The Month-End Accounting Checklist Every UAE Small Business Should Follow

The Month-End Accounting Checklist Every UAE Small Business Should Follow

Before you look for accounting services in Dubai, ask yourself one question: did last month close? For most small businesses the answer is no. You invoiced the sales, paid the salaries and filed the VAT return, but nobody checked the three against the bank statement. The difference surfaces months later as a VAT penalty, a wrong corporate tax figure or a customer invoice that was never issued.

A month-end close prevents that. You run the same steps in the same order every month. You finish with numbers you can defend to the Federal Tax Authority (FTA). The 14 steps below are ordered around the three UAE deadlines a missed close breaks.

The UAE deadlines your month-end close feeds

Every step on the checklist produces something a regulator will eventually ask you for. Three deadlines decide when each step must be finished.

VAT return and payment by the 28th

If you are VAT registered, you file a return on EmaraTax and pay any VAT due by the 28th of the month after your tax period ends. Most small businesses file quarterly, and businesses with taxable supplies of AED 150 million or more file monthly. For a January to March period, both the return and the payment are due on 28 April. The UAE government’s VAT filing guidance sets out the process on EmaraTax.

A quarterly return still depends on invoices issued on time every month. You must issue a tax invoice within 14 days of the date of supply. A simplified tax invoice must go out on the day of supply itself. If you are still raising March invoices in mid-April, the sales figure in your return is already understated.

Salaries through WPS by the first of the month

From 1 June 2026, you must pay the previous month’s wages by the first day of the month. Ministerial Resolution No. 340 of 2026 sets that date and requires payment through the Wage Protection System (WPS) or another channel MOHRE approves. The old 15-day grace period no longer exists. If you pay on the second, MOHRE’s monitoring system records the payment as late without waiting for an employee complaint.

You count as compliant when you pay at least 85 percent of total wages due on time, up from 80 percent under the old resolution. Payroll must therefore be final before the month ends rather than in the first week of the next one.

Records the FTA can ask for years later

Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022 requires you to keep corporate tax records for seven years after the tax period ends. VAT records must be kept for at least five years. Failing to keep required records costs AED 10,000, rising to AED 20,000 if you repeat the failure within 24 months. Those figures apply from 14 April 2026.

Your corporate tax return is due nine months after year-end. You build it from a profit and loss statement and a balance sheet. If you close every month, those statements already exist when the filing window opens. If you skip the close, you rebuild 12 months of records inside that same nine-month window.

ObligationDeadlineMonthly close output it depends on
VAT return and payment28th of the month after the tax period endsReconciled sales and purchase ledgers, tax invoices issued within 14 days
Wages via WPSFirst day of the following monthFinal payroll, deductions documented, at least 85 percent paid on time
Corporate tax returnNine months after year-endProfit and loss statement and balance sheet for each month
Record retentionSeven years (corporate tax), five years (VAT)Filed invoices, bank statements and reconciliations

The month-end accounting checklist in order

Run the steps in this order, because each block depends on the one before it. If you build the VAT working file before reconciling the bank, every correction from the reconciliation forces you to rebuild the file.

Reconcile: bank, receivables, payables

  1. Reconcile every bank account, card and payment gateway to the ledger. Identify every unmatched item over AED 100 instead of posting it to a suspense account.
  2. Check that every sale delivered in the month has a tax invoice dated within 14 days of supply. The invoice must show the customer’s TRN where the customer is VAT registered.
  3. Issue tax credit notes for returns, discounts and corrections within 14 days of the event that triggered the credit.
  4. Review the receivables ageing and assign every balance over 90 days either a collection action or a bad-debt provision.
  5. Match every supplier invoice to an order or an approval, and confirm it shows the supplier’s TRN. Without the TRN you cannot recover the input VAT on that invoice.
  6. Accrue any supplier invoice that arrives after month-end where the goods or services were delivered within the month.

Accrue: payroll, gratuity, prepayments and assets

  1. Finalise payroll and generate the WPS file at least three working days before the first of the month. A file the bank rejects does not count as payment.
  2. Accrue end-of-service gratuity at the rate in Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021. Each employee earns 21 days’ basic wage per year of service for the first five years, then 30 days per year.
  3. Release one month of each prepayment, such as rent, insurance and licence fees, and add any new prepayments made in the month.
  4. Post depreciation and update the fixed asset register with purchases and disposals.

The gratuity accrual is the step small businesses skip most often. An employee on a basic salary of AED 8,000 accrues 8,000 ÷ 30 × 21 = AED 5,600 a year for the first five years. The monthly accrual is AED 467. With 15 such employees, skipping the accrual leaves about AED 7,000 a month off your balance sheet.

Report: VAT working file, statements, thresholds

  1. Build the VAT working file from the reconciled ledgers. Show output VAT by rate, input VAT by category and reverse-charge VAT on imported services. Tie the totals to the sales and purchase ledgers before you open EmaraTax.
  2. Produce a profit and loss statement and a balance sheet, and compare both with the prior month. Investigate any line that moved more than 20 percent without a known reason.
  3. Update rolling 12-month revenue against the three thresholds that change your obligations. VAT registration becomes mandatory at AED 375,000. Small Business Relief ends at AED 3 million. Audited financial statements and the first e-invoicing phase, from 1 January 2027, start at AED 50 million.
  4. File the month’s bank statements, invoices and reconciliations in one place you can hand to the FTA within days of a request.

On a clean ledger with a few hundred transactions, one person completes all 14 steps in two to three working days. The first six steps take most of that time.

What accounting services in Dubai should deliver at month-end

Whether you use accounting services in Dubai or run the close in-house, the output should be the same. Hold whoever handles the month-end close, including yourself, to these three deliverables.

1. A close pack within ten working days

The pack contains the bank reconciliations, the receivables and payables ageing, the profit and loss statement and the balance sheet. Ten working days after month-end is a realistic target for a small business. If the pack arrives after the 20th, the figures are too old to change anything in the current month. The VAT return due on the 28th is then built from unchecked ledgers.

2. A VAT reconciliation, not just a filed return

A filed return proves you met the deadline, and a reconciliation proves the return was right. Ask for the working file that ties Box 1 sales and Box 9 purchases back to the ledgers. If the answer is “we took the numbers from the invoicing system,” nobody has checked that the invoicing system agrees with the bank.

3. Threshold and deadline tracking you can see

Whoever runs your books tracks four items every month: rolling revenue against the three thresholds above, the next VAT filing date, the WPS payment date, and the corporate tax return date. Ask for all four on one page. If the dates exist only in your bookkeeper’s head, the tracking stops the day that person leaves.

Run last month’s close before the next VAT return is due

Take last month and work the 14 steps in order. The break is usually in the first six: an unreconciled payment gateway, a tax invoice raised after the 14-day window, or a supplier invoice with no TRN. Once those are fixed, the VAT working file, the statements and the threshold check follow directly from the reconciled ledgers.

The rules moved twice in 2026. Cabinet Decision No. 129 of 2025 rewrote the penalty tables from 14 April. Ministerial Resolution No. 340 of 2026 moved wage due dates to the first of the month from 1 June. A checklist written in 2025 matches neither. Book the close for the first ten working days of every month, and the deadlines take care of themselves.