Who are your customers?
Begin with who you actually sell to. Shops and offices on the mainland, other free-zone companies and customers abroad can each mean different paperwork. List your main customer groups and note roughly how much of your selling goes to each. This list is the first thing to show your accountant, because it tells them which of your sales may need special attention.
Do the same for suppliers: where they are based and how they invoice you. Your buying side matters as much as your selling side when the books are reviewed. A supplier in another zone, or abroad, may invoice differently from one next door, and your records should make that visible rather than leave it to memory.
Do you invoice across the zone boundary?
Many companies sell both inside their zone and outside it, or buy from suppliers on the other side. Do not assume that everything is treated the same in both directions. Ask the FTA or your accountant how your own sales and purchases that cross the boundary should be recorded, and write the answer down in plain words.
That written note becomes the brief for whoever sets up your invoices, and you can hand it to any software vendor to see how they would handle the same case. If the answer changes later, update the note and tell whoever uses the system, so that new invoices follow the new answer.
How will you keep one set of books?
Some groups hold a mainland licence for one activity and a free-zone licence for another, with separate customers and bank accounts. Decide with your accountant whether you need separate books or one set with clear tagging. Then ask any software vendor to walk through that arrangement using your own example, rather than a generic demonstration.
What does your accountant need?
Ask your accountant what they want to receive, and in what form. It might be invoices that show the right TRNs, a list of unpaid invoices, credit notes tied to the original documents, or a clear record of purchases. Once you know the monthly handover you are aiming for, many software choices answer themselves.
Invite the accountant to look at a sample invoice from any system you are considering before you commit. A five-minute review from the person who prepares your returns can save months of rework, and it shows you early whether the output matches what they need. Ask them to mark anything they would have to retype or correct by hand.
Questions to take to a demonstration
Once you have your answers, ask each vendor to show rather than describe. A short demonstration using your own cases will tell you more than a feature list. Bring a printed sample of your usual invoice and of a typical correction, and compare what each system produces for the same cases, side by side.
- An invoice to a customer in your zone and another to a customer outside it
- A credit note that points back to the original invoice
- A list of customers who have not paid, with due dates
- What your accountant can see and take away each month
Who to ask
Questions about your licence, your zone and your VAT position belong with the FTA or your accountant, not with a software vendor. A vendor can show how documents are produced but cannot tell you what your status is. TAQNIX ERP produces invoices with 5% VAT, credit notes and payment tracking in Arabic and English. How those apply to your company is for your accountant to confirm.
General information, not legal or tax advice. Confirm rules with the authority or your accountant.
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