UAE labour law fits on a page. Applying it to 40 people, three sites and a month of real punches does not. The rules on working hours and overtime are clear enough. The trouble starts when a shift crosses midnight, someone works their rest day, Ramadan shortens the day, or one store measures lateness from a different start time than the next. That is when a spreadsheet quietly produces the wrong number.
This article sets out the working hours and overtime rules UAE private-sector employers work to, and then, rule by rule, what your attendance software has to calculate to keep up with them.
This is a practical summary of Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021 on the Regulation of Labour Relations and its Executive Regulations, not legal advice. Some sectors and roles have their own arrangements, so check your own case with MOHRE or an adviser.
The rules, in plain terms
Normal working hours. The standard maximum for private-sector employees is 8 hours a day and 48 hours a week. The law allows these to be changed for certain sectors and roles by decision, so treat 8 and 48 as the baseline, not a universal fact.
Breaks. Working hours should be arranged so that nobody works more than five hours in a row without a break, and the breaks in a day should total at least one hour. Break time does not count as working time.
Overtime limits. Overtime should not normally exceed 2 hours a day, and total working time, overtime included, should not exceed 144 hours over any three weeks. There are exceptions for emergencies, such as preventing a serious loss or accident.
Overtime pay. Ordinary overtime is paid at the basic hourly wage plus at least 25%, so 125%. Overtime worked between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. is paid at plus at least 50%, so 150%, with an exception for shift workers.
Rest days. Every employee is entitled to at least one paid weekly rest day. If someone has to work it, they get another day off in place of it or are paid for that work at plus at least 50%.
Public holidays. Public holidays are paid. Work on a public holiday is compensated with a substitute day off or pay at plus at least 50%.
Ramadan. Private-sector working hours are reduced by two hours a day during Ramadan. MOHRE confirms the arrangement each year.
Midday break. Each summer, MOHRE bans outdoor work under direct sun between 12:30 and 15:00, normally from 15 June to 15 September, with exemptions for certain essential work.
Who is excluded. Senior management and supervisory roles are generally outside the overtime rules. Your system needs a way to switch overtime off for those people specifically.
What your attendance software must calculate
Each rule above turns into a calculation. Here is what to ask your system to do, and how Wurxa does it.
1. The right working day for each person
Overtime and lateness are both measured against a scheduled day, so the first job is knowing what that day is. A roster entry for that date should win, then the person's own shift, then their site's working hours, then the company default.
Get this wrong and everything downstream is wrong. An evening-shift employee measured against a 9 a.m. company start reads as late every day and earns phantom overtime. We have seen this up close: half of a typical company's "late" flags mean nothing for exactly this reason.
Wurxa resolves the scheduled day in that order for every person, every day, and the rules around it (break, grace period, rest days, when overtime starts) come from the person, then their department, then their site, then the company default.
2. Overtime at the right rate
The law has two rates and your software needs both. The common mistake is to budget everything at 125% when much of the real overtime sits at 150%. We measured this in our own data: most overtime paid is at the premium rate.
In Wurxa, overtime is worked out from the raw punches, never typed in. The Overtime audit splits each person's overtime into 125% and 150% hours with a cost, and every hour worked on a weekly rest day or public holiday counts in full at 1.5x. Overtime can be switched off for one person, which is how you handle a manager outside the overtime rules.
3. When overtime starts
The law sets the rate. It does not tell you whether 12 minutes of packing up after a shift is overtime. That is a policy decision, and the software should make it explicit rather than bury it in a formula.
Wurxa keeps these decisions on one Overtime policy page, written as plain sentences: whether overtime starts when the scheduled shift ends or once someone has worked more than their contracted day; a grace buffer before it starts; a minimum to count; whether a late arrival works the time back first; and whether a paid break counts inside the day. A 09:00 to 18:00 store with a 30-minute buffer starts overtime at 18:30, so a normal day never bills overtime. Before you save a change, Wurxa shows what your last pay period would look like with it.
4. The daily and three-week limits
Calculating overtime is half the job. Spotting when someone has worked more than the law allows is the other half.
Wurxa flags more than 2 hours of overtime in a day for review, and the Overtime audit checks every person's total against 144 hours in a rolling three-week window, raising a critical exception when someone goes over.
5. Breaks that are counted the same way everywhere
Worked hours should come from punches, so time punched out for lunch is not worked time. The harder case is the store where nobody punches out for lunch at all.
In Wurxa, each site sets its break length and whether it is paid. The Monthly report flags a break that runs well over the expected length, and its optional Net working column deducts the site's expected break for staff who never punch out, so a warehouse does not appear to out-work every store.
6. Shifts that cross midnight
A shift from 15:00 to midnight that ends with a punch-out at 00:10 is one working day, not two broken ones. Systems that split the day at midnight drop or halve exactly the shifts most likely to carry night overtime. In Wurxa, a rostered shift that runs past midnight is counted in full, with the first punch-out the next morning closing it.
7. Ramadan, holidays and the midday break
Wurxa's Compliance calendar in Settings holds the Ramadan period, public holidays and the midday break season. You adjust the Ramadan dates after the moon sighting, and roster the shorter Ramadan shifts for those weeks so lateness and overtime follow the shorter day. Public holidays are kept per country, so a UAE holiday is not paid to staff in Qatar or Saudi Arabia. Outdoor work in the 12:30 to 15:00 window during the midday season is flagged.
8. Sites in different countries
If you run sites outside the UAE, each one has its own rest days, holidays and time zone. Wurxa sets these per site, with a live clock on the site form so you can confirm the offset, and keeps each country's holidays separate.
9. Proof you can show someone
When an employee disputes their overtime, the answer should be a calculation you can show, not a figure in a cell. In Wurxa, "Try it on a real day" works one person's day out step by step, and the Monthly report has optional "Overtime from" and "Overtime before minimum" columns that show how each day's overtime was reached.
What happens when one of these is missing
Each gap costs money in one of two directions. Undercount overtime and you carry a liability that surfaces in a labour complaint or a final settlement. Overcount it, through phantom lateness, wrong schedules or unflagged buffers, and you pay for time nobody worked. Either way, the spreadsheet that produced the number cannot explain it.
Let the software do the arithmetic
Wurxa works every figure above out from the raw punches on the ZKTeco terminals you already own, or from the phone app for staff without a terminal, and feeds the same hours into WPS payroll. See how on the Wurxa Attendance page, or read how Wurxa connects to ZKTeco terminals with no server on site.
Wurxa is free for up to 5 employees on one site, and every new workspace starts with a 14-day trial with every feature and no card required. Start your free trial, set your site hours and overtime policy, and check last month's overtime against what you actually paid.
Put the workflow into practice.
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