Saudi Payslip Format: What It Must Show and How It Matches WPS

The direct answer: the rule and its legal source

Saudi law does not set a fixed payslip layout in the Labor Law text. The duty sits in Article 17 of Royal Decree No. M/51 of 2005, which says an employer must keep records, statements and files at the workplace, with their nature and contents set in the Regulations. The Implementing Regulations then list what those records must hold. Under Article 5 of the Regulations, the records may be paper or electronic, and the wage payroll record must include the wages, the dates they were received, the amounts deducted and the reason for each deduction. A payslip is the practical way to give the employee that same information for each pay period.

Article 90 of the Labor Law adds two points that affect the payslip. Wages and all other entitlements are paid in the official currency, which is the riyal. Monthly-paid staff are paid once a month. The law also defines a month as 30 days unless the contract or work regulation says otherwise, and that definition drives the daily-rate arithmetic used for unpaid absence.

The payslip is also tied to the Wage Protection System. The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development (HRSD) runs the Wage Protection Program through the Mudad platform, and the ministry's own service page states that wage files are now uploaded only through the Compliance System in Mudad. The payslip does not replace the wage file. It is the employee-facing copy of the same numbers.

Saudi Arabia has no personal income tax on employment income, so a Saudi payslip has no income tax line. The lines that do appear are earnings, GOSI, other authorised deductions and net pay.

How the figure is worked out, step by step

1. Start with the contract wage. List the basic salary and each allowance the contract or the work organisation regulation names, such as housing, transport and other fixed allowances. Each one gets its own line.
2. Add variable pay for the month: overtime, commission, bonus or other additions. Put each one on its own line with the reason and the calculation, so the employee can check it later.
3. Work out the GOSI contributory wage. For Saudi nationals and expatriates, the contribution base is basic salary plus housing allowance. Transport, food and bonuses are described in GOSI-related guidance as excluded from that base, and the base is capped at SAR 45,000 a month. Sources differ on how commissions are treated for GOSI, so check the current GOSI guidance before you fix that line.
4. Apply the GOSI employee rate. For a Saudi national who was already registered before 3 July 2024, the employee share is 9.75%, made up of 9% pension and 0.75% for unemployment insurance (SANED). For a Saudi national who first joined on or after that date, the employee rate steps up each year, reported as 10.25% from July 2025 and 10.75% from July 2026, rising by 0.5 points a year to 11.75% by July 2028. An expatriate pays no employee GOSI share, while the employer pays 2% for occupational hazards.
5. Subtract the other authorised deductions. These include loan instalments, advances and unpaid absence. Each one needs a written basis, such as the employee's signed consent or a clause in the contract.
6. Calculate net pay: total earnings minus total deductions. This is the figure the employee should receive in the bank account.
7. Check the net against the wage file before upload. The file carries the employee's identity number (National ID or Iqama), the contracted salary, the amount actually paid and the deductions. The net paid must match the bank transfer, and the difference between contract and paid must be fully explained by the deduction lines.

The employer's own GOSI share is not normally shown on the employee's payslip. It is a cost to the business, so the employee copy only needs the employee share.

Worked example with real numbers

Take a Saudi national with the legacy GOSI rate. The contract pays a basic salary of SAR 8,000, housing of SAR 2,000 and transport of SAR 500. In the month, the employee has one unpaid day of absence. The table below shows how the payslip lines should add up.

In the wage file, the contracted salary stays at 10,500, the amount paid is 9,175, and the deductions add up to 1,325. If the file shows a different net, or the deductions do not add to the gap, the file will not agree with the payslip. The employer's own GOSI share in this example would be 11.75% of 10,000, which is SAR 1,175. That is an employer cost and does not appear on the employee's payslip.

Cases that change the answer

Expatriate staff. The employee GOSI line is not needed, because the employee pays no share. The employer's 2% occupational hazards share still applies, and it is not shown on the employee payslip.

Saudi nationals who joined on or after 3 July 2024. The employee rate is not 9.75%. It is the stepped rate for the year the payslip covers. Several sources agree on the 10.25% and 10.75% steps, but the year-by-year table should be taken from GOSI itself before it is hard-coded into a payroll sheet.

High salaries. The contributory wage stops at SAR 45,000. At the legacy 9.75% rate, the employee share on a base at the cap is SAR 4,387.50 (9.75% of 45,000, with the 0.75% SANED share included). Pay above the cap does not raise the GOSI line.

Deductions and the half-wage limit. An unofficial English translation of the Labor Law reproduces Article 93 as stating that deductions may not exceed half of the wage due, unless the Commission for the Settlement of Disputes allows more. Check that wording in the official Arabic text before you rely on it. Recovering an advance or loan should be shown as its own line, so the total stays inside that limit.

Resignation and end of contract. The final payslip can carry leave pay and other end-of-contract items, and the employee's payout depends on the leave still owed. Check the leave and final-pay articles in the official Labor Law text and the Regulations, because the articles that set those rules are not repeated in the payslip itself.

Reducing pay or hours. If a change to pay, hours or role would reduce what an employee receives, the Labor Law notice, consultation and severance rules apply, and the change should be agreed with the employee or checked with a lawyer before it goes on a payslip.

Common mistakes

The most frequent error is calculating GOSI on the total package. The base is basic plus housing only, so an allowance added to the transport line does not raise the contribution. The second error is letting the payslip net and the bank file net drift apart, usually because an absence deduction was entered in payroll but not in the file.

Wage file rejections often come from identifiers rather than maths. A mistyped Iqama number or IBAN can stop a file from matching, and a new hire who is paid before the contract or GOSI registration is complete can appear in the file without a matching record. Check the identifiers against the registration before each upload.

Some employers use old GOSI rates for new Saudi hires, or assume the employee rate never changes. Others keep only a paper payslip with no electronic copy and cannot retrieve the record during an inspection. Article 5 of the Regulations accepts paper or electronic records, but the record must exist and be retrievable at the workplace.

Upload deadlines are another source of confusion. Sources disagree on the Mudad deadline, with some describing the 10th of the month, others one business day before payday, and others 30 days after the due date from 1 March 2025. The figure is not stated in the official text reviewed, so confirm the current deadline on Mudad before you set the payroll calendar.

What to check with HR or a lawyer

Confirm the contract wage components with the employee's signed contract, especially whether housing is paid in cash or provided in kind, because the GOSI treatment differs. Confirm the current GOSI rate for each employee by joining date, using GOSI's own publications. Confirm the Mudad upload deadline and the bank channel on the Mudad platform itself.

Confirm in writing that each recurring deduction is authorised, and keep the record for the period the regulator requires. The Labor Law text does not state a minimum retention period, so ask HR or a lawyer to confirm which record-keeping rule applies to your business rather than relying on a vendor's guide. Software can calculate a line and flag a mismatch, but it cannot decide whether a deduction is lawful or whether a pay change is acceptable. A person has to make that decision.

This explains the rule in general terms; it is not legal or tax advice for your case.

How employers take payroll checks off their staff

Many employers still rebuild the payslip and the wage file by hand each month, copying figures from attendance sheets, allowance schedules and the bank portal. Routine work of this kind can be handled by an AI worker that reads the approved monthly inputs, calculates each line from the rules the owner has set, and compares the net with the file before upload. The payroll lead still approves the run, signs off the deductions and keeps the records.