UAE Payslip and WPS Salary File Rules for Each Month

The direct answer: the deadline, the threshold and the file

Ministerial Resolution No. 340 of 2026 (sometimes written 0340) replaced Resolution No. 598 of 2022. The old rule let payroll follow each contract's due date and gave employers a 15-day grace period. That grace period no longer exists. Wages for June are due on 1 July, and a payment on 3 July counts as late. Several law-firm summaries describe the same date, so the rule itself is not in doubt.

The legal chain is worth knowing if you ever have to explain it to a bank or an auditor. Article 22 of Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021 on the Regulation of Labour Relations requires wages to be paid on time through a system the Ministry approves. Cabinet Resolution No. 1 of 2022 requires registered establishments to pay through the Wage Protection System (WPS) or an approved system. Resolution 340 of 2026 then sets the unified 1st-of-month date, the 85 percent test and the enforcement steps. Read the official text on the MOHRE website and the UAE Legislation portal before you rely on any summary, including this one.

The Salary Information File is the data file behind each transfer. It is not the document the employee keeps. Think of the SIF as the record the bank reports to MOHRE, and the payslip as the explanation the employee checks against the contract.

How the figure is worked out, step by step

There are two tests, and people mix them up. The first is at establishment level: at least 85 percent of the total wages due for the month must be paid on time. The second is at worker level. A worker who receives less than 85 percent of the entitled wage in a pay cycle can leave the establishment non-compliant, even if the overall total passes. One law-firm summary reads this as a deduction ceiling of 15 percent of the entitled wage, against the 20 percent that the labour law otherwise allows. Check that reading against the official text.

Work through the month in this order:

1. Fix the entitled wage for each worker: fixed basic pay, fixed allowances, variable pay, days worked and days of leave.
2. Subtract only deductions the law allows or the worker has agreed in writing.
3. Test the result against the 85 percent line for that worker, and against the establishment total.
4. Build one employee record in the SIF for each worker. The fields are the 14-digit MOHRE labour card number, the 9-digit routing code of the worker's bank or exchange house, the IBAN (23 characters, starting with AE) or payroll card number, the pay start and end dates, the number of days paid, the fixed salary, the variable salary and the days on leave.
5. Build the control record: the 13-digit establishment ID, the employer's bank routing code, the file creation date, the salary month, the number of employee rows, the total amount in AED and the record count.
6. Send the file through your bank or exchange house well before the 1st, because bank processing takes working days.

The field list above comes from payroll software help pages and industry guides that describe the bank format. These sources agree on the main fields, but the MOHRE and bank templates decide the exact layout, column order and validation. Ask your bank for its current template before the first run.

The payslip and the SIF do different jobs, as the table shows.

The payslip should match the SIF row for each worker. If the two differ, the employee will see it first, and the mismatch becomes a dispute.

Worked example: one worker, one month

These figures are illustrative. Assume a worker on a fixed monthly package of AED 5,000 basic, AED 2,000 housing and AED 1,000 transport. The entitled wage is AED 8,000. The 85 percent line is AED 6,800.

In June the employer deducts AED 400 for an instalment on a staff loan that the worker signed for in writing. The worker receives AED 7,600. That is 95 percent of the entitled wage, above the 85 percent line, and the deduction is 5 percent of the entitled wage. If the instalment were AED 1,400 instead, the net would be AED 6,600. That is 82.5 percent, below the line, even though the deduction is still under the 20 percent that the labour law otherwise allows. The second case fails the worker-level test. The fix is to spread the loan over more months or agree a smaller instalment, not to pay the rest later.

The SIF row for the first case shows AED 5,000 as the fixed basic, AED 3,000 as the fixed allowances, the pay period dates and the worker's full 30 days. The payslip shows each line, the AED 400 loan deduction with its reason, and the net of AED 7,600.

Cases that change the answer

New starters are covered from their first pay cycle. Resolution 340 of 2026 removed the earlier exemption for the first 30 days of employment, according to Morgan Lewis's 2026 summary. A new hire needs a bank account and a labour card record before the first month-end, or the first payment will be late.

Early payment is a grey area in the text. One law-firm summary says the resolution does not state it explicitly, but practitioners understand that paying before the due date counts as compliant. Another reads the rule as requiring the wages for a month to clear by the 1st of the next month and the SIF pay period to match the month paid. Paying on the last working day of the month is the safer reading, but confirm it with your bank.

Free zones depend on where the company is registered. DIFC and ADGM operate separate employment regimes and do not file Salary Information Files with MOHRE, according to Harrison and Morgans's 2026 guide. Companies in free zones that use MOHRE, such as JAFZA and DMCC, fall under the federal file.

Exclusions exist, and the summaries do not agree on how many categories there are. One summary counts seven categories of worker and four categories of establishment that are exempt. Use the exclusion article in the official text, not a summary, when you decide whether a worker or company is in scope.

Resignation and end of service work differently from the monthly file, but they use the same salary figures. Under Article 51 of Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021, a full-time employee who has completed at least one year of continuous service is entitled to end-of-service gratuity. The sources reviewed say resignation does not reduce it, unlike the old rules. The gratuity is 21 days of basic wage for each of the first five years and 30 days for each year after that, capped at two years' wage. For example, an employee with AED 5,000 basic pay and three years' service gets 21 days a year, which is AED 10,500 in total, using a daily basic wage of AED 166.67. Allowances are not part of that base, so a payslip that blurs basic and allowances can create a dispute at exit. Unpaid absence is also excluded from the service period.

Common mistakes

The most frequent error is submitting on the last day of the month and expecting the money on the 1st. Some guides advise sending the file on the 29th or 30th because banks need a working day or two. Weekends and public holidays make this harder, because the 1st falls on a weekend several times a year.

Second, some payroll teams still plan around the old 80 percent figure or the 15-day window. Those figures belong to the previous framework and should not appear in a new payroll calendar.

Third, employers treat payslips and SIF rows as the same document. They are not. A clean payslip does not prove the bank file was correct, and a correct SIF does not satisfy an employee who cannot see the deductions.

Fourth, some employers put an allowance into the basic field to make gratuity look higher or lower. That creates a conflict between the SIF, the contract and the gratuity calculation.

Fifth, labour card numbers are often entered without leading zeros, and IBANs are copied with spaces. Both cause the bank to reject rows. Check field lengths before the file leaves your system.

Sixth, outsourcing payroll does not move liability. One 2026 summary notes that the establishment remains responsible for WPS compliance even when a delegate runs payroll, and that the delegate's contract is no defence against MOHRE action. The same summary says enforcement applies to the establishment.

Finally, the penalty details vary between summaries. Most agree that monitoring starts on the 1st, that MOHRE sends notifications from the 2nd day and that new work permit issuance can be suspended from the 5th day. Summaries differ on the day for fines and labour dispute registration, and on the size of company they apply to. Take those points from the official text, not from a blog.

What to check with HR or a lawyer

Check with your bank or WPS agent that the MOHRE establishment ID, the labour card numbers and each IBAN match the government records. Ask for the current SIF template and its validation rules, and test a file in the month before the rule bites.

Confirm that every deduction has written consent or a legal basis, and that the total deductions for each worker stay within the threshold you choose to apply. Ask a lawyer to read the exclusion article if any of your staff may fall under it. Ask whether your free zone files with MOHRE.

If you plan to reduce pay, hours or roles to fix a shortfall, the country's notice, consultation and severance rules apply. Agree the change with the employee or check it with a lawyer first.

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

How employers take routine payroll work off their staff

Many employers still rebuild the SIF and payslips by hand each month from separate spreadsheets. AI workers can read the payroll register, the HR file and the bank's template, then build the rows and draft the payslips automatically. A person still approves the deductions, signs off the file and submits it before the cut-off. That moves the repetitive checking off the payroll team and leaves the decisions with people.