Run the Wage Protection System month

Record time by worker for the month, with the overtime separated from the normal day and the reduced Ramadan hours shown as what they are, and allocate the hours to the work they were spent on so the payroll and the cost report are built from the same record.

Яагаад: The wage file has to agree with the employment contract as well as with the bank, and overtime is where the two drift apart. Time captured on site, by the person who saw the crew, is also the only defence when a worker raises a wage complaint, because the labour office will ask what was worked and paid rather than what was budgeted.

Match the crew on site to the establishment's own records worker by worker: the identity and residence permit details, the social insurance registration, and the bank account each wage is paid into. List the exceptions rather than paying around them, a worker on site who is registered to another establishment being the one to escalate the same day.

Яагаад: The wage file is submitted per establishment, so a mismatch between the site and the register is not a clerical difference, it is a file that will not reconcile. It is also where two separate obligations meet: a worker whose permit has lapsed cannot lawfully work, and paying him correctly through the system does not cure that.

Run the payroll against the contracts, with basic wage, housing and transport allowances and any deduction shown separately, and produce the wage file from the same run rather than typing it again. Wages are due monthly under the Labour Law, so the run and the file belong to the same cycle.

Яагаад: A wage file keyed separately from the payroll is a file that will disagree with the payroll, usually by one leaver and one joiner. The system compares declaration against transfer, so any difference is visible to the ministry before it is visible to you, and the correction costs a month of compliance rather than an afternoon.

Transfer the wages through a bank licensed in the Kingdom into an account in each worker's own name, checking the account number is a well formed Saudi IBAN of twenty four characters before the run rather than after a rejected transfer, and keep the bank confirmations against the payroll.

Яагаад: The whole point of the system is that a wage reaches the worker and can be proven to have reached him. Cash on site, payment into somebody else's account or a transfer to a labour supplier who will pass it on are all outside it, however genuinely the money was intended. A single malformed account number silently drops one worker out of the month, and one unpaid worker is what a compliance percentage is measured in.

After the file is submitted, read the result rather than assuming it: how many workers matched, which did not, and what the establishment's compliance status is now. Work the unmatched list the same week, because the fix is nearly always a wrong account number, a leaver still on the file or a wage paid outside the transfer.

Яагаад: Compliance is scored monthly and the consequence is the suspension of labour services, so a bad month is felt as a hiring freeze one or two months later, by which time the cause is hard to reconstruct. Reading the result on submission turns a compliance problem into a data problem, which is the only form of it anybody can fix quickly.

For each subcontractor supplying labour, record their establishment details and require evidence of their own wage compliance as a condition of each payment, and flag the ones whose status has slipped before you plan next month's crews around them.

Яагаад: Their compliance failure arrives as your labour shortage. A subcontractor whose services are suspended cannot renew permits or move men, so the crew he promised for next month simply is not there, and it is far too late to price an alternative. Asking for the evidence monthly is unpopular and much cheaper than the alternative.

Keep the month as one pack: the time records, the payroll run, the wage file as submitted, the bank confirmations and the compliance result, so any single worker can be traced from the hours he worked to the money that reached his account.

Яагаад: Wage claims are made by individuals about single months, sometimes long after the man has left the country. A pack that lets one name be followed from attendance to transfer answers the claim in an afternoon. Records scattered across a timesheet folder, an accounts system and a bank portal turn the same question into a week of work with an uncertain ending.