Ministerial Resolution 340 of 2026 — in force since 1 June
HR, payroll and site attendance for UAE contractors.
Ellaelio records attendance across every site, produces a WPS SIF file your bank accepts first time, and keeps you above the 85% threshold. Built inside a Dubai fit-out contractor — not translated from an American product.
Photo: aboodi vesakaran / Pexels
Why this got urgent
Wages are due on the 1st. The penalties start on the 2nd.
Ministerial Resolution 340 of 2026 replaced Resolution 598. It removed the grace period for new employees, raised the WPS coverage threshold from 80% to 85%, and names construction as a priority sector. The ladder runs like this.
This is a summary written for site people, not legal advice. Ellaelio shows you a live coverage figure against the 85% threshold and tells you which workers are dragging it down, before the deadline rather than after it.
Free, no sign-up, nothing stored
Two tools you can use right now.
We would rather show you working software than describe it. Both of these run entirely in your browser — your salary data never leaves your laptop.
WPS SIF file validator
Paste or upload your salary file and see exactly why the bank would reject it — before you send it. Checks the SCR line position, the MMYYYY salary month, all three date formats, IBAN check digits, the 25-character filename, and the totals to the fils. It also shows your coverage against the 85% threshold, separately, because a file can pass every bank check and still leave you non-compliant.
Validate a file →End-of-service gratuity calculator
Federal Decree-Law 33 of 2021: 21 days of basic per year for the first five years, 30 days after that, capped at two years' pay. Service is counted by anniversary, not by dividing days by 365.25 — which is the rounding error that quietly underpays a worker with exactly five years in.
Calculate gratuity →Built here, for here
It already knows the rules.
Most HR software is an American or European product with a currency setting. Ellaelio was written inside a Dubai fit-out contractor to solve that contractor's own problems, then packaged for yours.
One company record, one login, one bill
Take the module you need. Add the rest when you want them.
Your company details and your staff are entered once and appear in every module you subscribe to. Buy HR on its own, Booking on its own, or all of them.
Ellaelio HR
Geofenced site attendance, overtime and night-hour rules, leave and absence, warnings and fines, salary advances, payroll runs, WPS SIF export, gratuity settlements, employee files, and letters and certificates on your own letterhead.
Ellaelio Books
Built for contractors rather than as a general ledger: BOQ-linked project costing, payment certificates, retention and advance recovery, variations, invoicing and VAT.
Ellaelio POS
Till, stock and supplier orders, with staff commission flowing straight back into the payroll run instead of being retyped into a spreadsheet at month end.
Ellaelio Booking
Appointments, staff rota and WhatsApp reminders for salons and clinics — the same employee records, the same attendance, the same payroll.
Honestly
What actually changes.
Most contractors we meet are running attendance on a WhatsApp group and payroll on a spreadsheet. Here is the difference, including the places where other HR software does the same job.
| The job | Spreadsheet & paper | Ellaelio |
|---|---|---|
| Knowing who is on which site right now | A phone call to the foreman | Geo-tagged clock-in against each site's fence |
| Building the WPS salary file | Retyped by hand into the bank's template | Generated and validated before it is sent |
| Finding out the file was rejected | When the bank calls, usually on the 3rd | Before you upload it, with the reason named |
| Staying above the 85% threshold | Nobody is measuring it | Live gauge, and which workers are pulling it down |
| Overtime at 125% and 150%, night hours | Calculated by hand, argued about later | Applied by rule, per role, with the workings shown |
| End-of-service settlement | A calculator and a nervous accountant | Decree-Law 33, editable, before it is issued |
| Labour card and visa expiry | A reminder in someone's Outlook | Alerts against the employee file |
| Payslips emailed to staff | Printed and handed out | Automatic — though most HR software does this too |
| Getting your data back out | It was always yours | Full export any time, written into the contract |
Attendance that survives a real site
Six sites, three shifts, one roll call.
Each site gets a fence and a radius. A clock-in outside it is still recorded — flagged, not silently dropped — because on a real job the gate moves, the villa handover runs late, and a driver is genuinely at the farm.
Duty hours and the overtime threshold are set per role, so an office administrator on 08:00–17:00 is never marked short against a site trade's ten-hour day. Overnight shifts are paired across the date boundary rather than counted twice.
Published, in AED
Priced per employee, per month.
Tiered the way a tax band works — you pay the lower rate only on the staff above each threshold, so your bill can never fall when you hire someone. Figures exclude 5% VAT.
That is AED 10.83 per employee per month.
- First 50 staff — AED 12 each
- Staff 51 to 150 — AED 10 each
- Staff 151 and above — AED 8 each
- Minimum AED 300 per month; from 25 staff
Pilot
30 days, no card
- Up to 50 staff
- The full HR module
- Your own company data
- Keep the export if you stop
Standard
per employee / month
- Tiered rates as you grow
- WPS SIF export and gauge
- Unlimited sites and geofences
- Two months free paid annually
Setup and data migration are quoted after we have seen what you are moving from — we would rather look first than publish a number that turns out to be wrong for your company.
Straight answers
Questions contractors actually ask.
Will the SIF file it produces be accepted by my bank?
That is the whole point of it. The file is built to the WPS specification — SCR as the last line rather than a header, salary month as MMYYYY, all three date formats, the 23-character AE IBAN with its mod-97 check, and totals summed as whole fils so a floating-point rounding error cannot bounce the file. Two details differ between banks — the order of the date in the filename, and how an empty employer reference is written — so those stay configurable and we confirm them against your bank on the first run. You can test your current file against the same engine, free, before you talk to us.
What changed under Ministerial Resolution 340?
It came into force on 1 June 2026 and replaced Resolution 598. Wages are due on the 1st, the WPS coverage threshold rose from 80% to 85%, and the exemption that used to cover newly hired employees was removed. Penalties escalate from a warning on day 2 to suspension of new work permits on day 5, fines from day 11, automatic referral to labour disputes from day 16 and travel bans from day 21. Construction is named as a priority sector.
How is gratuity calculated, and can I override it?
Federal Decree-Law 33 of 2021: 21 days of basic salary per year for the first five years, 30 days per year after that, capped at two years' pay. The reductions for resignation that existed under the old law are gone. Service is counted by walking anniversaries rather than dividing days by 365.25, because that divisor reads a completed five years as 4.999 and underpays the worker. Every settlement is editable and reviewable before it is issued.
Does a worker need signal on site to clock in?
Clock-ins are geo-tagged against each site's fence and radius. A punch made outside the fence is recorded and flagged rather than refused, because on a live job the gate moves and people are legitimately somewhere else. If you already run biometric turnstiles, tell us the make and model — importing from existing hardware is handled case by case rather than promised in general.
Where does my data live, and can I get it back?
Each company's data is separated from every other company's. You can export everything — employees, attendance, payroll history, documents — as spreadsheets and PDFs at any time, and that right is written into the contract rather than left to goodwill. UAE data protection law (Decree-Law 45 of 2021) does not impose a general requirement to host inside the country for a business like yours; if your own client contract requires UAE residency, say so and we will quote for it.
Is there Arabic?
You can speak to us in Arabic or English — that is how the company runs. The interface itself is English today and Arabic is on the roadmap. We would rather tell you that now than let you find out after signing.
What does it cost for a company like mine?
Take your headcount and read it off the calculator above. A 40-person fit-out contractor is AED 480 a month, a 120-person contractor is AED 1,300, a 300-person group is AED 2,800 — all excluding 5% VAT. There is no per-module minimum charged twice if you take more than one module. Setup and migration are quoted once we have seen your current records.
Who is behind this?
Ellaelio is built by MAA Group Software in Dubai. The HR system it is packaged from runs the payroll and site attendance of a working fit-out contractor and a salon group every month — it was built to solve our own month-end, which is why it argues with you about things like overtime thresholds and night-hour slicing. The software trade licence is in process and the number will be published here when it is issued.
Send us last month's salary file.
We will tell you what the bank would have said about it, and what your WPS coverage figure actually is. No charge, no obligation, and you will know within a day whether we are worth a meeting.
Photo: David Rodrigo / Unsplash