Masdar City Free Zone accounting for tech and sustainability start-ups

A Masdar City battery-analytics start-up raises USD 2 million in a seed round, spends on engineers, lab equipment and cloud computing, and earns its first revenue from pilot contracts. Investors want monthly burn, runway and spend by category; the board wants R&D separated from sales and admin.

HelloBooks records share capital and investor funds in their own equity accounts, with the AED value of USD receipts. The AI agent codes each bill to R&D, sales or admin under your rules, and answers "what is our monthly burn over the last quarter, and how many months of cash do we have left?" in plain English. Lab equipment is capitalised in the fixed asset register.

• Equity and investor accounts with currency-accurate AED values
• Department tags for R&D, sales and admin spend
• Monthly investor pack built from standard reports

Under the FTA guide, a qualifying free zone person's income is qualifying when it comes from free zone persons that are the beneficial recipients, from qualifying activities, or from qualifying intellectual property. Pilots sold to a mainland utility or an overseas developer are not on that list unless the activity is a listed one, so they are likely to be non-qualifying.

Worked through: AED 1.8 million of revenue, of which AED 1.2 million comes from a mainland utility. The cap is 5% of revenue, AED 90,000, so the company would not be a qualifying free zone person that year. It would be taxed at the regular rates, and with revenue under AED 3 million it might consider small business relief. The guide's rules on qualifying intellectual property may matter later for a company that licenses its technology, and a tax agent should review them.

Start-ups in sustainability often receive grants or prize money with conditions attached. Record them in a separate account, attach the agreement, and release them to income as the conditions are met; your auditor will check the treatment. For grant tracking reports, an R&D-focused chart of accounts or approval rules for lab purchases, book a call at /book-a-demo or email hello@hellobooks.ai.