Overview
A Dubai-based group operating four entities across trading, distribution, and commercial property leasing. The group grew but its finance function stayed largely manual, run in-house by a small team using spreadsheets and entity-level records that had never been fully standardized. The engagement focused on migrating the Client’s bookkeeping to a structured outsourced model, tightening the monthly close, and building the reporting discipline the group needed to support its continued growth.
Key Challenges
Four entities kept separate books with no standardized chart of accounts, which made group-level reporting slow to assemble
Month-end close regularly ran past three weeks, limiting how quickly leadership could see group performance
Invoice approvals and vendor payments were handled differently across entities, with no consistent workflow or visibility into what was outstanding
The in-house finance team, sized for an earlier stage of the business, had limited capacity to build out structured forecasting and reporting as the group scaled
Financial reporting to ownership relied on manually assembled spreadsheets rather than one consistent, repeatable format
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Unison Direct's Solution
Multi-Entity Bookkeeping Migration and Chart of Accounts Standardization
- Migrated bookkeeping for all four entities onto a single cloud accounting platform
- Designed and implemented one standardized chart of accounts across the group, mapped back to each entity's historical records
- Established consistent transaction coding and reconciliation procedures across entities
- Built a clean data foundation for group-level reporting and future audit readiness
Monthly Close and Management Reporting
- Introduced a structured monthly close calendar with defined deadlines for each entity
- Automated recurring reconciliations and journal entries to reduce manual close work
- Delivered a standardized monthly management reporting pack, consolidated across all four entities
- Gave ownership a single, consistent view of group performance in place of four separate spreadsheets
Accounts Payable and Receivable Process Management
- Standardized accounts payable and receivable workflows across all four entities
- Centralized invoice intake, approval routing, and payment scheduling onto one process
- Introduced structured aging reports so each entity's outstanding receivables and payables were visible in one place
- Cut the average time to process and approve a vendor invoice by roughly a third
Finance Process Documentation and Virtual CFO Oversight
- Documented standardized finance procedures covering bookkeeping, close, and reporting across the group
- Set out clear role definitions between client’s internal team and Unison Direct's outsourced function
- Introduced a Virtual CFO checkpoint to review the group's monthly numbers with ownership before the reporting pack goes out
- Set the foundation for the group's finance function to scale without rebuilding process from scratch each time
Results
Cut average month-end close time by 3 days across the group
Reduced average vendor invoice processing time by roughly 30% through standardized AP workflows
Consolidated four entities onto one standardized chart of accounts and reporting structure
Gave ownership a single monthly reporting pack, reviewed through a Virtual CFO checkpoint, in place of four separate spreadsheets
Positioned the group's finance function to scale as new entities are added
“We used to spend the first three weeks of every month just closing the books. Now we spend that time actually looking at the numbers.”
