These businesses look nothing alike from the outside. Underneath, they all commit money on somebody’s say-so and recover it thirty to ninety days later — and the margin is decided entirely by what happened in between.
In a services business the cost is committed by whoever is closest to the work, which is usually the right person operationally and the wrong person financially.
A purchase order that has to be approved before it commits anything is unglamorous, and it is the single control that changes the shape of a services business.
Four documents, each built from the one before it. The value is not in any of them individually; it is that the fourth cannot disagree with the first.
A purchase request captures what somebody actually needs before it becomes a commitment, so the conversation happens while it is still a conversation.
It carries attachments and comments, and an activity timeline showing who did what and when, which is usually the first thing anybody asks afterwards.
Routes can key on the amount, the document type and the warehouse, so a routine order does not need the same signature as a five-figure commitment. Posting is blocked until the sign-off is complete.
Whoever raises a document and whoever approves it can be two different people — which is the whole point, and is enforced rather than encouraged.
Goods received are matched to the order, so what arrived and what was agreed are compared by the system rather than by whoever opens the box.
Stock lands at real cost, and what is still outstanding stays visible on the order instead of surfacing when an invoice arrives.
Vendor bills are raised from the order or the receipt, clearing goods-received-not-invoiced and booking input tax, so a supplier invoice that does not match something is visible immediately.
Payables aging, statements and post-dated cheques all sit on the same ledger.
Post against a cost centre — a contract, a site, a division — and compare it to a budget you set at the start of the year. Budget-versus-actual then feeds the executive dashboard rather than being rebuilt each quarter.
It is a reporting dimension rather than a project ledger, which is an important distinction and one the questions below deal with properly.
In most of these businesses the largest line is people. Attendance, leave and payroll run on the same ledger as the purchasing, so labour cost and supplier cost are not in two different systems.
Which means the monthly figure is assembled once rather than reconciled between an accounts package and a spreadsheet.
No card, no setup call. Bring a request, an order and the invoice that followed, and see whether they agree.
The ledger, the purchasing and the approvals underneath are identical. What changes is what you raise, who owes you, and where the cost has to land.
Multi-currency buying, stock across warehouses, and a bill raised from the order.
Shipments bought in one currency and sold in another, landed at what they really cost.
Recurring service contracts, subcontractor bills and cost tracked per site.
Contract customers on account, consumables issued out of stock, staff paid from the same system.
Manpower on contract, invoiced monthly, with the payroll behind it on the same ledger.
People placed on client sites, billed per contract, with cost per placement visible.
Not a generic retail tool with a currency switch bolted on the side.
Invoices, credit notes and purchases carry VAT as you raise them, with the totals your return needs already summed. See VAT accounting software and what e-invoicing will require.
Sign-off routing on purchase orders, sales orders and stock adjustments, with a full audit trail and closed periods behind it.
Basic covers a single branch from AED 115 a month. Multi-branch stock and transfers start on Professional at AED 215, which covers three — see pricing.
Purchasing, receivables, payroll and the ledger are one platform. In a business whose cost base is mostly other people’s invoices and your own staff, that is where the answer lives.
See the full feature listChart of accounts, journals, AR and AP, post-dated cheques, bank reconciliation, fixed assets and an audit trail — the ledger is here.
Attendance, leave and payroll for the staff whose time you are selling — see HR & payroll.
Post cost against a cost centre and compare it to a budget, so “which part of the business” has an answer.
Equipment on the balance sheet with depreciation posting itself — see assets management.
Ask which suppliers you spent most with this quarter in plain English and get the table back.
Still unsure? Send us a message — a person replies, usually the same day.
Yes. Routes can key on the amount, the document type and the warehouse, so an order above a value you choose is held until it is signed. Posting is blocked until the sign-off completes, and whoever raises a document can be a different person from whoever approves it.
Through cost centres, yes — post cost against a cost centre and report on it, with budget-versus-actual behind it. What there is not is a project or job-costing module that accumulates everything against a job record automatically, so this is a reporting dimension rather than a project ledger. If per-job profitability is central to how you run, raise it with us first.
Yes. Payables aging by bucket, supplier statements, and post-dated cheques tracked through to clearance, all from the same ledger the bills posted to.
Yes, with dated exchange rates and a base-currency ledger that still balances.
Yes. VAT is calculated on every purchase, invoice and credit note as you raise it, in AED, with the totals your return needs already summed.
Not from timesheets. There is no time-entry or billable-hours feature, so an invoice for six weeks of labour is a line you raise rather than a total the system accumulates from recorded hours. Attendance and leave are tracked in HR for payroll purposes, which is a different thing.
Partly. Recurring journals regenerate a saved balanced entry on a schedule, which covers the accounting side of a standing charge. What is not there is automatic recurring invoicing that raises a customer invoice every month on its own — outside the Real Estate module, which does this for leases.
Yes. Multi-branch users and reporting sit on one set of books with role-based access. Multi-branch starts on the Professional plan, which covers 1 branches.
You export it — customers, suppliers, transactions and the full ledger — in formats that open in a spreadsheet or go to another system.
Bring one contract with its purchase orders and supplier bills, and see whether the four documents agree. Fourteen days free, no card, export any time.