Abu Dhabi runs on its own paperwork. A mainland licence comes from the Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development through the TAMM platform, while the free zones — ADGM, KEZAD, Masdar City — each have their own registrar and their own reporting, so two companies on the same road can sit under entirely different rulebooks.
The bigger change is fiscal. Alongside 5% VAT since 2018, UAE corporate tax under Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022 applies at 9% on taxable income above AED 375,000 for tax periods beginning on or after 1 June 2023, with Small Business Relief available to smaller businesses under Ministerial Decision No. 73 of 2023. An Abu Dhabi SME that had no tax filings five years ago now has two, and bookkeeping that lived comfortably in a spreadsheet now has to survive being looked at.
Unnatio is in development and is not available to buy today. Nothing here is tax advice either: the tax and licensing facts above are the published position as we checked them, each one linked to its source so you can verify it yourself, and the decisions that follow from them belong to you and your accountant. If a vendor tells you their software makes you compliant, that vendor is selling you something that does not exist.
ADDED licenses mainland businesses through TAMM; ADGM, KEZAD and Masdar City operate their own registries. What you record about a sale is the same either way — who you report it to, and in what form, is not.
VAT at 5% has applied since 1 January 2018. Corporate tax under Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022 applies at 9% above AED 375,000 of taxable income for periods starting on or after 1 June 2023, with Small Business Relief for smaller businesses under Ministerial Decision No. 73 of 2023 — a relief with its own eligibility and end date, so confirm the current position with the FTA rather than with a blog post. The practical effect is that your records now have a second audience.
The Ministry of Finance has set the phasing: a voluntary pilot from 1 July 2026, then businesses with annual revenue of AED 50 million or more appoint an Accredited Service Provider by 30 October 2026 and go live on 1 January 2027, and businesses below AED 50 million appoint one by 31 March 2027 and go live on 1 July 2027, with government entities live on 1 October 2027. It covers business-to-business and business-to-government invoices; business-to-consumer is out of scope for now. Invoices become structured data exchanged through accredited service providers and reported to the Federal Tax Authority — so software bought today should be able to hand that data over later without a rebuild.
Cards, bank transfers and increasingly the Aani instant payment platform (2023) and the Jaywan domestic card scheme (2024) handle day-to-day money — but post-dated cheques remain normal for rent and larger commitments, which means a system that only understands instant settlement cannot describe your receivables.
Government-facing documents are Arabic-first, while the operating language on the floor is often English, Hindi, Malayalam or Urdu. Right-to-left support is a layout requirement, not a translation setting, and the difference is obvious the first time an invoice prints.
Unnatio ships ready-made workspaces for more than 80 business types on six domain cores — appointments, field service, rental, trade, pipeline and project — so a group running a garage, a rental portfolio and a salon is not buying three systems that do not reconcile.
One compliance engine covering India GST and GCC VAT, per-outlet TRN, gap-free invoice numbering, credit notes and branded PDF invoices — with an invoice spine designed for UAE Peppol e-invoicing as the mandate phases in.
Every record is scoped to its organisation and outlet by construction, with OTP-first login, role-based access and an append-only, tamper-evident audit log behind payments, refunds and exports. That is the shape of record-keeping a tax audit is comfortable with.
English, Malayalam, Hindi and Arabic across the interface, PDFs and messages, resolved per contact — so the same system serves an Arabic-reading customer and an English-reading supervisor.
Flat per-outlet pricing in INR and AED, with no per-seat charge and no commission on sales — which matters most for a business whose headcount moves with the season.
Everything above is a Unnatio capability, described on its own page in full detail — and the fastest way to find out whether it fits Abu Dhabi is to put your actual workflow in front of us.
Twenty-two base verticals across six domain cores, with more than 80 business types as flavours of those — salons, gyms, garages, AMC and field service, rentals and societies, retail counters and pharmacies, real-estate desks, projects and production. The vertical explorer on the Unnatio product page lists them, and the configurator lets you pick yours and see what a workspace would look like.
No. It is in development, which we label on every page rather than only in the small print. If you want to be involved while it is being built, say so — that is a more useful conversation than a waiting list.
No. It keeps records and produces documents — invoices, credit notes, audit trails, exports. Filing is done by you or your accountant, and any software marketed as filing your UAE tax returns for you deserves a very close look before you believe it.
Less than people expect on the software side. What a business records about a sale, a customer and a payment is the same; what changes is which registrar you report to and how your tax position is determined. The second part is your accountant's territory, not ours.
Every regulation, rate and deadline on this page is the published position as of August 2026, linked so you can check it yourself. Rules move, so verify anything you are about to make a decision on — and none of this is tax or legal advice.
Facts last re-checked against these sources on 2026-08-31.
We would rather hear how the counter runs on a Tuesday than send you a brochure. If our software is the wrong answer for you, we will say so on the first call and point you somewhere better.