If you build the salary file by hand and it goes to the bank on the last day of the month, this is for you. It is not for a company with no one who owns the payroll file once the bank has it: name that person first, before you buy anything.
What changed on 1 June 2026?
The grace window is gone. Ministerial Resolution 340 of 2026, in force since 1 June 2026, sets the 1st of each month as the due date for the month before, and a payment after that is a delay. The text says so in Article 1, and it repeals the 2022 resolution that gave employers until the 15th. At least 85% of total wages must be transferred by the due date for the establishment to count as compliant with the rule.
The official table, published on u.ae with text provided by MOHRE, then runs by the day after the due date:
For a contractor, day 5 is the one that hurts. A stop on new work permits means the next hire cannot start.
Why is the bank's cut-off your real deadline?
Because the clock counts money that has arrived, not a file you sent. BDO's own example: salaries submitted on 1 June that the bank credits on 2 June are already late, and the escalation starts on day 2. Baker McKenzie advises treating the 1st as a hard deadline and stress-testing bank cut-offs and file upload times. It adds that paying before the 1st is, in practice, accepted by the system. That is the firm's reading, not the resolution's text.
So the question is not "who runs payroll". It is "who makes sure the file is clean and uploaded in time for your bank to credit it by the 1st". A single wrong IBAN or Labour ID rejects the file before any money moves, BDO warns. A payroll vendor quoted a UAE business owner on Reddit in March: "Submitted WPS file to them on March 2 and it's still showing Under Review." We could not open the original thread, so read that as a vendor's quote, not our evidence. The lesson holds anyway: put the bank's cut-off in the calendar, and count back from it.
- 01Ask your bank or exchange house for the last time it accepts a WPS file so funds are credited by the 1st. Write the date and hour in the calendar for every month.
- 02Name one person who owns the file until the bank has it, and a second who can cover.
- 03Count back: the day attendance and leave close, the day the file is checked, the day it is uploaded.
- 04Run the next month against that calendar. If any step slips twice, the way you run payroll needs to change.
Excel, a payroll company or software?
This is our rule of thumb, not a study. Match your month to the row.
If you landed on the first or last row, close this tab and fix the calendar. That is a real answer, and we would rather say it before you pay us.
What does a payroll company not take off you?
The legal duty. Article 5 of the resolution lets an establishment delegate the payment of wages, but it must give MOHRE the delegate's data and a copy of the contract. The establishment stays responsible, and the measures apply to it if the delegate fails to pay on time.
So when you compare payroll companies, ask three things in writing: what time they need your data to meet the bank's cut-off, who pays if the credit lands on the 2nd, and who gets the bank's rejection when the file is wrong. The top results for the search "payroll company dubai" are outsourcers' own pages and lists, and several are dated 2025, before the window closed. Check the date on whatever you read.
What does People do, and what is left out?
Mindcat People is payroll software we host and run in the UAE or Saudi Arabia. One monthly run makes every salary slip and the WPS file. Employees check in from a phone, leave and overtime reach the slips, and a manager approves the run before the file is made. Our page's screens use a sample company: a Sharjah contractor with 18 employees. Contractors and FM firms will recognise the shape: see Mindcat for facilities contractors.
Here is the one step it changes. Before: a payroll officer copies hours from timesheet photos from four sites into Excel, and rebuilds the file when the exchange house rejects it. After: crews check in on their phones, overtime reaches the slips, the GM approves the run and the file comes out of it.
What it leaves out matters as much:
- The WPS file is set up during setup, in your bank's or exchange house's format, and tested with them. It is not built in on day one.
- Your team uploads the file to the bank. We have no direct link to MOHRE, Mudad or GOSI.
- Gratuity and leave rules are set during setup to your contracts.
- Papers that expire, such as visas and Emirates IDs, are a separate job: see Mindcat Vault.
- Biometric clocks are yours, and your bank or exchange house charges its own WPS fees.
- A parallel month, where your current payroll and ours run side by side, comes with the managed setup from 51 employees. The quick start runs your first month with you on tickets.
Check the dates and rules here against your bank or exchange house and, for anything that affects a penalty, MOHRE or your adviser. We cannot make the bank credit the file by the 1st. We can make the file the same every month, and show you where it came from.
What would 40 employees cost?
Our page prices each employee on payroll: AED 29 a month for employees 1 to 50. For 40 employees that is 40 × 29 = AED 1,160 a month, plus 5 percent UAE VAT. HR, finance and manager logins add nothing.
The per-employee price comes with a monthly minimum, so no one can buy a few employees at the per-employee rate. On the shared plan the minimum is AED 990, which covers up to 34 employees. A company with 30 pays AED 990, not AED 870.
Up to 50 employees, the quick start is a fixed package we set up for AED 2,500 one time: your employees, salaries and bank accounts imported from our template, the UAE rules, the WPS file with your bank's employer ID, and recorded training. We send the payment link within 24 hours. Annual prepay takes 15 percent off the part above the minimum.
At 40 employees you get the quick start, so there is no parallel month: your first People month is a live month, run with you on tickets. If that is too risky for you, run Excel beside it for the first month and compare. If your site crews still hand in paper timesheets, someone has to key their hours in before the run, so fix the roster first (last row of the table).
Weigh that against what your month costs you now: the payroll officer's days, and the file the bank rejects at the wrong hour. We will not put a number on that for you. Only your calendar can.
What happens in the first working session?
We call the method One run, one file: every salary slip and the file your bank accepts, made from the same run. You send how many employees you pay, in which sites, and how you pay them today. We reply with the setup plan and the monthly price per employee, in AED. If your attendance is still on paper, or your month works fine in Excel with an early bank cut-off, we will say so and point you back to the calendar. If your file is the part that breaks, tell us your headcount and we start from it.
