Retention is longer than most agencies assume
UAE tax and regulatory requirements generally expect financial records to be retained for a period of years, not months — long enough that "it's on someone's old laptop" or "it was in an email that got deleted" isn't a defensible answer if records are ever requested for audit or dispute purposes.
Where spreadsheet-based retention falls short
A spreadsheet stored on a single person's computer, without a consistent backup and archiving process, is genuinely fragile over a multi-year retention period — hardware fails, files get overwritten, staff who managed the file leave without a clear handover.
What durable record-keeping actually requires
Reliable long-term retention needs centralised storage (not one person's device), regular backups, and a structure that makes old records genuinely searchable years later — not just technically present in an archive nobody can navigate.
How Muhasib supports this
Every booking, invoice, and transaction in Muhasib is stored centrally in the tenant database rather than on individual devices, with the historical record remaining searchable and reportable years after the fact.