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All about the Salary Information File

If you are wondering how to process payroll in the UAE, you must have come across the term ‘Salary information file (SIF)’ time and again. Here is a quick guide about SIF.


Payroll is probably one of the most essential functions of an organization. After all, employees should be paid their agreed-upon salaries on time after working hard throughout the month. Just to quickly go through the payroll process once again, the HR or Finance person at every organization needs to carry out these basic steps to process payroll.

  • Payroll calculation

  • Approval flow

  • Payroll processing

The ministry of labour requires companies to use the salary information file (.SIF) to upload payroll through the WPS to distribute salaries to employees. Let’s dive deeper into what a salary information file is.



Salary Information File


As mentioned earlier, the ministry of labor requires all companies to use the salary information file (.SIF) to upload their payroll through the WPS in order to distribute salaries. Here are some of the details included in a salary information file:

  • Each employee will have an Employee Detail Record (EDR).

  • Each SIF will have only 1 Salary Control Record (SCR).

  • Each Company Trade License will have its own SIF linked to the employees on the Ministry of Labour (MOL) list for that Trade License.

  • Every on-shore employee has a Ministry of Labor Code or Personl ID which is used by the Central Bank to identify if an employee is being paid.

  • Every SIF will contain a Routing Code which is the Bank or Exchange House that is responsible for processing the payroll. The SIF will also include the currency in which employees are paid.

  • Each SIF will have a specific date range associated for the pay period for the employees and the month the employer is making the payment.

  • The final total salary for every employee which includes all the payroll details (variable, additions, deletions) is included on the SIF along with the sum of the total salaries for the employees belonging to that SIF.

The ministry of labour in the UAE provides a tool to create salary files (.SIF). To access this tool, you should have an eNetwasal account. You can visit http://www.mol.gov.ae/ to create an account.



Are you required to create a SIF file?


All onshore companies or companies that belong to JAFZA (Jabel Ali Free Zone Area) are required to create a SIF file to process payroll in the UAE. THE SIF file has to be prepared monthly and uploaded to the WPS system.

Free-zone entities, other than JAFZA, are not required to create a SIF file as part of their payroll process.


Processing payroll can be a time-consuming process. In addition to dealing with a lot of other responsibilities and compulsions, employers struggle to deal with the intricacies involved while dealing with employee payroll. If you're looking into automating your payroll process, you can take a quick look at our platform Bayzat Benefits, an HR platform that Bayzat provides to all companies in the UAE at no cost!

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