What attendance regularisation is
Attendance regularisation, also written attendance regularization and sometimes called attendance correction, is the procedure by which an entry in the attendance record is amended after it has been recorded. The amendment is made at the employee’s request or on a note from their manager, and it carries a documented approval whose trace stays in the record.
An entry that needs correcting is not in every case an error. The attendance record documents what the recording tool captured, and what the tool captured can differ from what actually happened. An employee may spend a day working in the field without passing the device, the network may drop at the moment of recording, or the employee may forget to record their departure. Attendance regularisation is the clean route by which that difference enters the record.
Why attendance regularisation exists
The reasons that call for attendance regularisation include the following:
- A task away from the workplace, or a client visit at the start or the end of the day.
- A fault in the recording device, or a network outage at the time of recording.
- An approved permission that did not reach the record. The employee then appears late although they were permitted to arrive at that time.
- A forgotten entry on arrival or on departure.
- Working across more than one location, where the employee starts the day at one branch and finishes it at another.
What keeps attendance regularisation controlled
Four elements keep attendance regularisation controlled:
- A known deadline for submitting requests. A correction sought months after the day in question asks everyone involved to remember what happened.
- A written reason, not a choice from a list on its own, together with evidence where evidence exists.
- One known approver for each case, so that approval does not turn into a question of whom the employee happens to ask first.
- A visible trace in the record: the original entry, the entry after correction, and who approved the change and when.
The fourth element is what separates a correction from an alteration. A record that is written over with no trace is no longer a record of what happened; it becomes a record of the latest opinion about it. The whole value of an attendance record lies in its showing what was recorded on a given date, not the latest state alone.
What is built on the record after attendance regularisation closes
The attendance record is not an end in itself. Later calculations are built on it. Part of it passes into the payroll run as earnings or deductions, and part of it feeds into the absenteeism rate as unplanned absence. For that reason the window for attendance regularisation closes before the period closes, not after it. A correction made after the period has closed is no longer a correction of the record; it has become an amendment to a calculation already completed.
The effect that absence or lateness has on pay is a separate question from attendance regularisation. Where that effect takes the form of a deduction from the wage, the Saudi Labor Law (نظام العمل) sets its terms. Article 92 of the Labor Law lists the cases in which an amount may be deducted from the worker’s wage without their written consent. Some of those cases carry a ceiling of their own, such as the 10 per cent of the wage set for recovering loans from the employer, while others carry no ceiling in that article. Fines imposed for violations are among the listed cases, and Article 70 of the Labor Law sets their ceilings. Article 93 of the Labor Law then sets an aggregate ceiling across all deductions: the amounts deducted may not exceed half the wage due to the worker, unless the labour court (المحكمة العمالية) is satisfied that a higher deduction is possible, or that the worker needs more than half of their wage, in which latter case the worker is not given more than three quarters of it.
What counts as a violation that warrants a penalty depends on what the Labor Law provides or on the organisation’s approved work organisation regulation. Article 66 of the Labor Law sets a closed list of the penalties that may be imposed: a warning; a fine; withholding or deferring an increment for up to one year, where the increment has been established by the employer; deferring promotion for up to one year, where the promotion has been established by the employer; suspension from work without pay; and dismissal in the cases the Law provides. Alongside that list, Article 67 of the Labor Law bars the employer from imposing any penalty not stated in the Labor Law or in the work organisation regulation. Article 13 of the Labor Law requires every employer to prepare that regulation in line with the model approved by the Ministry and to post it where those subject to it can see it. The regulation’s role as a source of penalties is set out in our guide to the work organisation regulation.
What attendance regularisation is not
Attendance regularisation is not suited to the following uses:
- It is not a substitute for a leave request. A full day away from work is handled through a leave request, not through an attendance entry added after the event.
- It is not a substitute for changing the schedule. A correction repairs what was recorded; a change of schedule alters what was expected in the first place. A change of schedule is a scheduling decision, and it falls under shift work and similar arrangements, among them core hours and shift bidding.
- It is not a tool for hiding a pattern. Repeated requests from one employee, or within one team, are management information in their own right. Concealing them through automatic approval deprives the organisation of the indicator that the requests themselves provide.
Where an attendance regularisation request is submitted
The natural place for the request is the employee self service portal. The request is then made at its source, and the employee follows its status themselves.
Moving the request into a portal relocates the procedure; it does not remove the organisation’s responsibility for its accuracy. Approval remains the decision of whoever holds that authority, and the policy is settled before the screen is built on it.
The provisions relied on are those of the Saudi Labor Law as published by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development: Article 13 (the work organisation regulation and its posting), Article 66 (the closed list of disciplinary penalties), Article 67 (no penalty outside the Labor Law or the work organisation regulation), Article 70 (the ceilings on fines), Article 92 (deductions without written consent) and Article 93 (the aggregate ceiling on deductions). Royal Decree M/44 of 1446H, in force since 19 February 2025, amended other provisions of the Labor Law. That decree did not amend Articles 66, 67, 70, 92 or 93 of the Labor Law.
This is an explanation of the concept and of the statutory provisions cited, not legal advice.
A standalone Saudi HR system
One employee file holding the contract, the documents and their expiry dates, the attendance record, leave, salary and end-of-service entitlements. End-of-service, overtime and leave-balance calculations are built into the system.
A standalone system on its own subscription. The connection to Qoyod Accounting is now available.