Arabic-first bookkeeping

Your books, finally in a form the bank will accept.

Hisabaya is invoicing, expense tracking and tax-ready books for small merchants and service businesses. Issue an invoice from your phone, photograph the receipt, keep the running tab you already keep — and end the period with a summary your accountant can actually file.

Start free for 30 days Talk to an accountant partner

No card required during the trial. Works on one phone or ten. Your accountant gets access on every plan.

Sales · July 2026 Sample data

Invoices issued this month, with VAT calculated at 16%.
Invoice	Customer	Date	Net ₪	VAT 16%	Total ₪	Status
INV-2418	Al-Amana Bakery	12 Jul	1,250.00	200.00	1,450.00	Paid
INV-2419	Nablus Auto Works	14 Jul	3,400.00	544.00	3,944.00	Sent
INV-2420	Zaytouna Pharmacy	18 Jul	860.00	137.60	997.60	14d late
INV-2421	Bilal Electrics	21 Jul	2,150.00	344.00	2,494.00	Paid
Total, 4 invoices			7,660.00	1,225.60	8,885.60

Cash on hand ₪ 24,310.00 +3,180.00 vs. June

Owed to you ₪ 8,571.60 1,790.00 over 30 days

Receivables by age bucket
Current	5,144.00
1–30 days	1,637.60
Over 30 days	1,790.00

Illustrative product view with sample figures — not a real business.

Language: Arabic-first interface and invoice templates, with English available side by side.
Tax periods: Built around the local 16% VAT rules and bi-monthly filing periods.
Device: Designed for the phone already in the till drawer, not a back-office desktop.
Your accountant: Free collaborator access on every plan, including the trial.

The honest version

Most small businesses don't have bad books. They have books only one person can read.

A paper ledger and a spreadsheet can run a shop for years. What they can't do is answer a question from an accountant, a tax office, or a loan officer within the week they ask it. Here is what that costs.

01

The ledger lives in the owner's head

Paper books and Excel files use shorthand nobody else understands. When the owner is away, the business can't say what it earned last month.
02

VAT filing becomes an annual panic

Receipts get gathered the week before the deadline, some of them are gone, and the return is assembled from memory rather than from records.
03

Receivables go uncollected

Regular customers buy on a running tab. Nobody tracks who owes what or for how long, so money that was earned is quietly written off.
04

There is no credible record when credit is needed

Access to credit is a binding constraint on small business growth here. Clean books are the missing input — and the bank will not accept a notebook.

The solution

Bookkeeping built for shop-scale reality.

Not a scaled-down enterprise accounting suite. Hisabaya starts from how a shop, a workshop or a clinic actually takes money in and pays money out, and produces the documents the rest of the world asks for.

Issue a VAT invoice in Arabic from a phone, in under a minute.
Photograph a receipt; the expense is categorised and filed against the period.
Track customer credit the way you already sell — running tabs, not payment terms.
Close the period with the VAT summary your accountant asks for, not a data dump.

VAT summary · period 4 · Jul–Aug 2026 Sample data

Every line traces back to the invoices and receipts behind it.
Line	Basis	Net ₪	VAT ₪
Sales — standard rate	128 invoices	42,180.00	6,748.80
Sales — zero rated	6 invoices	3,940.00	0.00
Purchases & expenses	94 receipts	18,450.00	2,952.00
Unmatched receipts	flagged for review	0.00	0.00
Output VAT on sales		46,120.00	6,748.80
Less input VAT on purchases		18,450.00	−2,952.00
Net VAT payable this period			3,796.80

Sample period. Hisabaya prepares the summary; filing and final responsibility stay with you and your accountant.

What's in it

Seven things, done properly.

We would rather do a short list well than ship a long one badly. Everything below is core to the product, not an add-on tier.

Arabic-first invoicing with VAT

Invoice templates written in Arabic first, with the VAT breakdown, sequential numbering and buyer details a compliant document needs.

Receipt capture and categorisation

Photograph the receipt at the counter. The expense is logged, categorised and attached to the right tax period before you lose the paper.

Customer credit ledger

A running tab per customer, exactly as it is kept on paper today — with a balance that is always current and always visible.

Automated payment reminders

Overdue balances chase themselves, in your wording and on your schedule. You decide who gets a reminder and who gets a phone call.

VAT and tax period summaries

Output VAT, input VAT and the net position for the period, with every figure traceable to the document that produced it.

Accountant collaboration access

Give your accountant their own login with the permissions you choose. No exported spreadsheets, no emailed photographs of ledgers.

Reconciliation and statements

Match cash and bank movements against the books, then produce profit-and-loss and balance figures in the shape a loan file expects.

Running tab · Umm Yousef Sample data

A tab, kept the way it is kept on paper — with the balance carried forward on every line.
Date	Entry	Charge ₪	Paid ₪	Balance ₪
02 Jul	Balance brought forward	—	—	180.00
05 Jul	Goods on tab	64.50	—	244.50
11 Jul	Cash payment	—	200.00	44.50
19 Jul	Goods on tab	118.00	—	162.50
28 Jul	Cash payment	—	100.00	62.50
Month total		182.50	300.00	62.50

What makes it different

We modelled the tab, not the invoice.

Small merchants sell on informal running tabs with regular customers. Most accounting software insists that becomes an invoice with payment terms — so the shop keeps a second, paper set of books, and the software stops reflecting reality within a week.

Hisabaya treats the tab as a first-class record. Add a charge in three taps, take a part payment, carry the balance forward. When you need a formal invoice for that customer, the tab converts into one with the VAT already correct — and the same entries feed the receivables ageing and the period summary.

Part payments and carried balances, without forcing a due date.
One tap turns a tab into a numbered VAT invoice when it's needed.
Every tab feeds the ageing report, so old debt stops hiding.

Receivables

Who owes what, and for how long.

The ageing report is the single view that turns a vague sense of "people owe us money" into a collection list you can work through on a Tuesday morning.

Aged receivables · as at 31 Jul 2026 Sample data

Balances by age bucket. Anything past 30 days is flagged for follow-up.
Customer	Last activity	Current ₪	1–30 ₪	31–60 ₪	60+ ₪	Total ₪
Nablus Auto Works	14 Jul	3,944.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	3,944.00
Hebron Tile Co.	09 Jul	1,200.00	640.00	0.00	0.00	1,840.00
Zaytouna Pharmacy	18 Jul	0.00	997.60	0.00	0.00	997.60
Sameh Upholstery	22 May	0.00	0.00	1,310.00	480.00	1,790.00
Total outstanding		5,144.00	1,637.60	1,310.00	480.00	8,571.60

Illustrative figures. On narrow screens the middle buckets collapse and the total stays visible.

How it works

Four steps, and the first one takes an afternoon.

STEP 01
Set up the shop

Business details, VAT registration number, your invoice numbering and the categories you actually use. Import an existing customer list from a spreadsheet if you have one.
STEP 02
Record as you trade

Invoice from the phone, add charges to a customer's tab, photograph purchase receipts. Nothing is entered twice and nothing waits for the end of the month.
STEP 03
Chase what's owed

Check the ageing list weekly. Send reminders in one tap, or mark a balance for a phone call. Payments land back against the right tab automatically.
STEP 04
Close the period

Reconcile cash and bank, review the flagged items, then hand your accountant the VAT summary and statements from inside the same account.

Pricing

Priced by how much you trade, not by how many features we withhold.

Every plan includes Arabic invoicing, receipt capture, the credit ledger, VAT summaries and free accountant access. The tiers differ by transaction volume and by how many businesses you manage.

Solo

Freelancers, contractors and one-person shops

$9/ month

Up to 50 documents a month
One user, unlimited customers
Receipt capture and expense categories
VAT period summary and free accountant login

Start free for 30 days

Most shops start here

Small business

Retail, workshops, restaurants and clinics with 1–20 staff

$24/ month

Up to 500 documents a month
Up to 5 staff users with per-role permissions
Credit ledger with automated payment reminders
Cash and bank reconciliation
Statements formatted for a loan application

Start free for 30 days

Accountant portal

Practices managing many small clients

$99/ month

Up to 25 client businesses on one licence
One dashboard across every client's period status
Bulk period close and export
Partner listing for practices taking new clients

Talk to an accountant partner

Prices are in US dollars, billed monthly, and shown before any local taxes that may apply. A document is an invoice, a receipt or a tab entry. Go over your plan's volume and we'll tell you before we move you up — never after.

Where we are

We'd rather show you an empty scoreboard than a borrowed one.

Hisabaya is early. Rather than dress the page with numbers we haven't earned, here is exactly what we intend to publish, and update, once real businesses are running on it.

Businesses using Hisabaya: —Counted as accounts with activity in the last 30 days. Published monthly from launch.
Invoices issued per month: —Total documents issued across all accounts, reported as a rolling monthly figure.
Days to collect, before → after: —Average receivables collection time, measured per business against its own first month.

Who is building it

Hisabaya comes out of An-Najah's accounting and finance community in Nablus. The people writing the VAT logic are the people who were taught the rules — and who go on to work in the practices that will use the accountant portal.

What we don't claim

We are not certified by any tax authority and we don't file on your behalf. Hisabaya prepares the records and the summary; you and your accountant review and submit them. If that changes, we'll say so here with the date it changed.

Thirty days is long enough to close one period.

Set the shop up in an afternoon, trade through a month, and see the VAT summary come out the other end. If it isn't better than what you do now, stop — there's no card on file to cancel.