Zoho Books · Free first review
Your books balance. That does not mean they are right.
We built a tool that reads a Zoho Books file the way a reviewer would, and checks it against the errors we find over and over in UAE company accounts. We run it on your organisation and send you what it found. The first review costs nothing.
- Around 24 checks across VAT, duplicates, posting and audit trail
- Findings ranked by what they actually cost you, with the transaction references
- Read-only access, removed the moment the review is done
- Report in two to three business days
Request your free review
Tell us how to reach you. We reply with the access steps and a date for the report.
Why this exists
Nobody checks the checker
If someone else keeps your books — an employee, an agency, a freelance bookkeeper — you are relying on a monthly report that only tells you the ledger balances. It always balances. Balancing is the one thing accounting software guarantees, and it says nothing about whether the 5% was applied to the right supply, whether the fit-out was capitalised, or whether the same supplier bill went in twice.
Those errors do not announce themselves. They sit quietly until something forces an examination: a query from the Federal Tax Authority, an auditor asking for support, a bank reviewing a facility application, a buyer running due diligence. At that point the cost is no longer the error. It is the penalty, the professional fees to unwind it, and the credibility you spend explaining it.
We kept finding the same handful of mistakes across client files, so we built something that looks for them systematically rather than hoping a human notices at volume. It runs in our office, on your data, and it produces a list. That is the whole product.
What it checks
Around 24 checks, in four groups
Not a generic data-quality sweep. Each of these is a mistake we have found in real UAE Zoho Books files, and each one has a consequence attached.
Tax and VAT accuracy
The errors that turn into penalties, because the FTA finds them rather than you.
Standard-rated 5% applied to what should be a zero-rated export, and the reverse — the two are not interchangeable and only one allows input recovery.
They look similar in Zoho and behave completely differently. Exempt supplies block input tax recovery; zero-rated do not.
Invoices to VAT-registered customers issued without their tax registration number.
Invoices missing fields the FTA requires — sequential numbering, date of supply where it differs from issue date, tax shown per line, amounts stated in AED.
Software subscriptions, overseas consultants and foreign platform fees where the reverse charge was never applied.
The figures filed on the VAT return compared with what the Zoho tax summary actually holds for the same period.
Duplicates and reconciliation
Money counted twice, or money that has quietly stopped matching the bank.
Same vendor, same amount, dates close together — the classic result of a bill entered once from the PDF and again from the statement.
One bill settled twice, or a payment recorded against a bill that was already closed.
The same invoice number issued more than once, which breaks the sequence the FTA expects.
Transactions sitting unmatched well past the point where anyone remembers what they were.
Cheques and deposits in transit carried for months that are inflating the cash position.
The same customer or vendor entered twice, splitting their history and hiding the real balance owed.
Posting and classification
Entries that balance perfectly and still describe the wrong business.
Anything parked because nobody knew where it went, and nobody came back to it.
Manual entries posted straight to receivables, payables or the bank account, bypassing the sub-ledger they are supposed to agree to.
Entries added to a month for which the VAT return has already gone in — which quietly makes that return wrong.
Equipment, fit-out and software written off in full instead of capitalised. This changes taxable profit, so it changes the corporate tax you pay.
Personal expenditure sitting inside business expense accounts, where it is not deductible and should not be.
Expenses posted to an account that contradicts how every previous bill from that vendor was treated.
Completeness and audit trail
What an auditor, a bank or the FTA will ask for, and whether it exists.
Transactions with no supporting document attached. UAE law requires records to be kept for at least seven years, and an entry without a document is an entry you cannot defend.
Missing numbers in the sequence, which invite the question of what was issued and then deleted.
Fixed assets on the balance sheet with no depreciation run for the period.
Month-end adjustments posted once and never reversed, or never posted at all.
Negative stock quantities, and closing stock value that does not agree to the balance sheet figure.
Balances that never tied after a migration into Zoho, which every subsequent period inherits.
What you get
A list of findings, ranked by what they cost
Every finding names the transactions, explains the consequence in plain English, and says what fixing it involves. No score out of ten, no dashboard you have to interpret.
AED 84,200 of overseas software and consultancy costs across 14 months. Output and input tax both understated. Correcting this through a voluntary disclosure costs 1% a month; the same error found by the FTA costs 15% of the amount.
AED 156,000 posted to Repairs & Maintenance in a single month. Treated as capital expenditure and depreciated, taxable profit for the year falls materially — which changes the corporate tax due on the return.
AED 31,450 recorded twice, each pair entered once from the supplier PDF and again from the bank feed. Payables overstated and two of the four vendors have been paid the duplicate.
94 transactions with no account assigned. Until these are coded, the profit figure is an estimate and the VAT recovery on them is unclaimed.
No supporting document on file. Not an error in itself, but each one is an entry you could not evidence if the FTA asked, and records must be retained for seven years.
The figures above are made up to show the format. Your report contains your own transactions, with references you can open in Zoho.
How it works
Four steps, two to three days
You ask
Fill in the form. We reply the same or next business day with exactly what we need and nothing more.
Read-only access
Add us to your Zoho Books organisation with a view-only role. Or send exports instead, if you would rather not add a user at all.
We run the review
The tool works through the checks, then a qualified member of our team reviews every finding before it goes anywhere near you.
You get the report
Findings, references, consequences, and what each would cost to fix. Then you decide — including deciding to do nothing.
A human reads it before you do. The tool finds candidates; it does not decide what is actually wrong. Every finding in your report has been checked by someone who knows UAE tax, because a false positive in a document like this costs you time and costs us credibility.
The commercial bit
Why we give the first one away
Because it is the most honest sales pitch we have. Telling you we are thorough is a claim. Handing you a list of specific things wrong in your own ledger, with the transaction numbers, is evidence.
Most owners who read the report ask us to fix what it found. Corrections are quoted as a separate piece of work, in writing, before anything is touched. A good number then move their monthly bookkeeping to us, which is the actual point. Some fix it themselves or hand it to their existing accountant, and that is a fine outcome too — it cost you nothing and the books end up right either way.
What we will not do is use the report as leverage. There is no countdown, no expiring discount and no follow-up sequence. You get the findings, and we wait.
Access and data
What we need, and what we do with it
Read-only, revocable
A view-only user on your Zoho Books organisation. You remove it when the report arrives.
Nothing is written
No entries posted, edited or deleted during the review. Corrections only happen under a separate signed scope.
Held under client controls
Working files sit in our Microsoft 365 tenant with the same access controls as any client record.
Not shared, not used for training
Your data goes nowhere else, and it is not used to build or train anything.
Exports work too
If access is a problem, send the standard Zoho exports. The review is the same; it takes a little longer.
Questions
Before you hand over access
Is this really free?
The review is free and there is no obligation attached to it. We do it because most owners who read the report ask us to fix what it found, and a meaningful number move their bookkeeping across afterwards. If you take the report, fix everything yourself and never speak to us again, that is a perfectly normal outcome and it still cost you nothing.
What access do you need?
Read-only access to your Zoho Books organisation, added as a user with a view-only role, which you remove when the review is done. If you would rather not grant access at all, export the standard reports and transaction lists from Zoho and send those instead — the review works either way, it just takes a little longer.
Can you change anything in my books?
Not during the review. Read-only means read-only. Nothing is posted, edited or deleted unless you separately engage us to do the corrections, and that is a written scope you approve first.
How long does it take?
Two to three business days for a typical SME organisation once access is in place. Larger files, or several years of history, take longer and we will tell you upfront rather than letting the date drift.
How much history do you review?
The last 12 months by default, because that is what covers your current VAT periods and the most recent corporate tax return. We can go further back — useful if you are preparing for an audit, a sale, or a voluntary disclosure — and we will say so if the findings suggest it is worth doing.
Will this make my current accountant look bad?
Sometimes it does, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. More often it finds the things any busy bookkeeper misses at volume: reverse charge on foreign software, a capital item expensed, duplicates created by a bank feed. Most findings are process problems rather than competence problems, and the report is written that way. It is your data and your report — what you do with it is your call.
What happens to my data afterwards?
Working files are held in our Microsoft 365 tenant under the same controls as client records, and read-only access is removed as soon as the review is finished. We do not pass your data to anyone, and we do not use it to train anything.
Is this a statutory audit?
No, and the name is deliberate. This is a data quality review of your accounting records. A statutory audit is a formal opinion on financial statements, signed by a firm licensed to audit in your jurisdiction. This review often makes that audit cheaper and faster, because the problems are found before the auditor bills you to find them.
Does it work for QuickBooks or Xero?
The checks are built around how Zoho Books structures its data, so that is where it runs today. Tell us what you use and we will say honestly whether we can help yet.
Next step
Find out what is actually in your ledger
One form, read-only access, and a report in two to three business days. If it comes back clean, you have something worth knowing. If it does not, you found out on your terms rather than the FTA's.
Not on Zoho Books? The free assessment works whatever system you use — seventeen questions, and it gives you a package, a fee and your own filing deadlines.
Request your free review
We reply with the access steps and a date for your report.