Startups and VC-backed companies

Runway does not wait for month end

A founder recalculating burn and runway by hand before every board meeting is working from stale numbers by the time the deck goes out. Finbryn builds burn and runway calculation into the monthly close itself, formatted the way a board expects, so the figures in the deck match the figures in the ledger rather than a separate hand-built model.

Equity and quasi-equity instruments cause the most damage when recorded incorrectly. SAFE-style and convertible note instruments common in Gulf seed rounds need to sit correctly on the balance sheet as a liability or equity instrument depending on their terms, not blended in as ordinary paid-in capital, because a mistake discovered at the next round is far more expensive to unwind than one caught the month it happened.

Free zone incorporation and investor diligence

Most venture-backed UAE startups incorporate in DIFC or ADGM, both of which operate under English common law with their own companies regulations, a structure many international investors are more comfortable diligencing than a mainland entity. A DIFC or ADGM entity's Qualifying Free Zone Person status under Corporate Tax, its UBO filing, and cap table consistency are all things a diligence team checks early, and inconsistent books slow down or derail a raise at the worst possible time. We build the chart of accounts to match what a diligence team typically expects, so a data room request does not turn into a scramble.

Corporate Tax on an early-stage company

Corporate Tax at 9% on taxable income above AED 375,000 applies once a startup is profitable, though most pre-revenue and early-revenue companies fall below that line or qualify for Small Business Relief with revenue at or below AED 3,000,000, for tax periods ending on or before 31 December 2026. The Corporate Tax registration deadline still applies even where no tax is currently due, and missing it carries a fixed AED 10,000 penalty, which the FTA's waiver initiative can lift if the first tax return is filed within 7 months of the first tax period end.

Working with Finbryn

You keep ownership of your Xero file. A named pod handles your account and any change in that pod comes with a recorded handover memo. Books are reconciled weekly and closed by business day five, in your time zone, with pricing published on our pricing page and terms set out in your engagement letter. Catch-up work for a company that grew fast on manual spreadsheets is priced separately from ongoing monthly bookkeeping.