What is TARS and how Dubai rental companies work with it

What is TARS in RTA

TARS stands for Transportation Activities Rental System. RTA launched it online in October 2021 for all types of rented transport: cars, heavy vehicles, buses and motorbikes. By then RTA had registered all rental companies in the system, moved their existing contracts into it and trained 989 rental companies in Dubai.

The portal is at tars.rta.ae. A company gets access once it has a Traffic File number and an activity permit: it creates an account on the RTA website and signs in to TARS with it. Technical questions go to tars.support@rta.ae.

What is TARS in UAE

TARS is a Dubai system. RTA runs it for rental offices in the emirate of Dubai.

How to log in to TARS

The TARS login is at tars.rta.ae. It sends you to RTA’s own sign-in page, and you log in to TARS from there.

1. Open tars.rta.ae and press Login. The RTA page has two Login buttons: one leads to UAE PASS, the other to a username and password. ALVI uses the username and password of the company’s RTA business account.
2. RTA then asks where to send a one-time code: to the email or to the phone of the account. ALVI picks the email; the other option is an SMS to the company number.
3. The code has 4 digits and expires in five minutes. Enter it and you are in.

A session lasts about an hour, so don’t leave a contract half-filled for long. After that you have to log in again.

Each employee signs in with their own account. Every staff member who works in TARS needs an RTA business account. The administrator adds that person in TARS under Company → Employees.

When you can’t get in:

• The code doesn’t come. Check the email or phone linked to the account. A code older than five minutes no longer works, so ask for a new one.
• Login leads to UAE PASS. You pressed the other Login button. To use a username and password, go back and press the second one.
• “Please login to access this page!” The session has expired. Log in again.
• Nothing helps. Write to tars.support@rta.ae.

The unified rental contract

In March 2026 RTA ran a public campaign for the unified rental contract, which applies to all rental offices in Dubai. According to RTA, it protects both the rental company and the renter through TARS. The portal now has a separate Unified Contracts section. What the contract covers:

• details of the car, the renter and the deal;
• the car’s condition at pickup and at return, recorded with photos;
• the renter accepts the contract with a one-time password (OTP), which works as a digital signature;
• no undisclosed charges, including extra charges for passing toll gates;
• the renter does not pay for damage from accidents or for the time the car is under repair, and the security deposit is returned within the set period.

In ALVI, the company’s own signed agreement goes into TARS as an attachment to the contract.

Contract types in TARS

TARS has more than one kind of contract. Here is which one to open.

The wizard takes one car at a time, so plan on one contract per car.

A B2C contract, step by step

Contracts → Rentals → + NEW B2C. The wizard has five steps.

1. Vehicle. Search by plate number and pick the car. TARS pulls your cars from RTA’s vehicle records, so you don’t type them in. The car has to be AVAILABLE: if it is still on an ACTIVE contract, TARS won’t take it.
2. Customer. An existing customer, or a new one as a Resident (Emirates ID), a Tourist (passport) or a GCC national (GCC ID). You enter the name in English and Arabic, gender, nationality, date of birth (18 or older), the driving licence and its dates, and upload scans of the documents.
3. Contract. Agreement number, start date and time, expected return date, rental location, the employee handling it, odometer and fuel level, and the scan of the contract the customer signed.
4. Additional details. Extra drivers.
5. Summary. Check everything, accept the terms and press Submit.

Two details that save time later:

• The start time is the one written in the signed contract, not the moment you type it into TARS. If the car left at 10:00 and you register the contract at 11:30, the start is 10:00.
• Use the number from your own contract as the agreement number. Then a contract in your system and in TARS is easy to match.

B2B contracts

Contracts → Rentals → + NEW B2B. The steps are the same, with two differences:

• instead of a customer you enter the business: company name, trade licence number and dates, address, emirate and phone, plus the company representative;
• drivers on a B2B contract are residents with an Emirates ID.

The 3-hour window

In practice, Dubai rental companies work to a 3-hour window: the contract should be in TARS within 3 hours of handing over the keys. The start time in TARS is the time on the signed contract, so register it as soon as you can.

What helps you keep to it:

• prepare the customer’s documents before the keys go out, not after;
• don’t leave contracts for the end of the shift;
• have one person check every evening that each car that left today has an ACTIVE contract.

Cars driven by your staff

When your own employee drives a car, it is not a rental. TARS has a separate document for this: the Non-Revenue Voucher (NRV). You find it in Contracts → Non-Revenue Vouchers.

An NRV has no customer and no payment. You enter the car, the driver (your employee), the start, the estimated return date, who the car is sent to and who authorised it, fuel and mileage, and attach the documents. When the car comes back, you close the NRV with the location, return date and time, mileage and fuel. Close it as soon as the car is back, before it goes on a rental.

For a workshop visit there is a separate Maintenance contract. It works the same way.

Overdue contracts

A contract becomes overdue when the expected return date has passed but the contract is still ACTIVE. This happens when the customer keeps the car longer, or when the car came back and nobody closed the contract.

• The customer keeps the car. Open the contract → Actions → Modify. Modify changes the customer details, the scan of the contract and the drivers. According to RTA’s FAQ, the rate can be changed this way too, for example from daily to monthly. Modify does not change the car: for another car, use Replacement. RTA’s published material does not spell out how to move the expected return date, so check what the form allows or ask TARS support.
• The car is already back. Close the contract with the real return date and time. TARS only accepts a return time that has already passed, so a late closure is still possible.

While a contract stays ACTIVE, the car can’t go on a new contract.

Closing a contract

Contracts → Rentals → find the ACTIVE contract → Actions → Close Contract. You enter the return location, return date and time, odometer, fuel and the car’s condition, then accept the terms and conditions. Close Contract stays inactive until you do. The contract becomes CLOSED.

When you close a contract, TARS shows the Salik and fines on the car. That’s the moment to check what the customer owes.

Replacement. If the customer swaps cars, open the contract → Replacement. The contract number stays the same. You enter the return of the old car and the pickup of the new one: time, place, fuel, odometer, plus the replacement form signed by the customer.

Fines

Two kinds of fines matter for a rental company.

RTA penalties against the company. Rental activity in Dubai is regulated by Executive Council Resolution No. 47 of 2017, as amended by Resolution No. 2 of 2022. It requires rental companies to subscribe to and register on the systems and platforms RTA adopts. The schedule of fines in the 2022 version includes, for example:

• renting out vehicles without a permit: AED 5,000;
• working after the permit has expired: AED 1,000 for each month of delay.

A repeat of the same violation within a year doubles the fine, up to AED 10,000. On top of a fine, RTA can issue a written warning, suspend the activity for up to six months or revoke the permit. We did not find a separate line for late TARS registration in the published schedule. For the current amounts, check with RTA’s Licensing Agency.

Traffic fines, Salik and parking during a rental. They are issued to the car, not to the renter. Salik and parking are tied to the plate and the time. To charge the right customer, someone has to match every charge to the dates of the rental. Fines from radars and from other emirates can arrive after the car is back, so a closed contract is not the end of the story.

Where contracts get stuck

These are the cases our system watches for:

How ALVI works with TARS

ALVI is a car rental company in Dubai. The system is our case: we built it for ALVI, and it is live.

• The contract assembles itself at key handover. The system takes the data from the order and the signed handover form, checks the documents, and the contract is registered in TARS automatically.
• It closes itself at key return. Readings come from the signed return form, and the contract is closed in TARS.
• No duplicates. Each contract has one number from ALVI’s register. Before sending, the system checks whether that contract is already in the portal, so a retry is safe.
• Charges land on the right rental. Salik and DARB tolls, parking and fines are attached to the rental whose dates they fall into.