What does WPS require of an employer?
Private-sector employers registered with MOHRE pay wages through the Wage Protection System. Salaries go through an approved bank, exchange house or financial institution, and the employer uploads a salary file describing who is paid what for the period.
Because the file is how the authorities see that wages were paid, it has to agree with your employee records: the right people, the right identifiers and the right amounts.
What is inside a SIF file?
A SIF file is a pipe-delimited text file with three parts: an employer record at the top, one line per employee, and a closing record with the totals.
Banks and exchange houses differ in the details they expect, so the safe approach is to test the file with your bank using a small batch before the first live run.
- Employee labour-card number
- Bank routing code and IBAN
- Pay period and days paid
- Fixed income and variable income
- Leave days in the period
How are fixed and variable pay split?
WPS reports fixed pay and variable pay separately. Fixed pay is the regular salary: basic plus allowances, less any deduction for unpaid leave. Variable pay is what changes month to month, such as overtime. Mixing the two makes the file disagree with the employment contract on record.
What does a clean WPS month-end look like?
- Close attendance, overtime and leave for the month
- Apply allowances, loan instalments and other deductions
- Review and approve the payroll run
- Generate the SIF file from the approved run
- Upload it to your bank's or exchange house's WPS portal
- Check the confirmation and resolve any rejected lines
Why do salary files get rejected?
Most rejections come from data, not from the file format. Typical causes are an incorrect IBAN or routing code, a missing or wrong labour-card number, totals in the closing record that do not match the employee lines, and a layout detail the bank expects differently. Keeping staff records current, together with the labour-law records behind them, prevents most of them.
UAE compliance figures at a glance
| Rule | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Private-sector employers registered with MOHRE pay wages through the Wage Protection System, via an approved bank, exchange house or financial institution, by uploading a Salary Information File (SIF) | WPS | Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation (MOHRE), Wage Protection System |
Last reviewed 14 Nov 2026. A summary, not tax or legal advice. Confirm your obligations with an adviser.
How Civova handles this
Attendance, overtime, leave, allowances, loans and deductions flow into the monthly payroll run. Once it is approved, Civova writes a pipe-delimited SIF file with the employer control record, one line per employee (labour-card number, bank routing code, IBAN, pay period, days paid, fixed income, variable income and leave days) and a trailer with the totals. Fixed pay is basic plus allowances less unpaid leave; variable pay is overtime. Payroll posts its own journal, and staff see their payslips through self-service.
Civova does not connect to the bank: you upload the file to your bank's or exchange house's WPS portal. Because banks differ, we validate the file with yours using a small test batch before go-live. This page is general information, not legal advice.