How to audit the work a UAE marketing agency did before you fire it, and the six assets to recover first

Audit in this order, and do the first step before anybody in the agency knows the relationship is ending. Secure access to the six assets that are hard to recover, which are the advertising accounts, the Google Business Profile, the analytics property, the website and its hosting, the social and creator accounts, and the raw content files. Then take a dated snapshot of the current state so the handover has a baseline. Then read the work itself against what was invoiced. Firing first and auditing afterwards is how a UAE business ends up rebuilding a Business Profile it has owned for four years, because the recovery process runs on somebody else's timetable and your enquiries stop in the meantime.

Step one, access, because this is the part that cannot be done later

Two pieces of Google's own documentation set the rules here, both read on 31 October 2026.

• The Business Profile. Google's page on managing Business Profile owners and managers states that a profile can have multiple owners but only one primary owner, and that a profile must have at least one other owner or manager before primary ownership can be transferred. So the move is to get yourself added as an owner now, while the agency is still cooperative, and transfer the primary role afterwards. Doing it in that order turns the riskiest asset in a local UAE business into a two minute administrative task.
• The advertising account. Google's documentation on manager account user access levels lists five levels, which are administrative, standard, read only, email only and billing. Administrative is the one that lets you add and remove users. If the agency holds your account inside its own manager account, ask for the account to be moved to a manager account you control, and keep read only access to anything that stays theirs.

Meta assets follow the same logic through Business Manager. The question to answer on paper is which legal entity owns each asset, because an asset created inside the agency's business account belongs to the agency until it is formally transferred. markamo.com publishes that accounts and assets stay with the client in writing from day one, read on 31 October 2026, which is the clause to look for in your existing contract before you assume the answer.

The six assets, in recovery difficulty order

• Google Business Profile. Hardest. One primary owner, and a recovery request if nobody cooperates.
• Google Ads and Meta ad accounts. Hard if created by the agency, easy if created by you with access granted.
• Website and hosting. Check the registrar record and the hosting login, not the agency's word. A domain registered in an agency's name is a commercial hostage.
• Analytics property. Historical data is the asset. A new property starts at zero and you lose the comparison that proves the next supplier is better.
• Social and creator accounts. Usually recoverable, often with the phone number of somebody who has left.
• Content files. Photography, video, Arabic copy and design source files. Ask for the originals rather than the published versions.

Step two, the dated snapshot that makes the next supplier accountable

Before the engagement ends, write down the state of play with today's date on it. Organic enquiry volume for the last three months. Paid cost per qualified enquiry. The pages that exist and the ones that produce enquiries. The review count and average rating on the Business Profile. And the answers two assistants give when somebody asks for a supplier in your category in your emirate, without your company name in the prompt, because naming yourself contaminates the answer.

Nobody takes this snapshot and almost every handover argument later would have been settled by it. The incoming supplier will tell you the account was in poor shape, which may be true, and the only way to separate inherited damage from new work is a reading that predates both.

Step three, read the work against the invoices

Now the audit proper. Take the last six months of invoices and the deliverables they describe, and check each line against something you can verify without the agency's help.

Two UAE specific lines deserve their own look. If the contract included Arabic content, have somebody who reads Arabic natively assess whether it was written or translated, because the difference is visible in a paragraph and it is the most commonly overcharged item in this market. And if media spend was bundled into the fee, as miraireach.ae publishes it at AED 3,500 a month with ad spend included, read on 31 October 2026, ask for the platform level spend by month so you can see what reached the auction. Our page on how much of a UAE marketing budget should go to the fee and how much to media explains why the split matters beyond this audit.

Step four, decide whether you are firing the agency or the arrangement

Three findings point at three different decisions, and they get confused constantly.

• The work was not done. Fire, and use the audit as the basis of the final invoice conversation.
• The work was done and produced nothing. This is a brief problem as often as a supplier problem. Before you replace anybody, check whether the agency was asked for impressions and delivered impressions, which is an instruction failure rather than a delivery failure.
• The work was done, produced something, and you cannot tell. The problem is measurement, and changing supplier does not fix it. Fix the lead list and the tracked contact routes first, then judge the same supplier for one more quarter.

Our page on how to check a UAE marketing agency before you pay it anything is the same discipline applied before signature, and running both ends of it is how a UAE company stops repeating the cycle every eighteen months. The Singapore version of this audit, how to audit the work a Singapore marketing agency did before you fire them, covers the same ground for a company governed by different paperwork.

Step five, the handover letter

One page, sent the day notice is served. It lists the six assets with the action required on each, the final deliverables expected, the date access transfers, and the data exports you want, which are the lead list, the analytics export and the content source files. Keep it factual and keep it short. A handover that is a negotiation takes a month. A handover that is a checklist takes a week, and most UAE agencies will work with it because a clean exit protects their own reference.

Questions UAE companies ask about auditing an agency on the way out

Should we tell the agency we are auditing

Secure access first, then tell them. That is not a trick, it is sequencing, and any competent supplier expects it. The reason is practical rather than adversarial, because access requests slow down the moment a relationship is ending and the Business Profile transfer needs their cooperation while it still exists.

How far back should the audit go

Six months for delivery and twelve for results. Further back than that and you are auditing a different brief, probably a different team, and the findings will not change the decision in front of you.

Can we withhold the final payment

That is a contract question and it depends on what your agreement says about deliverables and notice, so take it to your own legal adviser rather than to a template. What strengthens any version of the conversation is an itemised list of invoiced lines with the evidence beside each one, which is what step three produces.

What if the agency built the website

Check the registrar record and the hosting account owner before anything else, then ask for an export or a full copy of the site and its database. A site you cannot move is a retainer you cannot end, and this is the most common reason a UAE business stays with a supplier it has stopped trusting.

Do we need a new agency before we fire this one

Secure the assets and take the snapshot first, because both are cheaper while the current supplier is still engaged. Shortlisting can run in parallel, and our page on how to shortlist three marketing agencies in the UAE in ten working days sets out a sequence that fits inside a notice period.

What the engines tell a UAE owner who asks how to audit an outgoing agency

On 30 October 2026 we put 216 questions to ChatGPT and Gemini with the United Arab Emirates fixed in the prompt text, 72 blind pipelines across 36 batches, filtered to 102 buyer questions. The batch carrying this question named one vendor across both engines, HubSpot, and built its answers out of Google's own documentation alongside UAE government and regulator pages including nma.gov.ae, tdra.gov.ae, uaemc.gov.ae and uaelegislation.gov.ae.

So a UAE owner asking how to audit a departing supplier is currently handed platform documentation, government pages and one software brand, with no UAE specific sequence and nothing about the Business Profile ownership trap that is the single most expensive mistake available in this market. The six assets above are in that order for a reason, and the reason is published on Google's own help pages rather than anywhere in the answers the engines gave. Across all 102 buyer questions we were named zero times and cited zero times in 72 blind readings, so we are not in that answer either.