Payslip Format UAE — the WPS-Compliant Salary Slip Every Employer Should Issue

Ask a UAE employer for last month’s payslips and you learn everything about their payroll discipline. Plenty of SMEs transfer salaries faithfully through WPS yet issue nothing to the employee — no slip, no breakdown, no record of what the transfer contained. It works until the first dispute, resignation-time gratuity argument or MOHRE inquiry, at which point the missing paperwork costs more than a payroll system ever would. This guide, updated July 2026, sets out the salary slip format UAE employers should standardise on: the fields, the basic-versus-allowances logic that drives gratuity, the WPS and SIF alignment rules, lawful deductions, and the record-keeping obligations that make payslips a compliance document rather than a courtesy.

The template — ten fields that settle arguments

#	Field	Why it is there
1	Employer name + establishment details	Ties the slip to the MOHRE establishment file
2	Employee name, ID/staff number, designation	Identification in disputes
3	Pay period + payment date	The month the numbers describe
4	Basic salary	The gratuity and entitlements base — separately stated, always
5	Allowances, itemised	Housing, transport, other contractual allowances — each its own line
6	Overtime	Hours and the rate applied
7	Other additions	Commission, bonus, expense reimbursements (marked as non-wage)
8	Deductions, itemised with reasons	Advances, agreed contributions, court orders — each documented
9	Net pay	Must equal the WPS transfer to the dirham
10	Payment method reference	WPS via bank/exchange house

Format is free — and because UAE official processes run in Arabic and English, a bilingual slip travels furthest through a MOHRE conciliation or a UAE court file — but the reconciliation rule is not: contract, payslip and SIF file must tell one story. An employment contract saying AED 10,000, a payslip showing AED 8,500 and a WPS transfer of AED 8,000 is not three documents; it is a dispute with exhibits, and the framework around it is covered in our WPS explainer.

Basic vs allowances — the split that prices your gratuity

The most consequential design choice on a UAE payslip is how total pay divides between basic salary and allowances, because end-of-service gratuity calculates on basic: under Federal Decree-Law 33 of 2021, 21 days of basic pay per year of service for the first five years, 30 days per year after. Several other computations also reference basic.

A worked example: two employees each earn AED 12,000 gross. One is structured AED 8,000 basic + AED 4,000 allowances; the other AED 5,000 basic + AED 7,000 allowances. After five years, their gratuity accruals differ by tens of thousands of dirhams — run your own numbers in the UAE gratuity calculator, with the formula unpacked in the gratuity calculation guide.

Low-basic structures are lawful within reason, but three disciplines apply: the split must be contractual (not invented at exit), consistent across contract, payslip and SIF, and defensible — a basic salary set absurdly low relative to market invites tribunal scrutiny. And accrue the liability in the books monthly; a gratuity balance discovered at audit time is a controls failure, not a surprise.

21 / 30 days

Gratuity accrual per year of service (first five years / beyond) — computed on BASIC salary

Put numbers on it. Two UAE employees each cost the employer AED 12,000 a month; only the split differs. Using the 30-day divisor that is the working convention across the UAE market — the statute fixes the day counts, not the divisor — after five years the gap is stark.

	Employee A	Employee B
Basic salary (AED/month)	8,000	5,000
Allowances (AED/month)	4,000	7,000
Gross (AED/month)	12,000	12,000
Daily basic wage (AED)	266.67	166.67
Gratuity days after 5 years (21 × 5)	105	105
Gratuity accrued after 5 years (AED)	28,000	17,500
Gratuity days after 8 years (105 + 90)	195	195
Gratuity accrued after 8 years (AED)	52,000	32,500

The AED 19,500 difference at eight years is not a rounding artefact — it is the direct consequence of a line on a payslip, and it compounds across a workforce. Ten employees structured like B rather than A carry AED 195,000 less gratuity liability at that point. That is precisely why the split is a contractual decision to be made deliberately, documented, and then reflected identically on the contract, the payslip and the SIF line.

Run your own figures through the UAE gratuity calculator. Two statutory checks sit over the result: Article 51(6) caps the total benefit at two years’ wage, and Article 51(4) excludes unpaid absence days from the service term — which is where unpaid maternity days under Article 30(2) and ordinary unpaid leave under Article 33(2) drop out of the count.

When the salary is actually due — the 2026 wage clock

A payslip that is right but late is still a compliance problem, because UAE wage timing is now automated rather than discretionary. Ministerial Resolution No. 340 of 2026, in force from 1 June 2026, repealed Ministerial Resolution No. 598 of 2022. Wages fall due on the first day of each Gregorian month, there is no grace period, and at least 85% of wages must transfer on time.

Day after the due date	What happens
2	System alerts issued to the establishment
5	New work permits suspended
11	Fine and reclassification of the establishment
16	An automatic labour dispute is raised
21	Executive instrument, attachment and travel-ban measures become available

Read that ladder as a cash-flow instruction. Salaries have to be funded, the file has to be built and the bank or exchange house has to process it before the first — which means the payroll cycle closes in the previous month, not in the first week of the new one. Velmont Crest closes the cycle by the 25th so that wages land on the 1st, which leaves a working margin for a rejected record or a bank cut-off without any of the consequences above being triggered.

The other statutory deadline sits at the end of the relationship. Article 53 of Federal Decree-Law 33 of 2021 requires the employer to pay wages and all other entitlements within 14 days of the end of the contract term. The final payslip is where that settlement is evidenced: last month’s wage, accrued leave paid on the basic wage under Article 29(9), notice-period pay where applicable, and the gratuity computed under Article 51 — each on its own line, each traceable.

WPS and the SIF file — where the payslip meets the regulator

The Wage Protection System is the UAE’s enforcement layer for salaries: employers registered with MOHRE pay staff through approved channels, and each cycle the bank or exchange house submits a Salary Information File (SIF) listing every employee’s fixed pay, variable pay and days worked. MOHRE’s systems monitor timeliness and completeness. Late or missing files trigger establishment penalties charged per worker under Cabinet Resolution No. 21 of 2020, escalating on repetition, and can block new work permits.

The payslip’s job in this machinery is reconciliation: it is the employee-facing mirror of the SIF line. Where slips and SIF diverge — off-payroll cash top-ups, deductions that never reached the file, “paper salaries” inflated for visa purposes — the employer carries risk in every direction at once: MOHRE, the employee’s claim, the bank’s KYC and, since payroll feeds the ledger, the corporate tax computation too. One number, everywhere, is the whole discipline. The adjacent employer document — the salary certificate banks ask employees for — has its own format rules, covered in the salary certificate guide.

Deductions — regulated, capped and documented

Article 25 of Federal Decree-Law 33 of 2021 is a closed list: no amount may be deducted or withheld from a wage except in the cases it names, and each case carries its own cap. There is no general “10% of salary” limit, and the five-days figure that circulates in UAE HR circles belongs to damage, not to disciplinary fines.

Article 25(1)	What may be deducted	The cap in the article
(a)	Redemption of a loan granted to the worker	Within the article’s monthly ceiling, with written consent, interest-free
(b)	Amounts paid to the worker in excess of entitlements	Not more than 20% of the wage
(c)	Contributions for bonuses, retirement pensions and insurances	Per the legislation in force
(d)	Contributions or loans repayable to a Ministry-approved establishment savings fund	—
(e)	Instalments for an approved social project or benefit	Requires written agreement to participate
(f)	Violations under the establishment’s approved penalty regulation	Not more than 5% of the wage
(g)	Debts due under a court judgment	Not more than a quarter of the wage; awarded alimony may exceed a quarter
(h)	Rectifying damage caused by the worker’s mistake or breach of instructions	Not more than five days’ wage per month, unless the competent court approves more
Art 25(2)	All reasons combined	Total may not exceed 50% of the wage

Worked through on a wage of AED 12,000: an overpayment recovery is capped at AED 2,400 a month, a damage recovery at AED 2,000 (five days on a 30-day month), a disciplinary fine under an approved penalty regulation at AED 600, a court-ordered debt at AED 3,000 — and whatever combination applies, the month’s total deduction stops at AED 6,000.

The failure modes are mundane rather than exotic: “fines” for lateness where no approved penalty regulation exists, advance recoveries nobody papered, and absence deductions computed on gross pay when the contract says otherwise. Each deduction line on the payslip should map to one lettered case above, carry the document that case requires, and be tested against both its own cap and the 50% aggregate. Overtime, its mirror image on the additions side, has equally specific rates unpacked in the overtime calculation guide — paid on the basic hourly rate plus 25%, or plus 50% for overtime between 10pm and 4am for non-shift workers.

Two structural limits govern the additions side too. Article 19(1) caps total working hours at 144 hours every three weeks, so a heavy fortnight constrains the third week, and Article 18 prohibits more than five consecutive hours without breaks totalling at least an hour, which are not counted inside working hours. Both belong in the timesheet that feeds the payslip, not in a manager’s memory.

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Payroll disputes are never really about the money — they are about the missing paper. The employer with twelve reconciled payslips wins in an afternoon; the one with a WhatsApp promise and a bank transfer list settles.

A filled-in salary slip — what the ten fields look like with numbers in them

Field lists are easy to agree with and hard to copy. Here is the body of a compliant UAE payslip for June 2026, for an employee on a gross package of AED 12,000 who worked six hours of daytime overtime and is repaying a documented salary advance.

Line	Detail	AED
Basic salary	Contractual basic — the gratuity base	8,000.00
Housing allowance	Contractual, stated separately	3,000.00
Transport allowance	Contractual, stated separately	1,000.00
Overtime	6 hours × AED 41.67 (basic hourly AED 33.33 + 25%, Art 19(2))	250.00
Gross pay		12,250.00
Less: salary advance repayment	Art 25(1)(a) — written consent on file, interest-free, ref ADV-2026-04	(1,000.00)
Net pay	Must equal the WPS transfer to the dirham	11,250.00
Payment method	WPS via bank, value date 01-07-2026
Employer	Establishment name and MOHRE establishment number
Employee	Name, staff number, designation, Emirates ID or labour card reference

Three things in that slip do the real work. The basic line is stated separately, so the gratuity base is visible and auditable rather than implied. The overtime line shows its own arithmetic — hours, rate and the premium applied — because “overtime AED 250” with no working is exactly what gets disputed. And the deduction cites its authority and its document reference, which is what turns a contested number into a settled one.

The hourly rate deserves a note. Federal Decree-Law 33 of 2021 fixes the overtime premiums but not the divisor that converts a monthly basic wage into a daily or hourly one; 30 days and 8 hours is the working convention across the UAE market. Whichever divisor you use, write it into the contract and apply it identically every month — a divisor that changes between cycles is a dispute waiting for a trigger.

Leave and absence: the codes a UAE payslip needs

Leave is where payslips quietly go wrong, because each type carries its own pay treatment and a single “leave” code collapses them all into one number nobody can defend later.

Leave type	Article of FDL 33 of 2021	Pay treatment on the slip
Annual leave	Art 29(1)	Full wage; 30 calendar days a year, 2 days a month between 6 and 12 months’ service
Annual leave carried forward	Cabinet Resolution No. 1 of 2022, Art 19(1)	Not more than half the annual leave may roll into the next year, or a cash allowance agreed in lieu
Annual leave paid on exit	Art 29(9); Cabinet Resolution No. 1 of 2022, Art 19(2)	Cash allowance on the basic wage
Sick leave	Art 31(3)	15 days full, 30 half, remainder unpaid; unpaid during probation
Maternity leave	Art 30(1)	First 45 days full wage, next 15 days half wage
Additional maternity absence	Art 30(2)	Up to 45 days unpaid — and excluded from the service term for gratuity
Parental leave	Art 32(1)(b)	5 working days per parent, full pay, within 6 months of birth
Bereavement leave	Art 32(1)(a)	5 days for a spouse, 3 for a parent, child, sibling, grandchild or grandparent — full pay
Study leave	Art 32(2)	10 working days a year after 2 years’ service, at a UAE-accredited institution
Unpaid leave	Art 33(2)	Unpaid, and excluded from the service term

The two rows that move money are the maternity and unpaid-leave exclusions. Article 30(2) states in terms that the additional unpaid maternity period is not included within the service term for end-of-service benefits or retirement contributions — so payroll must suspend the gratuity accrual across those days rather than run it straight through. Article 51(4) applies the same logic to unpaid absence generally. An employer that accrues gratuity uniformly through every unpaid day is overstating a liability; one that quietly extends service across it is understating a cost somewhere else.

Records, retention and the free zone variants

Keep the full payroll trail — contracts, slips, SIF acknowledgements, deduction documents, leave records — through employment and at least two years beyond its end under the labour framework. The longer clock, though, comes from tax rather than labour: payroll is part of the books, and the UAE tax record rules bite for far longer than any employment file.

Records	Retention period	Source
General accounting records and commercial books, including payroll	7 years from the end of the tax period	Tax Procedures Executive Regulation, Cabinet Decision No. 74 of 2023, Art 3(1)(c)
Records relating to capital assets	10 years	Federal Decree-Law No. 8 of 2017, Art 60(2)
Records relating to real estate	15 years	VAT Executive Regulation, Cabinet Decision No. 52 of 2017, Art 71(2), as amended by Cabinet Decision No. 100 of 2024
Employment and wage records after the relationship ends	2 years is the working minimum under the labour framework	FDL 33 of 2021 framework and MOHRE practice
Books of account under company law	5 years	Commercial Companies Law

The practical answer for a UAE employer is to keep everything to the longest clock that touches the business. A payroll archive is small; reconstructing four years of wage evidence for an FTA query or a labour claim is not. Digital payroll systems make retention trivial and make the monthly slip a by-product instead of a chore.

Two carve-outs deserve their own rulebooks: DIFC, whose employment regulations require written pay statements and replaced gratuity with the funded DEWS savings plan (employer contributions monthly, shown on the slip), and ADGM, with its own employment regulations and end-of-service provisions. Entities in either centre should build payroll to those rules, not MOHRE’s — same discipline, different arithmetic.

Where the establishment is licensed	Payslip and end-of-service rulebook
Dubai mainland, and Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Ajman, Fujairah, Ras Al Khaimah and Umm Al Quwain mainland	FDL 33 of 2021 and MOHRE wage rules; WPS transfer, Article 51 gratuity accrual
Most UAE free zones	The same federal entitlements, administered alongside the zone’s own permit and visa process
DIFC	DIFC Employment Law — written pay statement, monthly DEWS contribution instead of a gratuity accrual
ADGM	ADGM Employment Regulations — own pay-statement and end-of-service provisions

The distinction is decided by the licence, not by the building. A UAE company operating out of Dubai on a mainland licence sits under the federal regime whatever its address; an entity licensed in either financial centre does not, and its payroll arithmetic differs from the first line of the slip.

The three-document reconciliation, run monthly

Everything above reduces to one control: the employment contract, the payslip and the SIF line must agree, every cycle, for every employee. Run as a monthly check rather than an annual clean-up, it takes minutes; run as a year-end exercise, it becomes an archaeology project.

Check	Contract	Payslip	SIF line
Basic salary	The contractual figure	Same figure, stated separately	Fixed pay component
Allowances	Each allowance named and quantified	Each on its own line	Included in fixed pay
Variable pay	Commission or bonus terms	Overtime, commission, bonus lines	Variable pay component
Days worked	Working pattern and rest days	Absence and leave codes applied	Days worked field
Deductions	The agreement that authorises each one	Itemised with its Article 25 basis	Reduces the amount transferred
Net amount	—	Net pay	Salary transferred
Value date	Due on the 1st under MR 340 of 2026	Payment date shown	Transfer date

Four exceptions account for most of the divergences a UAE employer will find. Off-payroll cash top-ups appear nowhere in the file and undermine every other document. “Paper salaries” inflated for a visa or a bank letter create a contract the employer cannot afford to honour and an employee entitled to claim it. Deductions applied at source reduce the transfer without ever reaching a payslip line, so the employee sees a shortfall with no explanation. And leave taken but never coded leaves an accrual that neither the books nor the employee’s expectations reflect.

Where the history is already tangled, the fix is a defined reconstruction rather than a policy memo: rebuild each employee’s file from the signed contract forward, restate the basic-versus-allowance split consistently, recompute accrued leave on the basic wage under Article 29(9), post the gratuity provision that should have been accruing under Article 51, and reconcile the result to the WPS transfers actually made. It is finite work with a clear end, and it is far cheaper than defending a wage claim without documents.

For a UAE business, that reconciliation is also where payroll stops being an HR chore and becomes an accounting control. The gratuity provision it produces belongs in the monthly management accounts; the deduction evidence it demands is what survives a MOHRE inspection; and the wage figures it fixes are the ones that flow into the corporate tax computation at year end.

Where Velmont Crest fits in

Payslips are a by-product of payroll done properly, which is the product we sell. Our payroll and WPS processing service runs the monthly cycle end to end: salary computation with the basic/allowance structure applied consistently, SIF preparation and submission through the approved channels, bilingual payslips issued every cycle, deduction documentation enforced before anything leaves a wage, gratuity accruals posted monthly into the books, and the retention archive that answers any MOHRE or audit question years later. For employers whose payroll history is a bank statement and good intentions, the reconstruction is a defined cleanup project. Either way, start through the contact page — quote within one UAE business day.