All about Salary Information File (SIF)
Here is a quick guide about SIF for processing payroll in the UAE.
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. The HR or Finance person at every organization needs to carry out these basic steps to process payroll.
(i) Payroll calculation
(ii) Approval flow
(iii) Payroll processing
The ministry of labor requires companies to use the salary information file (.SIF). It is used 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
Here are some of the details included in a salary information file:
(i) All of the employees will have an Employee Detail Record (EDR).
(ii) Each SIF will have only 1 Salary Control Record (SCR).
(iii) Each and every Company Trade License have its own SIF linked to the employees on the MOL list.
(iv) Every on-shore employee has a MOL Code or Personal ID which is used by the Central Bank to identify if an employee is being paid.
(v) 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, thereby, include the currency in which employees are paid.
(vi) 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.
(vi) 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. Therefore, 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.