How to build a bookkeeping practice for restaurants in Dubai

Dubai has thousands of F&B outlets, from single cafés in Al Barsha to groups with brands across several malls. They share the same problems, which means a firm can build one process, one chart of accounts and one management pack and reuse it across dozens of clients.

Restaurant owners also talk to each other. A firm that gets food cost under control for one café in Jumeirah tends to hear from the owner’s friends. Referrals in F&B travel quickly, in both directions.

The core is not complicated, but it is relentless. Every day produces sales, cash, card settlements and supplier deliveries, and every week produces delivery platform statements with commissions, promotions and refunds netted off.

• Daily sales summaries recorded with 5% output VAT, split by dine-in, takeaway and delivery.
• Card settlements reconciled to the bank, net of merchant fees.
• Delivery platform payouts grossed up: sales, commission and VAT on commission recorded separately.
• Supplier bills for food, beverage and packaging posted with input VAT, often from Arabic invoices.
• Food and beverage cost percentage reported monthly, ideally weekly.

The heaviest work is supplier bills. A busy outlet might receive 150 invoices a month from produce, meat, dry goods and beverage suppliers, many handwritten or in Arabic. HelloBooks’ AI reads Arabic and English bills, captures the supplier, TRN, amounts and VAT, and proposes the account, such as food cost or beverage cost. A bookkeeper reviews the batch rather than keying each invoice.

Bank reconciliation is the second. Statements uploaded from the restaurant’s bank are matched by the AI to card settlements, supplier payments and platform payouts. There is no POS integration, so daily sales totals are entered from the POS end-of-day report or imported as a summary journal, then matched to the deposits. Be clear with clients that this step is manual but quick.

Price by outlet and volume. A single café with up to 100 bills a month and one bank account might pay AED 1,800 monthly for bookkeeping, VAT and a monthly food cost report. A three-outlet group with a central kitchen and 400 bills a month could pay AED 5,500 monthly, with outlet-level P&Ls using classes or cost centres.

The value argument is food cost. If your monthly report helps a restaurant turning over AED 250,000 monthly cut food cost from 34% to 31%, the owner saves AED 7,500 every month. That makes your fee look small.

Delivery platforms are the frequent source of errors. The platform sells to the customer, deducts its commission and pays the net amount. If the restaurant records only the net payout as sales, output VAT is understated and the input VAT on commission is lost. Gross up every payout from the platform statement.

Staff meals, complimentary items and wastage need a policy, as do service charges. These are areas where an accountant should check the restaurant’s treatment with a tax agent and the FTA guidance rather than guess, because the answer depends on the facts.

Start with three to five F&B clients and build your templates: a restaurant chart of accounts, a delivery platform grossing-up journal, a weekly food cost report and a supplier mapping list for the AI. HelloBooks can configure a restaurant chart of accounts and reporting layout for your firm on request via /book-a-demo.

Then market narrowly. A firm that says “we do restaurant bookkeeping in Dubai” on its website and turns up at F&B owner meetups will win more clients than one listing twenty sectors. Our view: one niche done well beats five done adequately.