Company: Ethics Plus UAE
Industry: Accounting & Financial Services
Client Background
Ethics Plus UAE is a Dubai-based public accounting and audit firm providing audit and assurance, accounting, taxation, CFO services, business valuation, risk management, and other advisory services.
As the firm’s accounting records accumulated several months of pending transactions, maintaining an accurate view of its financial position became increasingly difficult. Accounts Payable (AP), Accounts Receivable (AR), and Journal Entries (JEs) had not been consistently recorded, reviewed, or reconciled, creating uncertainty around outstanding balances and historical transactions.
The growing backlog also made routine accounting activities more time-consuming and affected the reliability of management reporting. The client engaged OBS to take ownership of the historical bookkeeping cleanup, identify gaps, correct inaccurate records, reconcile outstanding balances, and establish a clean accounting foundation for ongoing bookkeeping.
Client Challenges
- Historical Bookkeeping Backlog: Several months of accounting activity remained incomplete, leaving the finance team with a significant volume of historical transactions requiring review and updating.
- Unreliable AP & AR Balances: Missing invoices, duplicate entries, unapplied payments, and incorrect postings made it difficult to determine the actual amounts owed to vendors and outstanding from customers.
- Incomplete Journal Entries: Some transactions were either missing Journal Entries or had been posted to incorrect accounts or accounting periods, requiring detailed review and correction.
- Reconciliation Gaps: Differences between accounting records and supporting documentation created additional reconciliation work and made historical balances difficult to validate.
- Duplicate & Incorrect Transactions: Duplicate postings and classification errors increased the risk of inaccurate financial reporting and required transaction-level investigation.
- Delayed Financial Reporting: The unresolved backlog extended the time required for month-end activities and reduced the finance team’s ability to rely confidently on historical financial information.
Client Goals
The primary objective was to bring the accounting records up to date and create a reliable foundation for ongoing bookkeeping and reporting.
The client wanted to:
- Clear the historical bookkeeping backlog.
- Establish accurate AP and AR balances.
- Identify and correct duplicate or incorrectly posted transactions.
- Complete missing and inaccurate Journal Entries.
- Reconcile vendor and customer balances.
- Improve the reliability of financial reports.
- Reduce time spent investigating historical transactions.
- Create clean opening records for ongoing bookkeeping.
Our Solution
OBS approached the engagement as a complete bookkeeping cleanup exercise, rather than simply entering the missing transactions. Each area was reviewed, corrected, reconciled, and subjected to quality checks before the books were considered ready for ongoing accounting.
1. Historical Records & Data Review
We first established the extent of the backlog by reviewing available accounting and supporting records, including:
- Bank and credit card statements
- Vendor invoices and AP reports
- Customer invoices and AR aging reports
- Existing accounting system records
- Payment and receipt details
- Supporting documentation for Journal Entries
Transactions were organized by accounting period and activity type, allowing the team to identify missing records, inconsistencies, duplicates, and transactions requiring further investigation.
2. Accounts Payable Cleanup
The OBS team conducted a detailed review of historical vendor transactions to establish an accurate picture of outstanding liabilities.
Our team:
- Recorded missing vendor invoices.
- Matched invoices with supporting documentation.
- Verified vendor names, dates, amounts, and payment status.
- Identified duplicate invoices and postings.
- Corrected incorrectly recorded transactions.
- Reconciled vendor balances.
- Updated AP aging records.
This gave the client a more dependable view of what was actually outstanding across its vendor accounts.
3. Accounts Receivable Cleanup
Historical customer transactions were reviewed with the same level of detail to ensure receivables were properly reflected in the accounting records.
We:
- Updated missing customer invoices.
- Verified invoice dates and amounts.
- Matched receipts against outstanding invoices.
- Identified unapplied customer payments.
- Reviewed duplicate and incorrect postings.
- Reconciled customer balances.
- Updated AR aging records.
The result was a clearer and more reliable picture of customer receivables and overdue balances.
4. Journal Entry Review & Corrections
OBS reviewed historical Journal Entries to identify missing entries, classification errors, and transactions requiring adjustment.
The process included:
- Reviewing available supporting documentation.
- Identifying missing Journal Entries.
- Validating debit and credit accounts.
- Correcting classification errors.
- Posting required adjustment entries.
- Confirming the appropriate accounting period.
- Maintaining supporting documentation for audit trail purposes.
5. Reconciliation & Quality Control
Once AP, AR, and Journal Entries had been updated, the team performed a final reconciliation and quality review.
This included:
- Vendor balance reconciliation.
- Customer balance reconciliation.
- Transaction-level verification.
- Bank and payment matching where applicable.
- Duplicate transaction checks.
- Period-wise completeness checks.
- Final validation of outstanding balances.
This final layer helped ensure that the cleaned records were not simply complete, but also internally consistent and supported by available documentation.
Results Achieved
Through the bookkeeping cleanup engagement, OBS helped the client move from a historical accounting backlog to a more reliable and organized financial record.
- Cleared several months of pending AP, AR, and Journal Entry activities.
- Reconciled historical vendor and customer balances.
- Identified and corrected duplicate and incorrectly posted transactions.
- Improved visibility into actual AP and AR outstanding balances.
- Reduced the manual effort required to investigate historical transactions.
- Established cleaner records for ongoing monthly bookkeeping and reporting.
Business Impact
The value of the engagement extended beyond clearing the backlog. By bringing historical records into a more organized and reconciled state, OBS gave the client’s finance team a dependable starting point for current-period accounting.
The team no longer had to spend significant time revisiting old transactions to understand whether balances were accurate. Management gained greater confidence in financial information, while the internal finance team could shift its attention from historical cleanup to current accounting, reporting, and business priorities.
The engagement also strengthened the supporting documentation and audit trail around historical transactions, creating a more sustainable accounting environment for future reporting and compliance requirements.
From Backlog to a Reliable Accounting Foundation
What began as a historical bookkeeping backlog became an opportunity to rebuild the underlying accounting records systematically.
By reviewing transactions at the AP, AR, and Journal Entry level, reconciling balances, correcting errors, and validating supporting documentation, OBS helped the client establish a cleaner and more dependable financial foundation.
With the historical records brought under control, the client was better positioned to maintain accurate monthly books, produce more reliable financial reports, and move forward without the burden of unresolved accounting issues from previous periods.