If your fit-out crews queue at the service entrance while someone hunts for the approval email, this is for you. It is not for one small office with no contractor traffic: a free sign-in app is enough there.
What do Dubai buildings already ask of a contractor?
They ask for the approval first and the pass second.
The JLT retail tenant handbook says "all contractors and suppliers must obtain temporary access permits issued by Security". The request must include the company name and trade licence copy, a staff list with Emirates ID or passport details, vehicle registration details, and the purpose and duration of the visit. The same section says "no access cards will be issued to the contractors", and the fit-out team issues temporary badges that must be worn visibly.
Central Park Towers' tenant handbook runs on the same order. Contractors submit work permits and documents to the loading dock office for approval "48 hours prior to work commencement". On the first day they "first report to the GL loading dock office on arrival to obtain a contractor's access pass".
Both buildings declare the duration up front. Neither says the crew signs in again as a stranger every morning. That is the part left to your gate, and it is where the queue forms.
Why does one crew leave two records?
Because the gate and the work area each keep their own book.
Public pain on this is old and residential, but plain. In 2019 The National reported that "security guards were stopping cleaners and workmen and asking them to pay the fee" at a developer's buildings, a Dh20 daily contractor access charge that was later scrapped after residents objected. A daily fee is a different problem from a daily sign-in. The scene is the same: workmen stopped at a gate, one morning at a time.
Inside a fit-out the second record appears on its own. The guard writes the crew in at the gate. The fit-out contractor keeps an attendance list for the supervisor. Neither is wrong, and by week three they disagree about who was on site on a Tuesday.
Our rule: the gate record is the only record of entry and exit. The contractor's own attendance list can exist, but it does not replace the gate, and the gate does not ask the supervisor to fill in a second form.
When is one approval for the whole job right?
When the same crew comes back every day and nothing about the approval changes.
Approve once, against your building's own list: trade licence, insurance, staff list with ID, vehicle, purpose and dates. Then each morning the guard confirms the person against the approved list, records the entry with the name on the day, and records the exit. The approval is per job. The entry is per day.
vFound, a global sign-in tool, shows the same pattern in software. Its contractor sign-in page (updated 25 October 2026) says a daily or weekday pass "reuses one QR code on each valid day", asks up to ten questions of your choosing such as a work order number, and signs people out automatically once they have been in for 12 hours. We cite it as the pattern, not as a recommendation. An automatic sign-out hides the exit time you may need.
When does a fresh pass each visit win?
When anything in the approval can change under you.
Crews rotate: three electricians this week, five next. Work moves between floors with different hosts. The tenant's work order changes. The job pauses for Ramadan hours or an after-hours moving slot. In each case yesterday's approval no longer describes today's person, floor or task, and a fresh pass is the cleaner record.
If you cannot tell which case you are in, use the fresh pass. It costs a minute at the gate. A stale approval costs an argument with a tenant about who was in their space.
Either way the card is read and handed back. A contractor's Emirates ID is never the deposit for the pass. The UAE Government portal says companies may take the data on the card but may not withhold it. Our visitor log book post sets out the rule.
What does a contractor pass hold in Lobby?
In Mindcat Lobby contractors default to the service-lift gate and suppliers to the loading bay, set per site. A printed badge carries the photo, company, host, purpose, date, valid-till time and the pass QR. Our sample badge is for a chiller plant service on level B2, with work order WO-2041 printed on it. In the sample gate screen, the contractor is verified in 1 minute 35 seconds.
On a fit-out, each crew member's pass is approved the day before with the work order and tools declared, so the loading bay checks the card against the list instead of phoning the building manager. The card image is deleted at check-out and the number kept as its last 4 digits. We call the method Scan, check, delete. The work order itself lives in Mindcat Maintain.
How a multi-week job is set up on your gates is agreed during setup. Tell us the job length and the gates.
What is not there today: no self check-in kiosk, no WhatsApp invitation or host alert (email, and SMS through your own provider), and no turnstile or door-access link. The scan was tested on specimen cards, and we test your own cards and camera during setup.
What does it cost?
A tower with a lobby and a loading bay is one site. Every client gets a copy of Lobby of its own, in the UAE or Saudi Arabia, or in your own cloud. The price is AED 1,490 per site a month for sites 1 to 3, with a monthly minimum of AED 3,790 for your own copy hosted by us. A single tower pays the minimum, not AED 1,490. Logins for guards, hosts and managers are free, visitors never need an account, and there are no per-visitor or per-scan fees.
One-time setup for one site is AED 7,900. Cameras, tablets and badge printers are not in the price. All prices exclude 5 percent UAE VAT.
A free or global sign-in app is cheaper, and for one small office without contractors it is the right call. What the extra buys is a copy that is yours alone, the card read on a server in the UAE or Saudi Arabia, and contractor gates named for your lobby, service lift and loading bay.
Tell us how many towers or sites you run, their gates and how contractors get in today. We reply with the setup plan and the monthly price per site, in AED or SAR. If your gate is fine as it is, we say so.
