A RERA escrow audit goes smoothly when the work was done all year and painfully when it was not. Use this checklist to walk in with nothing to fix. Each step maps to something an auditor will actually test.
The checklist
- Reconcile the escrow account to the bank. The escrow ledger and the bank statements should match to the dirham, with every difference explained.
- Confirm inflow completeness. Tie every buyer payment on the payment plan to a deposit in the escrow account. Nothing should have been collected or parked outside it.
- Test every withdrawal for eligibility. For each release, confirm it is a permitted, project-related cost with an invoice or contract behind it. Set aside anything that looks like overhead or marketing.
- Match withdrawals to certified progress. Check that releases line up with the certified stage of construction and are not running ahead of the build.
- Verify the retention. Confirm the required retention, commonly 5%, is still held and was not released before the completion and handover milestones allowed it.
- Check segregation.Make sure this project's funds are clearly separate from other projects and from company money.
- Organise the documentation. Gather the certificates, invoices, contracts, and statements that support every entry, indexed so an auditor can find each one quickly.
- Assemble the audit pack. Put the reconciliations, evidence, and summaries together in the format your auditor expects, so the review is a read-through rather than a scavenger hunt.
Where audits most often get flagged
A few issues come up again and again:
- An ineligible withdrawal, such as a marketing cost, paid from escrow.
- A release that ran ahead of certified construction progress.
- The retention released too early.
- A reconciliation that does not tie out, or a missing document behind a transaction.
- Buyer money briefly held outside the escrow account.
Almost all of these are invisible on a spreadsheet until the audit, when there is no time left to fix them.
Make it painless year-round
The real fix is not a better audit week, it is never being unready in the first place. If your account is reconciled continuously and issues are caught as they happen, the annual audit becomes a formality.
Plinth runs this checklist for you all year. It reconciles the account, flags ineligible or premature withdrawals, tracks the retention, keeps documentation linked to each entry, and exports the finished audit pack in one click.