Bookkeeper (UK & UAE) – Xero & AI

About us

Urban Chic is a premium serviced apartment brand with design-led apartments across central London and Abu Dhabi. We are a growing, vertically integrated group of companies spanning operations, technology and property. We run several UK and UAE entities from our Abu Dhabi office and invest heavily in our own tools and automation.

The role

You will own day-to-day bookkeeping for our UK and UAE businesses – and help us build the tools that make finance faster and more accurate. We want someone dynamic who enjoys technology and AI, sees a manual process and wants to automate it, and is happy working alongside our developers on our internal systems. Full-time, on-site in our Abu Dhabi office, reporting to the Director & Founder.

Day-to-day bookkeeping (UK & UAE)

• Maintain the books for multiple UK and UAE entities in Xero
• Accounts payable: enter and code supplier bills (documents attached, tracked to the right property), prepare payment runs for approval
• Accounts receivable: raise and issue invoices, allocate receipts, chase corporate debtors and OTA/agent remittances
• Daily bank reconciliations across all entities, including OTA payouts (Booking.com, Airbnb, Expedia etc.) and payment-gateway settlements
• Intercompany transactions and reconciliations; credit notes, refunds, guest deposits and commission bills

Month-end, reporting & compliance

• Month-end close: accruals, prepayments, reconciliations, P&L and balance sheet review
• Monthly management accounts and budget-vs-actual reporting by entity and property
• UK and UAE VAT returns (with our external accountants); support year-end and audits

Systems, automation & AI

• Use AI tools daily to work faster – reading invoices, matching payments, drafting chasers, analysing data
• Help design, test and improve our in-house tools – invoicing module, owner portal and finance dashboards – working with developers
• Improve integrations between our PMS (Guesty), Xero, bill-capture tools and reporting

Review, supervision & clean-up

• Manage and review the work of our accounts assistant, setting checks and quality standards
• Act as finance lead when working with developers and consultants on systems built by others: define requirements, test and sign off changes
• Audit historical sales and income: reconcile bookings to Xero invoices and receipts, and correct errors; clear legacy balances and intercompany differences

Essential

• 4+ years' hands-on bookkeeping in a multi-entity business, including reviewing or supervising others' work
• Strong Xero skills (multi-entity, bank feeds, tracking categories, bills, budgets)
• Working knowledge of UK and/or UAE bookkeeping and VAT
• Demonstrable interest in IT and AI – you already use AI tools (ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot) in your work and can give examples
• Proven at investigating and cleaning up historical records
• Accurate, organised and self-driven; excellent written and spoken English

Desirable

• Serviced apartments, hospitality, short-term rental or property experience
• OTA payout reconciliation; Guesty or another PMS; Hubdoc, Dext or similar
• Low-code / no-code tools, APIs or basic scripting; AAT, ACCA (part-qualified) or equivalent

What we offer

• Competitive AED salary
• UAE employment visa and health insurance
• Annual leave in line with ADGM Employment Regulations; six-month probation
• Real input into the tools you use in a growing, tech-led business

Please apply with your CV and a short note on how you use AI in your work.

Ability to commute/relocate:

• Abu Dhabi: Reliably commute or planning to relocate before starting work (Required)

Application Question(s):

• Have you personally prepared or submitted VAT returns (UK or UAE)?
• Give one specific example of how you use AI tools (e.g. ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot) in your bookkeeping work today.

Experience:

• bookkeeping: 4 years (Required)
• Xero: 2 years (Required)

Work Location: In person