Dubai Knowledge Park accounting for training providers and HR firms

A training provider sells a twelve-week project management course for AED 6,500, paid upfront. Revenue belongs to the weeks in which the course runs, not the day the fee arrives. HelloBooks posts the fee to a deferred income account and releases it across the course dates with a recurring journal your accountant sets once.

Each course is tagged as a class, so trainer fees, venue hire, certification body charges and marketing land against it. The AI agent reads trainer invoices and exam body bills and codes them to the course. Ask "which courses made a loss last term?" and it lists them with their income and costs.

• Deferred income released over the course dates
• Course-level profit from class tags
• Exam and certification fees tracked as direct costs

Fees paid by individuals for their own courses are transactions with natural persons, which the FTA guide normally treats as excluded activities. Fees paid by employers that are free zone persons can be qualifying income. Fees from mainland or overseas employers are qualifying only if they come from a listed qualifying activity, and training is not listed as one in the FTA guide.

Consider a centre with AED 3.4 million of revenue, AED 2.1 million from free zone employers and AED 1.3 million from individuals and mainland companies. The de minimis cap is AED 170,000. Non-qualifying revenue is far above it, so the centre would be taxed at the regular rates. Its revenue is above AED 3 million, so small business relief is not an option either.

Recruitment firms earn placement fees, usually a percentage of the candidate's first-year salary, with a rebate if the hire leaves early. HelloBooks records the fee on placement and the rebate as a credit note, and the AI tags each fee by employer type. HR consultancies on retainers use recurring invoices.

Both keep personal data on candidates and staff, so access matters. The Business plan adds role-based access and an audit log, so a consultant sees only their own clients' invoices. For a training-centre chart of accounts, deferred income schedules or invoice templates, book a call at /book-a-demo or email hello@hellobooks.ai.