How attendance becomes payroll in an Egyptian SMB: lateness, absence and overtime rules, the monthly cut-off, approvals and a month-end checklist.

Attendance and payroll software in Egypt only gets salaries right when the attendance side is settled first: every lateness, absence and overtime hour measured against a written rule, reviewed before a fixed cut-off date, and approved by a named manager. Most month-end disputes in small businesses are not calculation errors in payroll. They are unapproved or ambiguous attendance records that reach payroll too late to fix calmly. This guide walks through that chain, shows what each attendance event should do to pay, and ends with a checklist you can run every month.

TL;DR. Treat payroll as the last step of a five-link chain: capture the clock-in, apply your lateness, absence and overtime rules, close the month at a fixed cut-off, review and approve exceptions, then hand one clean sheet to whoever runs payroll. Egypt's Labour Law No. 14 of 2025 sets the frame (8 hours a day or 48 a week, overtime at no less than 35% by day and 70% by night, according to law-firm summaries), but your internal penalties policy decides how lateness and absence are deducted, so write it down and have it reviewed.

If you are still choosing a system, start with our guide to employee attendance software in Egypt. This article assumes you already record attendance and want it to turn into correct salaries.

The chain from clock-in to salary

Every salary in a business that pays by attendance passes through the same five links. When a payslip is wrong, the error almost always sits in one of the first four, not in the final calculation.

Capture. The employee records start and end of work: a phone check-in, a fingerprint, a signature. The record should be made by the employee at the moment, not typed in later by someone else.
Rules. Each record is measured against the person's schedule. Late minutes, absent days, early leaving and extra hours are calculated by rules you decided in advance, not by judgement on the 30th.
Cut-off. The attendance month closes on a fixed date. Anything after that date moves to next month's sheet, so payroll is never waiting on a missing day.
Review and approval. A manager clears exceptions: missing check-outs, disputed lateness, overtime that was or was not requested. Each decision carries a name and a reason.
Hand-off. One approved sheet goes to whoever runs payroll, whether that is your accountant, an external payroll provider or a module in your HR system.

The chain is only as strong as link 2. If two branch managers apply lateness differently, no payroll tool downstream can make the result fair.

What each attendance event does to pay

The table below is the reference most small businesses never write down. Fill in the third column with your own policy; the law and your contracts set the boundaries.

Attendance event	What the record must show	Typical payroll effect	Who should approve it
On-time day	Check-in and check-out inside the schedule	Full day's pay, no adjustment	No approval needed
Late arrival	Minutes after the scheduled start	Deduction under your written penalties policy, often after a grace period	Direct manager, with the minutes visible
Early leaving	Minutes before the scheduled end	Same logic as lateness, unless permission was granted	Direct manager
Missing check-out	A check-in with no end time	No automatic effect: flag for review before cut-off	Manager confirms the real end time
Unexcused absence	No check-in on a working day, no leave request	Deduction of the day under your policy	Manager, after one attempt to contact the employee
Approved annual or sick leave	A leave code, not a blank	Paid as the law and contract require; never deducted as absence	HR or the owner
Daytime overtime	Hours beyond the schedule, requested in advance	Premium on top of the hourly wage (law summaries cite no less than 35%)	The manager who asked for it
Night-time overtime	Extra hours at night	Higher premium (law summaries cite no less than 70%)	The manager who asked for it
Work on the weekly rest day	A check-in on the rest day	Extra day's wage plus a substitute rest day, according to law summaries	Manager and HR
Official public holiday worked	A check-in on a gazetted holiday	Follow the holiday-pay rule your advisor confirms	Manager and HR

Two rows cause most of the arguments. A missing check-out should never become an automatic deduction, because the employee usually did work and simply forgot. And approved leave must carry its own code; a blank cell that means "absent" will eventually deduct someone who was on paid leave. For the overtime and leave side in more depth, see our guide to overtime and leave tracking.

What the new Labour Law says about hours and overtime

Egypt's Labour Law No. 14 of 2025 took effect on 1 September 2025 and replaced Law No. 12 of 2003, according to an EY tax alert. The points below come from two law-firm summaries we read; they are not legal advice.

Working hours. A summary by Habib Al Mulla and Partners, published on Mondaq, cites Article 117: 8 hours a day or 48 a week, with rest periods and at least one full weekly day off.
Overtime. The same summary cites Article 121: the regular wage plus no less than 35% for each daytime overtime hour and 70% for each night-time hour. A separate summary by Sadany and Partners gives the same rates.
Rest-day work. Work on the weekly rest day earns an additional day's wage and an alternative rest day within the following week. In all cases, the official text of Article 121 says total time at the workplace may not exceed 12 hours.
Annual leave. 15 days in the first year, 21 from the second year, and 30 after ten full years or for employees over 50.

What these summaries do not settle for you: the exact hours that count as "night" for your shifts, how a grace period for lateness should work, and how much may be deducted for a given number of late minutes. Those depend on your contracts, your internal penalties regulation and the ministerial decisions issued under the law. Confirm each one with your HR or legal advisor before you automate it, then put the answer in the third column of the table above. For the deduction limits and procedure as they appear in the law's own text, read our guide to attendance policy under Egypt's Labour Law, and for a full salary example from basic to net pay, see our guide to payroll software for Egyptian SMBs.

Where Excel breaks between attendance and payroll

A well-built spreadsheet can carry a small team in one location. Our article on moving from an Excel attendance sheet to an app covers the columns and formula traps. Between attendance and payroll, though, the failures are different, and they are about process rather than formulas.

No real cut-off. The sheet stays open until the day salaries are paid, so corrections arrive on the last afternoon and nobody checks them.
Rules live in someone's head. The person who built the file knows that "15 minutes late twice" means a quarter-day deduction. When they are on leave, the rule changes.
Approval is invisible. A deduction was removed, but the file does not say who removed it or why. The next dispute starts from zero.
Copy steps multiply. Attendance is typed from a register, summed in one sheet and re-typed into the payroll file. Each copy is a chance for a shifted row.
Shifts break the maths. Night shifts that cross midnight and rotating rest days make lateness and overtime hard to compute by hand. If your team rotates, our guide to shift scheduling in Egypt explains how to set schedules that attendance can be measured against.

None of these is solved by a better formula. They are solved by a fixed date, written rules and a record of who approved what.

Month-end reconciliation checklist

Run this list in the same order every month. The first four items belong in the week before the cut-off, not on the cut-off day itself.

Weekly exception sweep. Every Thursday, clear missing check-outs and unexplained absences from the past week while people still remember.
Leave entered before cut-off. Make sure every approved annual, sick and casual leave day carries its code, so it cannot be read as absence.
Overtime matched to requests. Compare recorded extra hours with the overtime a manager actually asked for. Unrequested extra time is a policy question, not an automatic payment.
Schedule changes logged. Shift swaps, new start times and rest-day moves should be in the system before the month closes, or lateness will be measured against the wrong time.
Freeze at the cut-off. On the agreed date, close the attendance month. Late corrections go into next month as an adjustment line, with a note.
Manager sign-off per branch. Each manager confirms their team's totals: late minutes, absent days, overtime hours. Record the name and date.
Spot-check three employees. Pick three people at random and trace one day each from check-in to the final figure. If one fails, check the rule, not just the person.
One sheet to payroll. Send a single approved file with totals per employee and a short list of exceptions. Do not send raw logs.
Keep the evidence. Store the approved sheet and the exception notes. When an employee questions a deduction in three months, the answer should take minutes.

How Yawmy does this

Yawmy is an attendance and employee-management app for small and mid-sized teams in Egypt and the Gulf. To be precise about what it covers, here is what the Yawmy website states:

Employees check in from the iOS or Android app, or through a Telegram bot, verified by GPS against the office radius you set.
Lateness and absence deductions are calculated automatically into an end-of-month payroll sheet, with the net figure computed.
A live dashboard and detailed reports show hours worked, lateness and attendance per employee.
Staff can be grouped by branch or department, and managers can assign and follow tasks.

The website does not describe overtime premiums, social insurance, income tax or bank-transfer files. Treat Yawmy as the attendance side of the chain: it produces clean, verified attendance and the lateness and absence part of the month-end sheet. Overtime pay, allowances, insurance and tax stay with whoever runs your payroll today, so check that hand-off before you rely on it. Yawmy is free for up to two employees; the Pro plan is 500 EGP a month or 4,500 EGP a year for unlimited employees.

FAQ

Can attendance software calculate payroll in Egypt?

Some systems calculate the attendance-driven part: lateness and absence deductions measured against each person's schedule. Full payroll also covers overtime premiums, allowances, social insurance and income tax, which many attendance tools leave to your accountant or a payroll system. Ask any vendor to show you exactly which of these it calculates.

How is overtime calculated under Egypt's new Labour Law?

According to law-firm summaries of Law No. 14 of 2025, overtime is paid at the regular wage plus no less than 35% per daytime hour and 70% per night-time hour. Work on the weekly rest day earns an extra day's wage and a substitute rest day. Confirm the details for your shifts with your HR or legal advisor.

When should the monthly attendance cut-off be?

Pick a date that leaves enough working days before salaries are paid to review exceptions and get manager sign-off. What matters most is that the date is fixed and announced. Corrections after the cut-off move to next month as an adjustment, instead of reopening a closed month.

Should a missing check-out be deducted?

No, not automatically. A missing check-out usually means the employee worked and forgot to record the end of the day. Flag it for the manager to confirm the real end time before the cut-off, and only treat it as early leaving if the manager confirms that.

How do I stop salary disputes over lateness?

Write the lateness rule down, including any grace period and how minutes turn into deductions, and share it with staff. Then make sure each deduction is visible to the employee before the cut-off, with the recorded minutes. A dispute raised before payday is far easier to settle than one raised after the money is paid.

Written by Nada Hassan, HR-Tech Strategist, Yawmy.

Want month-end to start from clean attendance? Start free on Yawmy with your first two employees.

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