Dubai Production City accounting for printers and packaging makers

A DPC packaging printer quotes a run of 200,000 folding cartons for a food brand at AED 0.42 each, AED 84,000 in total. The job uses board, ink, plates, machine time and finishing. Profit depends on how much board was wasted and how long the press ran.

HelloBooks tags each job as a project. Board and ink drawn from stock post to the job, and machine time can be charged in with a journal at a rate your accountant sets. The AI agent reads supplier bills for board and consumables, updates stock quantities and values, and posts them to the right accounts. Ask "which jobs made less than 15% margin last month?" and you get a list.

• Projects per job for material and machine costs
• Stock tracked by item, with batch tracking on the Business plan
• Waste and make-ready costs posted to their own accounts

The FTA guide lists manufacturing of goods or materials and processing of goods or materials among qualifying activities, with conditions in Ministerial Decision No. 265 of 2023. For a DPC manufacturer, sales of its own products can therefore count as qualifying income, whoever buys them, provided the conditions are met and the company is a qualifying free zone person.

Side services can tip the balance. Suppose a printer earns AED 18 million from manufacturing and AED 700,000 from graphic design fees charged to mainland clients. If the design fees are non-qualifying, they must stay within the cap of AED 900,000, which is 5% of total revenue of AED 18.7 million. They do, with AED 200,000 to spare. Growth in design work could cost the company its status.

The FTA conditions require core income-generating activity in the free zone with adequate assets, full-time staff and operating expenditure, plus audited financial statements. A DPC factory with its own presses and operators is well placed on substance; its books need to show it clearly, with fixed assets, payroll and running costs posted correctly.

HelloBooks keeps a fixed asset register with monthly depreciation, posts the HelloTime payroll journal and holds every supplier bill as an attachment. The auditor gets a clean trial balance and, on the Business plan, an audit log. For a manufacturing chart of accounts or job reports in your format, book a call at /book-a-demo or email hello@hellobooks.ai.