax registration triggers a fixed AED 10,000 penalty under the FTA's penalty schedule. We handle the late EmaraTax registration immediately. We prepare the supporting trade-licence pack and financial-year declaration. Where the delay is attributable to reasonable cause (illness, force majeure, prior advisor error documented in writing), we prepare a reconsideration request to argue the penalty down. We then bring the corporate-tax computation, return preparation and filing under the same engagement, so the next deadline is met without another scramble.

There's no flat catch-up bookkeeping price, because two 12-month backlogs can differ enormously in effort. What moves the number is the length of the gap in months, the transactions per month, how many bank accounts and currencies are involved, the state of the source documents, and whether overdue VAT-201 returns, voluntary disclosures or a late corporate-tax registration sit alongside the cleanup. We scope all of that in a free review first, then quote one fixed price in writing before any work starts — no hourly meter, no surprise invoices. Once you're current, ongoing monthly bookkeeping runs on a fixed retainer quoted at the same time, so you can see the total cost across both the one-time cleanup and the cycle that follows.

Often, yes. When a rebuild uncovers errors in previously issued or previously booked figures — misclassified VAT, unrecorded liabilities, wrong opening balances — IFRS treats the correction as a prior-period adjustment, restating the affected comparatives rather than dumping the fix into the current year's profit. We identify each adjustment during the reconstruction, restate the opening balances so the current period starts clean, and write a board-ready note explaining exactly what changed and why. If the cleaned years still need audited financial statements for a licence renewal or bank facility, that restatement note is what lets your auditor sign off the backlog financial statements without qualification.

Backlog accounting — also called catch-up bookkeeping or catch-up accounting — is the reconstruction of financial records for past periods that were never recorded, were recorded badly, or were lost. In the UAE it usually means rebuilding the ledger from bank statements, invoices and customs data so overdue VAT returns can be filed, the corporate tax return has real numbers behind it, and the statutory record-keeping obligation is met.

As far as the source documents go — in practice five to seven years is achievable because UAE banks retain statements and the FTA's own records anchor the tax periods. The legal driver: tax records must be kept for at least five years (longer for real estate), and the FTA can assess within the statute of limitation. We scope the periods that carry legal exposure first; older cosmetic gaps can wait.

A single missed year for a small company with two bank accounts typically closes in a few weeks once statements are in. Multi-year reconstructions run in monthly waves — each rebuilt year is reconciled and locked before the next opens. The honest constraint is document gathering: the plan we issue on engagement includes a document checklist, and the calendar moves as fast as that checklist fills.

That is a late-registration case layered on the backlog: we rebuild turnover month by month to establish exactly when you crossed the AED 375,000 mandatory registration threshold, register with the true effective date, and prepare the returns for the periods you should have been filing. Penalties apply, but they are calculable and finite — and far smaller than what accrues by waiting for the FTA to find the customs data first.

Yes, if the reconstruction is done to evidence standards — every entry traced to a bank line or document, estimates flagged with a written basis, VAT control accounts agreed to filed returns, and the file indexed so a specific invoice can be produced on request. That is the standard we build to. What does not survive an audit is a ledger back-filled to match the returns rather than the documents.

If the accounting period has passed and the books don't exist, yes — the corporate tax return must be built on financial statements prepared under acceptable accounting standards, and the filing deadline is nine months after the financial year ends. Estimating is not a filing basis. A single-year catch-up engagement gets the ledger, the adjustments and the tax computation done inside that window when it starts early enough.

Yes — where a rebuilt ledger shows a filed VAT return understated tax by more than AED 10,000, the correction route is a voluntary disclosure on EmaraTax; smaller errors can be corrected in a subsequent return. We prepare the disclosure schedules from the reconstruction so each correction is documented, and we sequence disclosures so penalties are assessed once, not per resubmission. The disclosure decision itself always stays with you.

Accounting records and commercial books sufficient to show transactions, assets and liabilities — retained at least five years after the end of the tax period for VAT and corporate tax purposes, longer for real-estate-related records. That includes invoices, bank statements, payroll files, inventory counts and contracts. Backlog engagements end with exactly that file, indexed and handed over, plus a monthly routine so it stays current.