Accounting supervision · UAE
Accounting supervision, because you have an accountant but nobody senior checking the work.
A monthly review of what your own accountant produces, by the firm that also signs audit reports. You keep your team. We keep the standard, and you find out about a problem in the month it happens.
The problem it solves
One accountant, nobody to check the one accountant.
Most companies here reach a size where they need a full time accountant long before they can justify a finance manager above them. So the person who posts the entries is also the person who decides they are right, and nobody sees the work until the auditor arrives, eleven months later, when it is expensive to fix. Supervision closes that gap without a second salary.
Every month
We review the closed month: the reconciliations, the entries that moved the profit, the owner and related party accounts, and anything posted to a suspense or miscellaneous account. What we find goes back to your accountant in writing, with how to close it.
Every quarter
A longer look: the controls around cash, purchasing and payroll, the numbers behind the margins, and a short risk note for the owner. This is also where the filings due in the quarter are checked off rather than assumed.
Every year
The file the auditor will ask for, built through the year instead of in one week, a checkup on each company in the group, and a training day for your finance staff on what changed in the law and in the standards.
What is reviewed
Eight things, on a fixed cycle, so nothing is reviewed only when someone remembers.
- Internal controls. Who can approve a payment, who can create a supplier, who signs off a credit note, and whether the same person can do two of those. Written down as it actually works, not as the manual says.
- Financial reporting. That the monthly accounts are prepared on a consistent basis, that the balance sheet is supported line by line, and that the figures the owner is shown are the figures in the ledger.
- Compliance with the filings you are bound by. The VAT returns, the corporate tax registration and return, the license renewal, and the accounting records the law requires you to keep. Checked against the dates, not against memory.
- Audit preparation. The schedules, confirmations and supporting documents the auditor will ask for, built up through the year, so fieldwork starts with the file already there.
- Financial analysis. Margin by product, branch or contract, the days your money sits in stock and in receivables, and where the cash actually went this quarter.
- Risk management. The three or four things that would genuinely hurt this company, written plainly: one customer who is most of the revenue, a facility that renews next year, a currency nobody covers, one person who holds every password.
- Entity checkups. For each company in the group: is the license current, does the licensed activity still describe what you do, is the tax registration right for the turnover, and is the beneficial owner register the company must keep up to date.
- Annual staff training. A day for your finance people on what changed in the year and how it lands on their work. Delivered at your office or ours.
What it is not
It is supervision. It is not an audit, and we will not let it be sold as one.
There is no opinion at the end of this and no audit report. Nothing here can be handed to a bank or a free zone as audited accounts, and we will say so if anyone asks us to imply otherwise.
It is not an internal audit either. An internal audit is a separate engagement with its own scope, its own testing and its own report to the owner or the board. Where that is what you need, we say so and quote it.
And it is not a replacement for your accountant. The point is that your accountant does the work and gets better at it, with someone senior looking over the result every month.
Independence
We will not review the work and then sign an opinion on it.
If we supervise your accounting through the year, we have had a hand in the figures, and a firm cannot audit its own work. So for any one year we do one or the other: we supervise and another firm audits, or we audit and the supervision stops. You are told which before the year starts, not discovered at year end.
Where the audit is the part we give up, we hand the incoming auditor a complete file and answer their questions. That is usually a shorter audit and a smaller audit fee, because the work was already done properly.
Fees
A fixed monthly fee, agreed before we start.
Quoted within one business day of seeing your license, your last accounts and the software your accountant uses. The quarterly review and the annual training day for your finance staff are inside the yearly fee, not extras billed later.
Questions we are asked
Four straight answers.
- 01
Is this an audit?
No. There is no opinion and no audit report at the end of it. It is supervision of your own accountant's work, month by month, so that what reaches the auditor is already right. A statutory audit and an internal audit are separate engagements.
- 02
Are you replacing our accountant?
No. Your accountant keeps the books and keeps the job. We review the work, raise what needs raising and show them how to close it themselves next month. Firms usually take this instead of hiring a second, more senior person.
- 03
Can you supervise and audit the same company?
Not both on the same year's figures. Independence rules do not let a firm review work and then sign an opinion on it, and we do not get round that. We tell you before the year starts which of the two we are doing, and hand a clean file to the other firm where it is the audit we give up.
- 04
What does it cost?
A fixed monthly fee, quoted within one business day of seeing your license, your last accounts and the software you use, before any work starts. The annual training day for your finance staff is included in the yearly fee.
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