ERP for IT Services. From SOW to utilisation: every billable hour tied to revenue.
An IT services firm sells capacity. Kinnow ties each SOW to its timesheets, milestones, support tickets and invoices, so utilisation, bench and margin come from one record instead of three tools. This edition covers UAE VAT first, with Saudi VAT alongside.
From December 2026How will Kinnow help an IT services firm in the UAE or Saudi Arabia? A statement of work (SOW) becomes an engagement with milestones, a rate card by role and approved timesheets. Time-and-materials hours and completed milestones become invoices without double billing, support tickets run on service-promise (SLA) plans, and recognised and deferred revenue come from the contract. The UAE and Saudi editions arrive from December 2026; nothing on this page is live in the region today, and nothing is billed, filed or paid without a person.
Your firm, in one paragraph.
You sell people. Revenue is billable days on time-and-materials work, milestones on fixed-price work, and monthly support on managed-service and annual maintenance (AMC) contracts, often for a Dubai or Abu Dhabi enterprise, a government-linked company or a Riyadh group. Cost is the same people, billable or not, so the gap between the two is the bench. SOW milestones sit in one tool and timesheets in another, invoices wait for someone to reconcile them, and a support ticket after go-live is rarely charged to the engagement that created it. Multi-element contracts get their revenue rebuilt in a spreadsheet at every close.
The regional layer adds its own work: a tax invoice that carries your TRN (tax registration number), a quarterly VAT return, cloud and software bought from abroad that has to be accounted for under reverse charge (you account for the VAT yourself), and a monthly wage file for the bank. Three things keep the delivery head awake: bench time hidden inside an average, a milestone that slips while a team stands idle, and an incident resolved outside the agreed window that turns into a credit note.
How your month runs on Kinnow
Kinnow's ready-made setup for IT services (we call it an industry pack) gives you two step-by-step routines: SOW to utilisation and Incident to resolved. Amounts below are in AED; the approval limits are starting figures you set.
| Step | Who | What Kinnow does | Where a person approves |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Opportunity to SOW | Sales head | The pipeline in Sell takes an opportunity through requirement, SOW proposed, rates negotiated and signed. | Signing the SOW is a step-up approval. Large open deals raise a warning. |
| 2. Create the engagement | Delivery head | An engagement is opened in Build with milestones, a rate card by role and staffing. | Contracts above your set value need project approval. |
| 3. Deliver and report time | Consultants | Timesheets are filed against the engagement. A chaser lists missing and stale ones. | The engagement lead approves, or sends back with a reason. |
| 4. Accept milestones | Delivery head | A deliverable is submitted for acceptance, can be sent back, and accepted work is billing evidence. Scope drift is compared with the agreed effort. | Client acceptance recorded. |
| 5. Invoice | Accounts | Approved hours are invoiced at the rate frozen on each timesheet; a completed milestone is invoiced once. A batch key stops double billing. The tax invoice carries your TRN and VAT at 5%. | An invoice above your set value needs approval (the UAE starting figure is AED 500,000). |
| 6. Support after go-live | Support lead | Tickets run on SLA plans with response and resolution due times. A ticket outside a plan is blocked. A defect can be escalated into the engineering backlog, which parks the ticket on hold until it is fixed. | The client confirms the fix before closure. |
| 7. Recognise revenue | Finance controller | A contract is split into performance obligations by standalone selling price, a waterfall is built under IFRS 15, and a monthly recognition run posts the journal. | A manager activates the contract. |
| 8. Collect | Accounts | The client sees and can dispute the invoice in the customer portal; Collections drafts reminders by days overdue. | Escalated reminders go to a person. |
| 9. Pay the team | HR and finance | The UAE payroll run computes pay, accrues end-of-service (the gratuity owed to staff on leaving) for expatriates, and produces the WPS salary file (the wage-protection file your bank asks for) for the bank. | The payroll run is signed off above the set figure. |
| 10. Close and file | Accounts head | Month-end checks run before the books close. The groundwork to draft the quarterly VAT return for review is completed before launch, and your team uploads it. | Books closed and the return approved by people. |
Bring one live SOW; we will show it from timesheet to tax invoice to recognised revenue.
Utilisation, bench and what a ticket costs
Utilisation over capacity
Billable hours over each person's weekly capacity, never over hours worked, so a bench cannot hide. Bands run from bench to over-committed; a person with no recorded capacity is shown as unknown, not 0%.
Capacity forecast
Allocations by week show who is free next month, useful when a Riyadh or Abu Dhabi client asks for a team at short notice.
Support cost against the engagement
The engagement P&L counts support tickets. Work done and never billed raises a warning, since it quietly reduces margin until renewal.
Revenue by obligation
Several elements in one contract are allocated by selling price and recognised as each is satisfied. Deferred revenue is a balance, not a side sheet.
The ready-made setup for IT services, and the UAE rules
Two sets of limits apply. The industry setup shapes delivery and support; the UAE country setup shapes tax, payroll and journals. Figures are starting points in AED, to be set to what your firm wants reviewed.
| Limit | Starting figure | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Support ticket outside an SLA plan (industry setup) | Always | Blocked |
| Support work never billed (industry setup) | Always | Warning |
| Delivery commitment and open deal value (industry setup) | Set with you in AED | Project approval and warning |
| VAT return, net payable (UAE country setup) | Over AED 1,000,000 | Approval |
| Tax invoice value (UAE country setup) | Over AED 500,000 | Approval |
| Manual journal (UAE country setup) | Over AED 500,000 | Approval |
| Purchase order, including foreign suppliers under reverse charge (UAE country setup) | Over AED 500,000 | Approval |
| Payroll run, gross (UAE country setup) | Over AED 5,000,000 | Approval |
Sixteen processes come on with four sign-off routes (who approves, in what order): engagement, journal, return filing and invoice. Fifteen Ask Kinnow starters and ten reports come with the industry setup, including the engagement register, milestone status, service-promise (SLA) status for tickets, attrition, project cost and support cost by engagement. The UAE country setup adds a VAT sales register, a purchase register and a rate summary.
Agents for an IT services firm
Engagement Margin Watch
Compares revenue, delivery cost and support cost as the SOW runs and flags drift before the final bill. Shows unknown, not healthy, when it cannot price one.
SLA Alert
Flags a ticket at risk of breaching from its response and resolution due times against now.
Contract Renewal Watch
Sweeps contracts nearing their end date so the renewal conversation is scheduled before the AMC lapses.
Project Risk
Scores schedule slip and billing burn from milestones on every engagement.
Collections
Drafts overdue reminders and steps them up according to how many days a payment is actually late. A person approves each reminder before it goes out.
Account / KnowCash-flow Forecaster
Builds a rolling cash forecast for the next 30, 60 and 90 days from post-dated cheques, bills due and how customers have paid in the past, with a range around each figure to show how sure it is.
ComplyFiling Prep
Builds the sales-tax return file from your books and lists every document it left out, with the reason, for a person to clear before filing.
VaultAsk Kinnow
Answers questions from your documents and from the records of the applications you use, and only shows what the person asking is allowed to see.
Every agent is validated with each client before it works on their books, and every output waits for a person.
Ask us which of these agents we would switch on first for your delivery team.
Tax and payroll calendar for the UAE and Saudi Arabia
Kinnow prepares and exports; your team uploads to the authority's portal. Dates are set by the Federal Tax Authority and the labour authority, so your tax lead confirms them for your period.
| Obligation | Where | What Kinnow prepares |
|---|---|---|
| VAT return (VAT-201) | UAE, quarterly | The groundwork for a draft return from the sales and purchase books, sales split by emirate, with data-quality warnings, completed before launch. The layout is checked with a UAE tax adviser before the first filing. |
| Reverse charge on imported services | UAE | Output and input sides of reverse charge, for cloud and software bought from abroad, on the same return. |
| Tax invoice | UAE | Invoice templates in English and Arabic, checked for mandatory fields such as your TRN before it is issued. |
| Wages through WPS | UAE, monthly | The salary file for the bank, from an approved payroll run. Expatriate end-of-service is accrued; pension contributions apply to UAE and GCC nationals. |
| VAT return | Saudi Arabia | VAT at 15% and a draft return structure for review. Filing is by your team on the authority's portal. |
Corporate Tax: the compliance engine can compute the 9% charge above AED 375,000 from the taxable income your accountant supplies; it is a computation, not a return. A Corporate Tax return is not in the first release.
What the owner sees
| Ask Kinnow | Answer built from |
|---|---|
| Which engagements are behind on milestones? | Project milestone status |
| Which support tickets are close to breaching? | Ticket SLA status |
| Which engagements are losing money once support is counted? | Support cost by engagement |
| Which support work has been done but never billed? | Support cost by engagement |
| What VAT did I charge this quarter? | UAE VAT sales register |
| Which supplier invoices are missing a TRN? | UAE VAT purchase register |
Each answer shows its source and cost before it runs. Veil, our privacy layer, holds back bank, tax and ID numbers and swaps names for placeholders before an AI call. It covers Ask Kinnow and most agents today; the rest are being added.
See your own bench and support cost on Kinnow, with your SOWs loaded.
Questions
Can Kinnow show utilisation and bench?
Yes. Billable hours are measured against each person's weekly capacity, with bands from bench to over-committed, and a capacity forecast by week from allocations.
Does it handle revenue recognition?
Yes. A revenue contract is split into performance obligations by standalone selling price, a waterfall is built per obligation under IFRS 15, and a monthly run posts the recognition journal. A manager activates each contract.
Can I bill time-and-materials and milestones on the same engagement?
Yes. Approved timesheets and completed milestones are separate sources, each invoiced once and never twice, and they share one ledger.
Does Kinnow replace our issue tracker?
No. Issues, sprints and releases are there at a basic level, with tickets escalated into them, but source code and CI/CD stay in your DevOps stack.
Does it support Saudi Arabia as well as the UAE?
Saudi Arabia arrives from December 2026 with VAT first. ZATCA e-invoicing is planned after launch, and Saudi payroll is not part of the first release, so a Saudi company would run payroll elsewhere for now.
How long does set-up take?
About two weeks to first results for one company: masters, rate cards and opening balances in the first week, agents switched on and a first close in the second.
Show me Kinnow for IT Services.
Answer three questions. Get the applications, the agents and a two-week plan for your business.