How to choose HR and payroll software in the UAE: 15 questions for the demo

Most HR and payroll demos in the UAE look alike. The difference shows when a vendor has to produce a salary file your bank accepts, calculate gratuity on your own contracts, and show real Arabic screens. These 15 questions make every vendor prove those hard parts, so you can compare like with like.

What changed. From 1 June 2026, Ministerial Resolution No. 340 of 2026 Concerning the Wage Protection System replaced Ministerial Resolution No. 598 of 2022: salaries are now due on the first day of each Gregorian month, for the month before. We updated question 1 on 2 November 2026 to match.

This is a checklist for any vendor, including us. It is not a ranking.

Before the demo

Send each vendor the same pack a week ahead:

• Five anonymised employees, including a part-month joiner, someone on unpaid leave and a leaver.
• Three real contracts, with the employee names removed, for the gratuity question.
• Your WPS agent's name, meaning the bank or exchange house that pays your salaries.
• This list of questions.

A vendor that cannot work with your data in a demo will struggle with it after you sign.

The 15 questions

Compliance you can test

1. Can you produce a WPS salary file from our test data?
Under the Wage Protection System (WPS), private-sector employers pay salaries through approved banks, exchange houses and financial institutions. Ask for the Salary Information File (SIF) from a test run, and ask which agents have accepted the vendor's files. Since 1 June 2026, wages are due on the first day of each Gregorian month for the month before, and any later payment is a delay. On the fifth day after the due date, the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation (MOHRE) suspends new work permits for an establishment that has not paid. The day-by-day ladder is in our page on Ministerial Resolution No. 340 of 2026. A file that bounces costs real time.

2. Can you calculate gratuity on our three contracts?
The UAE gratuity uses the last basic wage: 21 days a year for the first five years and 30 days a year after that, with part years, unpaid leave and a cap of two years' wage to handle. Compare the vendor's numbers with your own. Ask how it turns a monthly wage into a daily one.

3. How do you handle a part-month joiner, unpaid leave and a leaver?
Watch the vendor do it, not describe it. These three cases cause most payroll corrections.

4. Who updates the rules when the law changes, how fast, and who pays?
Rules change: contribution rates, minimum wages, deadlines. Ask how updates reach your system, whether you approve them, and whether old payslips stay as they were calculated.

5. What does your Emiratisation or Nitaqat number actually measure?
A headcount ratio is not the same as the regulator's calculation. Ask the vendor to show the formula and where it differs from MOHRE's or Qiwa's figure.

Arabic and your people

6. Are the Arabic screens complete, right to left, for employees and managers?
Ask to see payslips, letters, leave requests and approvals in Arabic. Translated labels on an English layout are not enough.

7. What can employees do for themselves?
Payslips, leave requests, salary certificates and letters. Every self-service request is one less email to HR.

Controls and data

8. Can the person who prepares payroll also approve it?
Look for a setting that separates the two. A small team may need to turn it off, but you should be able to turn it on.

9. What is recorded when someone changes personal data?
Ask who changed what, when and why. Ask to see the log.

10. Where is our data stored, by whom, and where are the backups?
Get the country, the hosting provider and the backup location in writing. If location matters to you, ask your legal adviser what you need, and hold the vendor to it in the contract.

11. How is our data kept apart from other customers' data?
Ask for a plain answer, then ask what "separate" means: a separate database, or rows tagged with your company's name in a shared one.

Connections and cost

12. Does payroll post to accounting, and does attendance reach payroll, without re-keying?
Every manual export and import is a place where numbers drift.

13. What exactly is in the price?
Per employee or per module? Are implementation, data migration, rule updates, Arabic, AI features and support included? What happens to the price at renewal?

Leaving and support

14. How do we leave?
Ask for the export formats, how long you have after notice, and written confirmation when your data is deleted. Agree this before you sign, while you still have leverage.

15. Who supports us, in which language, and how fast?
Get response times in writing. Ask who does the data migration and who trains your team.

Score every vendor on one sheet

Score each answer from 0 to 2: 0 for no answer, 1 for an answer without proof, 2 for an answer shown with your data or put in writing.

Red flags

• The demo uses only the vendor's sample data, even after you sent yours.
• "We can customise that" is the answer to a question about the law.
• No written answer on data location or on how you leave.
• Arabic appears only on the login screen.

How Tarleaks helps

Our answers, for comparison: Tarleaks runs HR, Payroll, attendance and accounting on one sign-in, in English and Arabic. Payroll builds a WPS salary file with checks before the file exists. Statutory rules ship as versioned country packs for the six Gulf states plus the UK, Germany and the US. Each company's business records sit in a database of their own. Ask us the other questions, including where your data is hosted, and hold us to written answers.

What to do next

• Send this list and your data pack to every vendor on your shortlist, including us.
• Read the UAE WPS payroll guide so you know what a good salary file process looks like.
• Read the UAE gratuity guide to check the vendors' gratuity numbers yourself.
• If you are covered by Emiratisation targets, read who is covered and by when before question 5.
• Book a demo and bring your data pack.

Questions people ask

What should I ask in an HR software demo in the UAE?

Ask the vendor to produce a WPS salary file from your own data, calculate gratuity on your real contracts, show the Arabic screens, put the data location in writing, and explain how you would leave.

How do I check a vendor's WPS support?

Ask for a salary information file generated from a test run with your data, and ask which banks or exchange houses have accepted the vendor's files.

Should HR and payroll be in the same system?

Not necessarily, but every hand-off between separate systems is a place where leave, joiners and pay changes can be lost. If you choose separate tools, ask how data moves between them and who fixes a mismatch.