WPS and the SIF file, explained

What WPS is

The Wage Protection System (WPS) is the electronic salary transfer system of the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation (MOHRE). Private-sector employers pay their workers through it every month, by way of an approved agent — a bank, an exchange house or another approved financial institution — so the ministry can see that each worker was paid, and how much.

MOHRE's rule is that wages are paid monthly, in the amount and at the time agreed in the employment contract. For the employer, that turns payroll into a monthly file: one line per employee and one line for the company, handed to the agent that pays everyone.

The salary information file

The salary information file (SIF) is a plain text file of comma-separated values with the extension .SIF — the kind of file a spreadsheet saves as CSV, under a different name. It carries two kinds of record:

• EDR

  Employee detail record. One line for each employee being paid, and never more than one per employee in a file.

• SCR

  Salary control record. One line that identifies the employer, counts the EDR lines and totals them.

Some agents also accept an employee variable pay (EVP) line beside an EDR, breaking the variable amount down into allowances such as housing or overtime. Ask your agent whether theirs does.

What an EDR line holds

Ten fields, in this order. Dates are written YYYY-MM-DD, and amounts as plain numbers with no currency sign and nothing negative.

1. Record type: EDR
2. The employee's unique ID, as issued by MOHRE
3. The agent's routing code: nine digits, assigned by the Central Bank
4. The employee's account with the agent, usually the IBAN
5. Pay start date
6. Pay end date, in the same month as the start date
7. Days in the period: end date minus start date, plus one
8. Fixed income for the period
9. Variable income for the period
10. Days of unpaid leave in the period, or 0

The control record

The SCR names the employer and its bank, records when the file was made, and totals it. If the line count or the total does not match the EDR lines, or the salary month does not match their pay dates, the whole file is rejected — not just the line that is wrong.

1. Record type: SCR
2. The employer's unique ID, as issued by MOHRE
3. The routing code of the employer's bank
4. File creation date
5. File creation time, as HHMM
6. Salary month, as MMYYYY
7. Number of EDR lines in the file
8. Total salary: every fixed and variable amount in the EDR lines, added up
9. Currency: AED
10. Employer reference, optional

EDR,10000000000001,900000001,AE070000000000000000001,2026-09-01,2026-09-30,30,3000.00,500.00,0
EDR,10000000000002,900000001,AE070000000000000000002,2026-09-01,2026-09-30,30,2800.00,0.00,2
SCR,1000000000001,900000002,2026-09-28,1015,092026,2,6300.00,AED

Read it against the fields above: the second employee took two days of unpaid leave, which goes in the last field while the period stays thirty days, and the SCR total is the four amounts added together.

How the file is named

The file name is the employer's unique ID followed by the date and time the file was created, with the extension .SIF. Your agent may add requirements of its own on top — some ask for the file to be encrypted, or uploaded through their own online banking.

[employer ID][YYMMDD][HHMMSS].SIF
1000000000001260928101500.SIF

Where it goes wrong at company scale

None of the fields is hard. What breaks the file is the payroll sheet it is typed from drifting away from the people it describes.

1. 1
   IDs and accounts go stale

   A new work permit, a change of bank or a closed account leaves the old value in the payroll sheet — and one invalid account can send the whole file back.

2. 2
   Unpaid leave is not carried through

   It belongs in the EDR line, and it matters again when end-of-service gratuity is worked out.

3. 3
   Joiners and leavers mid-month

   The period dates and the day count change for exactly the people HR is busiest with that month.

4. 4
   The file is retyped every month

   Every manual step is a chance for the line count or the total not to match.

Questions