Abu Dhabi Airports Free Zone accounting for aerospace, logistics and pharma firms

A parts supplier serving airlines at Zayed International Airport holds expensive rotable spares, each tracked by serial number, exchanged and repaired on cycles. Its books need parts stock with batch or serial records, repair costs per part, and customer contracts that bill on usage.

HelloBooks keeps stock by item, with batch tracking and multiple locations on the Business plan. The AI agent reads repair-shop invoices and freight bills, matches them to the part and the customer contract, and drafts the usage invoice for the account manager to approve. Ask "what did repairs cost us on rotables leased to our largest airline customer this year?" and it pulls the bills.

The FTA guide's list of qualifying activities includes manufacturing and processing, logistics services, distribution of goods in or from a designated zone, and aircraft financing and leasing, each with conditions in Ministerial Decision No. 265 of 2023. For an ADAFZ company, the activity mix matters as much as the customer list.

Worked example: a pharma distributor with AED 34 million of revenue. Most of it is distribution to hospitals and wholesalers, which a tax agent would test against the distribution conditions. AED 1.4 million comes from a small retail pharmacy counter serving travellers, which is a transaction with natural persons and normally excluded. The cap is AED 1.7 million, 5% of revenue, so the company is within it, but only by AED 300,000.

• Income accounts for each activity: distribution, logistics, leasing, retail
• Batch tracking for regulated goods on the Business plan
• Running non-qualifying revenue total checked monthly

ADAFZ mentions a dual licence among its benefits. A business that also trades on the mainland should keep each legal entity's books separate, because the free zone conditions apply to the free zone person alone. Talk to ADAFZ about the licence and to a tax agent about the corporate tax effect.

HelloBooks keeps a full audit trail for the audited financial statements every qualifying free zone person must prepare. Qualifying status also rules out small business relief, according to the FTA. For serial-number reports, approval rules or an aerospace chart of accounts, book a call at /book-a-demo or email hello@hellobooks.ai.