If sick notes reach your HR officer by WhatsApp and the day count lives in a sheet on one laptop, this is for you. It is not for a firm with nobody who owns HR records. Name that person before you choose where the count lives.
What does the law fix?
Three things: when the worker tells you, what they hand over, and how the 90 days are paid.
u.ae, the UAE government portal, sets out Article 31 of Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021 for the private sector. The worker tells the employer about the sickness within three days at most and submits a medical report issued by the medical entity. After probation, the worker can take up to 90 days of sick leave a year of service, in one spell or several. The first 15 days are on full pay, the next 30 on half pay, and the last 45 unpaid.
Probation is the exception. u.ae says there is no paid sick leave during probation, though the employer may grant unpaid sick leave on a medical report from a recognised medical authority. u.ae also says an employer may not dismiss a worker, or give a termination notice, while the worker is on sick leave.
These are mainland rules. DIFC and ADGM have their own employment laws, and other free zones can publish their own. Check with your free zone authority before you use anything here.
Is a photo in the chat the record?
No. The photo is the notice. The certificate is the record.
A message on day four that says "sick, see photo" does one job: it tells you inside the three days. What you file and count is the certificate from a licensed facility. In May 2025 Gulf News reported that the Department of Health Abu Dhabi shut four facilities for selling sick leave certificates through WhatsApp without examining patients. A blurry photo of a paper tells you little about where it came from.
MoHAP's service page helps here. It says certificates issued by facilities using the MoHAP sick leave system are already certified and need no further attestation. Leave attested by the Department of Health Abu Dhabi, the Dubai Health Authority or the Sharjah Health Authority needs no second attestation either. Leave of five days or less is attested at once. Longer leave goes to a medical committee with the certificate and a medical report.
The news this month moves the start of that work. WAM reported on 4 November 2026 that licensed facilities now submit the attestation request for the patient, instead of the patient doing it. The automatic link from attestation to approval applies to federal government staff and four emirates' local government staff, not to private companies. For a private employer, the change is simpler: the certificate now starts in the facility's system, so asking for it is a fair request.
So HR asks for one thing: the certificate as issued, with the facility's name and reference on it. HR does not attest anything and does not judge the diagnosis.
How do the 90 days change the pay?
They change it twice in a year: at day 16 and at day 46.
The count runs across the year of service. A second spell carries on from where the first stopped. It does not restart at day one. That is why the count belongs next to payroll and not in a chat thread. The person who runs the month needs to know which days were full pay, which were half and which were unpaid.
A sample, arithmetic only. A site supervisor has used 12 sick days this year. A new certificate covers 6 more. Days 13, 14 and 15 are on full pay. Days 16, 17 and 18 are on half pay. If the run pays all six at full pay, three days are overpaid, and the next run has to recover it from a person who has just been ill. That is an illustration of the count, not a case from a client.
The end of the 90 days matters too. u.ae says that if a worker has used all 90 days and cannot return, the employer may end the service, and end-of-service benefits are due. How the unpaid days count toward gratuity is a question for your adviser or MOHRE. Keep full-pay, half-pay and unpaid days as three separate figures on the record, so whoever settles it has them.
Who owns the count?
One named person. Usually the HR officer, sometimes the payroll officer, never "whoever sees the chat first".
The owner does four things for each spell: logs the date the worker told you, files the certificate, adds the days to the year's count, and marks which pay tier each day falls in before the run closes. If a supervisor on site receives the photo, the supervisor forwards it to the owner the same day and does nothing else with it.
Sheet or system: how do we decide?
At Mindcat, we ask two questions before we say. Who enters the absences? From how many sites?
Keep a sheet while one officer enters every absence, the staff sit in one office, and nobody is near day 15. Give it six columns: name, date told, certificate reference, first day, last day, days used this year. Add one more for the tier. A sheet costs nothing and works when one person keeps it.
Move the count into the system that makes the payslip when notes come from several sites, when more than one person enters absences, or when a half-pay day has already been paid at full pay once. At that point the count and the run are kept in two places, and they drift apart.
What does a system not do?
It does not check a certificate with MoHAP, the Dubai Health Authority or anyone else, and it does not attest or file anything. Our People page lists annual, sick and unpaid leave per policy, with balances, and says approved leave reaches the slip. It also says the leave rules are set with you during setup, so the sick leave policy follows the rule you and we set, and a person still decides each case.
Employees ask for leave on their phones and managers approve it there or at the HR desk, so the request and the approval sit on the same record. Keep the certificate with your HR file for that employee. For a disputed case, confirm with MOHRE or a lawyer before you act.
What would it cost?
Here is what the People page says today. You pay per employee on payroll a month, AED or SAR, and the price falls as you grow: 29 for the first 50, 18 for 51 to 200, 12 for 201 to 500, 8 above. The shared plan has a minimum of AED/SAR 990 a month. HR, finance and manager logins add nothing.
By that list, a 40-person firm is 40 x 29 = AED 1,160 a month, above the minimum. That is arithmetic on the page's prices, not a quote. The quick start, up to 50 employees, is a fixed AED/SAR 2,500 that we set up, with your leave balances imported from our template. Prices exclude 5 percent UAE VAT and 15 percent Saudi VAT.
Our method is called One run, one file. Tell us how many employees you pay, from how many sites, and how sick notes reach you today. We reply with the setup plan and the monthly price per employee, in AED or SAR.
