RecoveryAudit

No. A recovery audit is not a statutory requirement under UAE law, unlike VAT or corporate tax filings. It is a voluntary internal review carried out to identify overpayments, duplicate payments, missed discounts and vendor overcharges. Businesses typically commission one to recover lost funds and tighten payment controls, particularly after periods of rapid growth or system changes.

Recovery audit fees depend on the size of your accounts payable ledger, the volume of transactions to be reviewed and the period covered, so they are quoted after a proposal rather than published as a fixed rate. Get in touch with your transaction volumes and review period and a firm quote can be prepared.

Timeframes vary with the size of the business and how far back the review needs to go, since older records and multiple vendor accounts take longer to reconcile. A focused review of a single financial year can often be completed within a few weeks, while a multi year audit across several entities will take longer.

Any business with a high volume of vendor payments, complex procurement processes or multiple entities is a good candidate, since these conditions increase the chance of duplicate payments and missed credits going unnoticed. Whether it makes sense for your business depends on your transaction volume and how long it has been since your accounts payable process was last reviewed.

You will generally need to provide accounts payable ledgers, vendor invoices, purchase orders, payment records and contracts covering the period under review. Bank statements and any existing reconciliation reports also help speed up the process. The exact list depends on how your accounting records are kept and the scope agreed for the audit.

A recovery audit reviews payment records against invoices, contracts and purchase orders to identify duplicate payments, pricing errors, unclaimed discounts and vendor overcharges. It also looks at whether internal controls allowed these errors to occur, so the findings usually come with recommendations to prevent recurrence rather than just a list of recoveries.