Sales and Marketing Saudization: Two Decisions at 60% and the One Field They Differ In

Sales and marketing saudization is set by two localisation decisions issued on the same day: Decision 101278 for sales professions and Decision 101319 for marketing professions. Both set 60% of the workers in the decision’s professions, at entity level, both apply to establishments in which 3 or more workers work in their targeted professions, and both carry a grace period of 3 months with an application date of 19/4/2026.

One field between them parts company, and it is the field that decides who enters the count. The guide for marketing professions states a minimum counting wage of SAR 5,500. In the guide for sales professions, no floor was established by the reading behind this page. So the marketing figure is not carried across to sales, and it is not said that sales professions carry no wage condition.

The subject of this page is those two decisions. The shared architecture of the localisation decisions, meaning the level of measurement at the entity, the rounding rule, the automated monitoring and what triggers non-compliance, is covered where it belongs and is not repeated here in full.

1. What each of the two decisions provides

This is what was read from each decision’s procedural guide and from its page at the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development:

Dates are shown as the documents print them, Hijri and Gregorian together where both appear. No conversion was made between the two calendars in either direction, so what is in the table is what is printed and not what is computed.

2. Four fields identical across the two decisions

The match between the two decisions is not a coincidence in a single field. It runs across four:

• Issuance date: 30/7/1447 AH, corresponding to 19/1/2026, in both.
• The percentage: 60% of the workers in the decision’s professions, at entity level, in both.
• The scope trigger: 3 or more workers in each decision’s targeted professions.
• Grace period and application date: 3 months, applying on 19/4/2026.

In these decisions the entity is the capacity the Ministry deals with for the purposes of computing localisation, and it represents all the branches of a single establishment operating in the same economic activity. The practical effect of the match is direct: an entity with three workers in sales professions and three in marketing professions is caught by both decisions, at the same percentage and on the same date, each decision against its own professions.

3. The fifth field parts company: the floor stated in the marketing guide

The wage floor in this family of decisions is a counting condition, not a statutory minimum wage. A Saudi whose wage falls below it does not enter the calculation of the percentage. There is nothing in it preventing a contract below that figure, and the effect that was read is the count alone. The measure is the contribution wage registered with the General Organization for Social Insurance, not the basic wage and not the total in the contract.

The guide for marketing professions states this floor as a figure: SAR 5,500.

In the guide for sales professions, no wage floor was established here. That is an absence from the reading, not a denial that a condition exists. It is not sound to carry the SAR 5,500 figure across to sales professions, and it is not sound to write that sales professions carry no wage condition. Settling that either way is a matter for the procedural guide of the sales professions decision and the competent authority.

What makes this difference easy to miss is that it does not show up in the fields that match. The two decisions were issued on the same day and agree in four fields, and reasoning from those four to the fifth is reasoning without a text. Four matching fields do not produce a fifth matching field, and each decision’s floor is read from its own guide.

4. The denominator: the workers in the decision’s professions

The denominator of the percentage in these two decisions is the workers in the professions named in the decision, not the establishment’s total headcount. An entity with one hundred workers of whom twenty are in sales professions enters the calculation under Decision 101278 with twenty, not one hundred.

This holds for the decisions that cut across activities. It is not a rule about every localisation decision, and stating it without its scope is how a wrong number gets built. Decision 208819, on the sales outlets of seven economic activities, sets its 70% on the total workers at the outlet. Decision 212535, on real-estate activities and professions, sets its 70% on the total number of workers at establishments operating in those activities. The denominator is read off each decision’s own guide, exactly as the level of measurement is.

One distinction is worth holding before any of this reaches a spreadsheet. The Ministry’s own answer in its guides says that a localisation decision is applied to the professions the decision targets. That is a statement about the scope of application. Whether the percentage is calculated on those professions alone is a separate question, and it is answered by the decision’s own percentage sentence, not by the answer about scope. The two sentences read alike and they do not say the same thing, and reading the second out of the first is how a denominator gets invented.

5. A worked example on sales professions

Take an entity with 9 workers in sales professions. That number is the input to the calculation under Decision 101278, and it is assumed here to show the operation. It is not taken from any text.

• The denominator: 9 workers in sales professions.
• The percentage set in Decision 101278: 60%.
• The result: 60% of 9 is 5.4.
• Rounding: the guides provide that 0.49 and below rounds to zero and 0.5 and above rounds to 1. The fraction here is 0.4, so the figure is 5.

The example shows the denominator and the rounding. It does not show the effect of a wage condition: no wage floor was established here in the guide for sales professions, so the example does not settle that the count here is free of a wage condition, and it does not settle that it is subject to one. The example also settles no date and no particular profession.

6. The scope trigger: 3 or more workers, counted per decision

The trigger in the two decisions is one figure in two separate places. The scope of Decision 101278 is establishments in which 3 or more workers work in sales professions, and the scope of Decision 101319 is establishments in which 3 or more workers work in marketing professions. Each trigger is counted against its own decision’s professions.

The effect on smaller entities is immediate: an entity with four workers in sales professions and two in marketing professions falls under the first and not under the second, even though the two counts add to six.

Both decisions may reach one establishment at once, and then the workers in sales professions are the denominator of their decision’s percentage and the workers in marketing professions are the denominator of theirs. Where two decisions meet on one profession, the guides and the signed decisions provide that where localisation percentages differ, the higher percentage is applied, and the condition for that rule to operate is, in its own wording, that the percentages differ. Which professions both decisions reach is read from the two targeted-professions tables, and those tables were not established here.

7. The grace period: 3 months, and where it runs from

The grace period in the two decisions is 3 months and the application date is 19/4/2026. The grace period in this family of decisions is defined in the guides as the period between the date the ministerial decision is published and the date it is applied and enforced. It runs from publication of the decision, not from publication of the guide and not from the establishment’s knowledge of it.

Decisions in this family are issued as updates. The wording of each one read here is “approval of an update to the procedural guide”. So before a date from this page is built into anything, open the decision’s own page at the Ministry and check two things: that the decision number on the signed attachment is unchanged, and that no updated guide has replaced the one read.

8. What was not read in the two guides: the targeted-professions tables

The targeted-professions table in each decision is what settles which of your job titles falls under it. The two targeted-professions tables in Decisions 101278 and 101319 were not established here, so no profession is named on this page as falling inside either one or as falling outside it.

The profession codes in these decisions’ tables are keyed to the Saudi Unified Classification of Occupations issued by the General Authority for Statistics. The classification’s own definitions were not established here, so the codes are read from their source.

9. Professional accreditation

Professional accreditation is a counting condition in a number of localisation decisions, of the same kind as a wage floor: a worker who does not hold it is not counted in the percentage. Three authorities are named across the guides read for this material: the Saudi Organization for Chartered and Professional Accountants for the accounting professions, the Saudi Commission for Health Specialties for the health professions, and the General Authority of Civil Aviation for the licensed aviation professions. That is what those guides were read to say, and it is not a census of what the decisions contain.

No accrediting authority and no professional-accreditation condition was read in Decision 101278 or in Decision 101319. That is an absence from the reading and not a denial. A decision in which no authority was named in the guides read is not thereby a decision without an accreditation condition, and settling the question either way is a matter for the decision’s own procedural guide and the competent authority.

A localisation decision is an obligation separate from the Nitaqat programme. The Ministry answers the question in its own guides: the localisation decision is applied to the professions the decision targets at entity level, the penalties provided for in law apply regardless of the establishment’s range in Nitaqat, and the establishment’s range does not affect the calculation of the localisation percentage. The other direction of the question, whether meeting a decision moves the band or whether the headcount a decision targets is weighted in the Nitaqat formula, was not established in any source read here. The required figure under the programme is a different number, and estimating it is what the Nitaqat calculator is for.

What the text does not settle

• A minimum counting wage in the sales professions decision: neither denied nor affirmed here.
• The two targeted-professions tables in Decisions 101278 and 101319, and which job titles fall inside each.
• A professional-accreditation condition in these two decisions: no authority was named in them in the guides read, and that is not a reason to say they carry no accreditation condition.
• The penalty amount arising from a breach of either decision, and what follows from their cross-reference to the older schedules of violations.
• The content of the two earlier decisions that these two update: their citations were read, not their texts.
• The effect of meeting either decision on the establishment’s classification in Nitaqat.
• The regional decisions, their percentages and the activities they cover, and their bearing on sales and marketing professions inside those regions.

Each of these is a matter to be referred to the statutory text and the competent authority.

What your system should record

The figure the Ministry sees is read from the GOSI registration, not from your file. Monitoring runs on the job titles and wages in the social insurance database, and the wage tested is the contribution wage registered there, not the basic wage and not the total in the contract. So what is worth holding in your own employee file is what you can reconcile against that registration:

• The number of workers in sales professions and the number of workers in marketing professions, each on its own, because each count is the denominator of its decision’s percentage and the trigger for its scope.
• The job title registered with GOSI for each worker, and its code in the Saudi Unified Classification of Occupations.
• The contribution wage for each Saudi in a marketing profession, to measure against the SAR 5,500 floor stated in the marketing guide.
• Which branches fall inside the entity: which are in the same economic activity and which are outside it.
• The date 19/4/2026, as the application date of both decisions.
• The actual work the worker performs, where it parts company with the registered title.

Checklist

• Do you know how many workers you have in sales professions and how many in marketing professions, as two separate counts?
• Has either count reached 3 or more, putting you under the decision that governs it?
• Are you computing 60% on the workers in the decision’s professions, or on your total headcount?
• Did you round the fraction by the rule that 0.49 and below goes to zero and 0.5 and above goes to 1?
• Does the contribution wage of each Saudi in a marketing profession reach SAR 5,500?
• Did you carry the wage floor across from the marketing decision to the sales decision without reading it in the sales guide?
• Did you treat sales professions as carrying no wage condition? An absence from the reading is not a denial that one exists.
• Did you read the targeted-professions table in each decision’s guide before counting an employee in or out?
• Are you watching 19/4/2026 as the application date, or waiting for the effect of a breach?

Why this turns into a problem

The effect of these two decisions shows up late. Monitoring runs on the job titles and wages in the social insurance database, and an establishment is not notified on the day it falls out of the percentage.

The characteristic error in these two decisions is reasoning from one to the other. Reading the SAR 5,500 floor in the marketing guide and then applying it to sales professions builds an exclusion of employees on no text that excludes them. Reading the silence of the sales guide and then writing that sales professions carry no wage condition builds an inclusion on no text either. The error in both directions is the same one: attributing a rule to a decision it was not read in.

A second is adding the two counts. An entity with two workers in sales professions and two in marketing professions may see four workers and place itself below the trigger of three, and each decision’s trigger sits on its own professions. A third is dividing by total headcount in an entity caught by a decision whose denominator is the targeted professions, which shows a compliance that is not there.

This is where it pays to have an employee’s facts in a single file. That is what Qoyod HR provides: a single employee file holding the contract, the documents and their expiry dates with an alert before them, an attendance record for each employee, and their leave, salary and end-of-service entitlements. End-of-service, overtime and leave-balance calculations are built into the system. It is a standalone HR system with its own subscription, and the link with Qoyod accounting is available now.

For more guides and templates, browse the HR Resource Centre.

Frequently asked questions

What is the localisation percentage for sales professions and marketing professions?

Each of the two decisions sets 60% at entity level: Decision 101278 for sales professions and Decision 101319 for marketing professions. The denominator in both is the workers in the professions the decision names, not the establishment’s total headcount. Each profession’s percentage is read from its own procedural guide.

When do the sales and marketing localisation decisions start to apply?

Both decisions were issued on 30/7/1447 AH, corresponding to 19/1/2026. The grace period in each is 3 months, and the application date is 19/4/2026. The grace period as the guides define it is the period between the date the ministerial decision is published and the date it is applied and enforced.

Does the sales professions localisation decision apply to every establishment?

The scope of Decision 101278 in its guide is establishments in which 3 or more workers work in sales professions, and Decision 101319 reads the same way for marketing professions. The trigger is read in each decision against its own targeted professions, and one decision’s trigger is not carried over to another.

Is there a minimum counting wage in the sales professions localisation decision?

No minimum counting wage was established in the guide for sales professions. That is an absence from the reading and not a denial that a condition exists, so it is not sound to write that sales professions carry no wage condition. As for the marketing professions guide, it states a floor of SAR 5,500.

Can the wage floor stated in the marketing decision be carried over to the sales decision?

No. The figure read, SAR 5,500, is stated in the guide for marketing professions, and carrying it across to sales professions attributes a condition to a decision it was not read in. The two decisions matching on the percentage, the trigger, the grace period and the application date does not make the wage field match in them.

What number is the 60% in these two decisions calculated on?

On the workers in the decision’s professions: in Decision 101278 the workers in sales professions, and in Decision 101319 the workers in marketing professions, not the establishment’s total headcount. Some activity decisions are built the other way and compute on the total workers, so the denominator is read from each decision’s own guide.

Statutory references

This page rests on the procedural guide for the localisation of sales professions (Decision 101278) and the procedural guide for the localisation of marketing professions (Decision 101319) as published by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development, on each decision’s page at the Ministry for its number, issuance date and application date, and on the two signed ministerial decisions attached to them.

The rounding rule, the definition of the grace period and the higher-percentage rule are read from the procedural guides of this family of decisions.

No wage floor is published on this page that was not read in its own decision’s guide, no penalty amount is attributed to a localisation decision, and no profession is named as falling inside a table that was not read.

Subjects that border this decision and are not settled on this page: registration with the General Organization for Social Insurance, and the contributions recorded against a worker under it; the contribution rates applied to a registered wage; and the Saudi Standard Classification of Occupations, from which the profession codes are drawn. None of these is read from this decision’s guide, and none of them is a source for the localisation percentage stated here.

This guide is a regulatory explanation, not legal advice. In an existing dispute or a particular case, the statutory text and the competent authority remain the reference.