An audit in this country is a licence condition, a banking condition, or both. CA Audit Dubai has planned these engagements from Office 512 since 2024 — around the actual reader, not a template. We do not treat a DMCC renewal pack as if it were a mainland statutory audit, and we do not sign an opinion we have not tested.
Statutory and independent audit
For companies required to present annual financial statements with an external auditor’s report, we plan materiality against the licence, the year-end, and the accounting framework in use — typically IFRS. The file includes bank confirmations, inventory attendance where stock matters, related-party testing, and a management letter that names the issues rather than burying them in boilerplate. The opinion is independent: we will not audit a set of books this office has prepared without the safeguards an external engagement requires, and we will say so in the letter before work starts.
Licence-renewal and group reporting
Free-zone authorities still ask for audited statements as a condition of renewal. We assemble the pack the zone actually files — not a generic PDF — and we schedule the work so the licence date is not a surprise in week fifty-one. Groups with a UAE branch or subsidiary get a reporting pack that a parent auditor can use: aligned year-end, mapped trial balance, and a clear note of local adjustments. If the parent sits outside the UAE, we still write the local file as if the FTA or the zone will read it tomorrow.
Bank, facility and liquidation assignments
Banks in Dubai ask for comfort that the numbers behind a facility still hold. We issue audit-based reports and certificates scoped to the facility letter — turnover, receivables, related-party balances — rather than a second full statutory opinion nobody requested. On a wind-down, a liquidation audit documents what remains, what was realised, and what the authority or the court will expect to see. That is a different engagement from a going-concern year-end, and we scope it as such.
What this desk covers
Statutory annual audit
Year-end financial statements with an independent auditor’s report for mainland and free-zone companies that must file annually.
View this service →External / independent audit
An opinion from this office when your books are kept elsewhere — or a clear decline if independence cannot be maintained.
View this service →Free-zone licence-renewal audit
Audited statements and supporting schedules in the form DMCC, JAFZA, IFZA, SHAMS and similar zones still require for renewal.
View this service →Group, branch and subsidiary audit
Local statutory work plus a reporting pack a parent or consolidating auditor can tie into without re-inventing the UAE file.
View this service →Bank-facility audit reports
Certificates and agreed procedures aligned to a facility letter, covenant or credit-review request from a UAE bank.
View this service →Liquidation audit
A closing audit of realisation, remaining assets and liabilities when a licence is surrendered or a company is wound up.
View this service →Questions we are asked
Do free-zone companies in Dubai still need an annual audit?
Most operating free-zone licences still require audited financial statements as part of renewal or ongoing compliance. The exact pack differs by zone. Send the licence and last renewal notice and we will tell you what that authority asked for last year — and what it is likely to ask for this year.
Can you audit statements that your accounting desk prepared?
Independence rules matter. If this office has kept the books, we will not simply “stamp” the same file. We will either introduce an independent reviewer arrangement or recommend an external auditor. That conversation happens in the engagement letter, not after fieldwork.
How long does a statutory audit take from this office?
A straightforward trading company with a complete trial balance and bank letters typically sits in a four-to-six-week window from a complete file. Groups, inventory-heavy businesses and first-year audits take longer. We put a timetable in the letter once we have seen the licence and the prior-year statements.
Will a UAE bank accept your facility report?
Banks accept reports that answer the facility letter, on a letterhead they can call. We scope the certificate to the bank’s request and keep working papers that support every figure. If the bank names a format, we follow it; if it does not, we issue a report a credit team can file.