I am not a tax adviser and none of this is tax advice. It is a list of things I have watched business software get wrong here, and what I would make a vendor demonstrate before signing. Where a rule has a number attached, ask your accountant rather than me, because those numbers change and this article will not.
Dirhams, and the rate on the day
VAT is worked out and reported in dirhams. If you sell in another currency the software has to convert, and what matters is which rate it used, on what date, and whether it keeps hold of that rate permanently.
A system that quietly recalculates an old invoice at today's rate will hand you a return that does not agree with the invoices sitting behind it, and you will discover that during the one conversation where you would rather everything agreed. Ask to see an invoice raised in a foreign currency, then ask to see the same invoice again after the rate has moved.
The invoice is a legal document, not a printout
A tax invoice has to carry particular information, including your tax registration number and the tax shown in dirhams, and the numbering has to run in a sequence that neither skips nor repeats. Whether you also need Arabic on it depends on who you are selling to. Assume you will, and be pleased if you do not.
Credit notes are where products come apart. Ask the vendor to cancel an invoice from a tax period that has already been reported, in front of you, and show what happens to the figures. Then ask about a deposit taken now against goods handed over later, a sale that carries no tax, and a sale to a customer outside the country. Any of those four can turn out to be something somebody has to write for you afterwards.
Nothing already issued should be quietly changeable
A surprising number of products let somebody edit or delete an invoice that has already gone out to a customer. It is convenient, and it is the thing most likely to cause you difficulty if anybody ever inspects your records.
What you want is that a correction happens through a new document, that nothing already issued can be altered without leaving a trace, and that the system keeps a record of who changed what and when. Ask to see that record on screen. If the vendor has to go away and find out, you have your answer.
Your records have to outlive your software contract
You are required to keep records for a number of years, and I am deliberately not going to say how many, because it depends on the type of record and it can change. The part that concerns your software is the same whatever the number turns out to be: the obligation sits with you, and it will still be sitting with you long after you have stopped paying the vendor.
So ask three things before you sign. What happens to the records if you stop paying. Whether you can take everything out in a form a human being can read without the vendor's product in front of them. And where those records physically sit, which in this country is a question with a real answer rather than a formality.
Invoices are turning into data
The direction across the region is away from an invoice as a document you send a customer and towards an invoice as data your system reports as it happens. I am not going to put dates or scope on that here, because both have moved before and will move again, and your accountant will know what applies to you.
What you can do now is ask your vendor in writing what their plan is and who pays for it. "We will support it when it is required" is not a plan. It is a hope with a support ticket attached. A vendor who has already been through this in another country will be able to tell you what it took them.
Who to ask, and in what order
Your accountant or tax adviser first, and the question is what applies specifically to you, which is not the same as what applies to the business next door. Then the software vendor, in writing, against that list. Then the authority's own published guidance for anything where the two disagree.
The order matters. Do not let the vendor be your source for what the rules are. They are a supplier answering a sales question, and the answer to a sales question is always yes. One arrangement that costs nothing: have your accountant sit in the demonstration. They will ask the two questions you would not have thought of and recognise a vague answer well before you do.
A product built for another market can usually be made to do all of this. The thing to price is not the alterations themselves. It is who owns them afterwards and what happens to them each time the vendor releases an update, because that is a bill that arrives every year rather than once.
If you are choosing a system now and want a second opinion on what a vendor has actually committed to in writing, send the list over and I will tell you what is missing from it.
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