If your renewals list lives in one person's spreadsheet and a trade licence or Emirates ID date can slip past it, this is for you. It is not for a desk with no one who owns the renewals list, or an office that only needs shared folders for Office files: name that person first, before you buy or build anything.
What does one missed renewal really cost?
More than the fine, and the fine is the part we cannot give you a number for. Circulating figures for a late Dubai trade licence disagree with each other, and the way the authority combines the lines on a voucher is not something we could find published. So we quote no amount here. The voucher you are handed governs.
The knock-on cost is easier to see. A Dubai business owner wrote on Reddit in July 2026: "My UAE mainland trade license expired in 2025 because my local sponsor had multiple expired licenses under his name, which prevented renewal." After the licence was renewed, they wrote, "my Establishment Card is still blocked, so I can't renew my partner visa." That is one person's account, and their case had more going on than a forgotten date. It shows the shape of the problem: one lapsed paper holds up the next.
A PRO firm's marketing page puts the same fear more bluntly: "I've seen seasoned property managers and business owners lose thousands because they thought they had 'plenty of time.'" It is a vendor's line, not evidence, and we use it only as the claim to test.
What can SharePoint already do with your scans?
More than most "SharePoint can't do Arabic" claims allow. We checked Microsoft's own pages on 15 October 2026.
Microsoft's page also says its included monthly capacity for trying these services ran through June 2026, so that allowance is over. Read the page for today's terms before you plan around any figure here.
One thing we cannot tell you: how well it reads a faint, skewed Arabic scan from a government counter. We found no published test, so we will not claim it either way. You can run the test yourself on your own papers (below).
Who builds the reminder, and who fixes it?
This is the real decision. A reminder on SharePoint is possible, and it is something a person builds.
A Microsoft Q&A answer to a user with an Expiration Date column and a Status column describes a scheduled cloud flow in Power Automate: it runs on a recurrence, gets the files in the library, and updates each one that has passed its date. A UK consultancy's 2022 write-up describes a daily check that sends a 30-day reminder to the contract manager. So the feature exists. We have not verified which Microsoft 365 plans include the flow, so check yours.
What the pages do not describe is what happens when the person who built it leaves. If the flow stops, will anyone on your desk know? That is the question we ask first, and a flow nobody has documented is the case to worry about.
- 01Name who types the expiry date when a paper is filed. A date nobody typed cannot trigger anything.
- 02Name who built the daily check and where it is written down.
- 03Name who receives the email, and a second person who sees it if the first is on leave.
- 04Once a quarter, put one test document with a date 31 days away into the library and see whether the email arrives.
Stay on SharePoint or move?
This is our rule of thumb, not a study. Match your desk to the row.
If you landed on the first or last row, stay. That is a real answer, and we would rather say it before you pay us.
The ten-paper test
Before you decide either way, take ten of your own papers. Include three faint or skewed Arabic scans and a government-counter photo. Put them through each tool you are weighing and write down: which words it got wrong, whether you can find each paper by a client's Arabic name, and who on your desk set it up. It takes an afternoon. It is the one test no web page can do for you.
What does Vault do on day one, and what is left out?
Mindcat Vault is a document system we host and run in the UAE or Saudi Arabia. A clerk scans a licence, Vault reads the Arabic and English text so any word can be searched, the clerk files it to the client with a type and an expiry date, and the date joins an "Expiring in the next 90 days" list on the dashboard. A reminder rule runs on that date field: 30 days before, the document is labelled Expiring soon and your desk gets an email. You can change the days, the label and who gets it.
The difference from the SharePoint route is not a feature Microsoft lacks. It is that the list, the reading and the reminder are already built and we keep them running. What is left out matters as much:
- Arabic text reading and the reminder email are switched on during setup, not on day one. The reminder needs your mail connected.
- Clean scans read well. Faint or skewed ones get some words wrong, so we test your own documents in setup.
- Vault does not read an Emirates ID or a passport into fields. Your team types the expiry date.
- The Arabic screens are partly translated and run left to right. Right to left is not there yet.
- Dates are Gregorian. There are no Hijri dates.
- There is no client portal. Clients cannot log in to see their own files: you send a link to a file that stops working on a date you set.
- There is no WhatsApp intake, UAE PASS or Nafath sign-in. A passport photo a client sends on WhatsApp is saved and dropped onto the page, or forwarded to the mailbox Vault reads.
- We store your copy on encrypted disks. The app itself does not encrypt files.
- Scanning a paper archive is quoted separately.
If your clients need to log in and see their own files, another product fits better today. Papers that need signing are a separate job: after it is signed, the PDF can sit in Vault, and Mindcat Sign is the signing part.
What would 15 users cost?
Our page prices each person who signs in during the month, on bands: AED 59 for users 1 to 5 and AED 39 for users 6 to 20. For 15 users that is 5 × 59 + 10 × 39 = AED 685 a month, plus 5 percent UAE VAT. There are no per-document or per-page fees, and 20 GB of storage per user is included.
The per-user price comes with a monthly minimum, so no one can buy two seats at the per-user rate. On the shared plan the minimum is AED 449, so a 3-person office pays 449.
Up to 20 users, the quick start is a fixed package we set up for AED 2,500 one time: your own copy on our UAE servers with your logo, our office template with document types and expiry dates for trade licences, Emirates IDs, visas, tenancy contracts and title deeds, Arabic and English text reading, the expiry list and the reminder emails, your users from our CSV template, and recorded training. We send the payment link within 24 hours. Annual prepay takes 15 percent off.
Weigh that against what the SharePoint route costs you in someone's hours, plus the OCR meter. We will not put a number on that for you: only your desk knows who would build it. Nothing about the product guarantees a renewal. The reminder goes out on time; acting on it stays with your desk.
What happens in the first session?
We call the method Nothing expires unseen: every date on the dashboard, and an email before each one. You tell us how many people need access, what papers you hold and which dates you track. We reply with the setup plan and the monthly price per user, in AED. If your desk already has a named owner for a SharePoint flow that works, or you only need shared folders, we will say so and point you back to the ten-paper test. If the renewals list lives in one head, tell us your team size and we start from it.
