Ten accounting software customization requests from UAE firms

Firms rarely want a generic chart of accounts. They want one that matches how they report to clients and how they map to the VAT 201 and corporate tax computation.

• Sector charts of accounts: a restaurant template with separate food, beverage and delivery platform commission accounts, or a contracting template with retention receivable.
• Default VAT treatments per account: so a client’s “Export sales” account defaults to zero-rated and “Residential rent” to exempt.
• Cost centres or classes by branch: a retailer with outlets in Deira and Al Ain wants profit by location.

Invoice layouts matter because they leave the building. Firms ask for templates with Arabic fields alongside English, a TRN in a specific position, bank details for AED and USD accounts, and payment terms wording that matches the client’s contracts.

The fifth request is statement and reminder wording. Firms want overdue reminders to sound like their client, not like a debt collector. A Jumeirah interiors studio and a Ras Al Khaimah building supplies trader need very different tones.

Approval rules come up in almost every conversation with firms serving owner-managed businesses. A typical rule: any bill over AED 15,000, or any new supplier, needs the owner’s approval before it is scheduled for payment.

The seventh is role design. A firm may want its junior bookkeepers to post and match, seniors to approve, and clients to view reports and raise invoices but not edit journals. Advanced role-based access and an audit log are part of the Business plan.

Firms want the AI agent to learn their house rules quickly. Examples: payments to the electricity and water authority always go to utilities with standard-rated VAT; anything from a particular freight forwarder splits between import VAT and freight; card spend under AED 200 at petrol stations goes to motor expenses.

The AI proposes categories from the transaction text, the supplier and past choices. Firms can set explicit rules so the proposal is right first time, and bookkeepers still review before posting.

Ninth is the management pack. Firms want a monthly report with their own layout: summary P&L, cash position, receivables over 60 days and VAT payable, on one page with the firm’s branding.

Tenth is the corporate tax view: a report that starts from accounting profit and lists the adjustments the firm tracks, such as non-deductible entertainment or fines, so the computation at year end does not start from scratch.

Not every request is a good idea, and a good partner should say so. The most common one we question is a separate chart of accounts for every client built from scratch. It feels personal but makes reviews slower, because a bookkeeper moving between clients must relearn each ledger. Sector templates with small client-level changes give nearly all the benefit with far less cost.

The second is approval rules so strict that nothing gets paid on time. A threshold of AED 500 for owner approval on a business that pays forty suppliers a month will stall the payables run within weeks. Start with a higher threshold, review the audit log after a quarter, and tighten only where you see a real problem.

Some requests are configuration your team can do in an afternoon, such as account defaults and approval thresholds. Others, like a new report layout, are scoped with the HelloBooks team. Either way, start with the business reason. “We need retention receivable tracked separately because our contracting clients bill 10% retention on a AED 2 million fit-out” is far easier to build well than “we need a new field”.

Prioritise by impact. A chart of accounts template used by 40 clients matters more than a perfect layout for one.