Leave & Attendance Software UAE: Top Solutions Compared (2026)

You've got 40 employees, five leave types, and a payroll run that needs to be done by month-end. Someone's applied for leave that wasn't approved on time, two people have conflicting records between your attendance sheet and your payroll file, and your finance team is asking why the SIF numbers don't match last month's actuals.

This is not a hypothetical. It is Tuesday for a lot of HR managers in the UAE.

The right leave management system does not just track days off. It connects attendance, leave balances, and payroll into one clean flow so that none of those conversations happen in the first place. This guide compares three platforms commonly evaluated by UAE businesses: Zoho Payroll, Bayzat, and Jibble.

The goal is simple: help you figure out which one is worth your time.

Quick Overview

Zoho Payroll

Zoho Payroll is a simple software that handles payroll, leave, and attendance all in the same place. When they do, data does not get lost in transit, manually reconciled, or mismatched at pay run time.

The UAE edition covers WPS compliance, SIF file generation, DEWS contributions for expatriates, GPSSA and ADPF pension deductions for UAE and GCC nationals, and end-of-service gratuity calculations by contract type, free zones, and separation reason. All of this is native.

Leave and Attendance (Premium Plan) 

The Premium plan brings leave and attendance directly into the payroll workflow. You can configure leave types based on factors like employee location, gender, department, or designation. Carry-forward rules, lapse policies, and leave encashment formulas are all configurable to match your HR policy.

Attendance works through the Employee Self-Service (ESS) portal. Employees check in and check out via the web or mobile app, submit regularization requests for missed punches, and apply for leave directly. Managers approve from the same portal. When the pay run opens, Loss of Pay calculations, overtime, and leave encashment figures are already populated.

Holiday calendars are configurable by work location. If your team is split across Dubai and Abu Dhabi, each location follows the right public holiday schedule and leave accruals are calculated accordingly.

For companies already using Zoho People, attendance data and LOP reports sync directly into Zoho Payroll in one click. No CSV exports, no column mapping, no version control headaches.

Where Zoho Payroll pulls ahead 

The decisive edge is architectural. Leave and attendance data feed the pay run natively, with zero manual steps. That matters most at the end of the month when a discrepancy between your attendance tool and your payroll system can delay WPS submissions and create compliance exposure.

Zoho Payroll also carries the full weight of UAE statutory compliance. SIF files for WPS, DEWS contributions at the correct rate (5.83% for the first 5 years, 8.33% thereafter), pension deductions for GCC nationals, and end-of-service calculations are all automated. A business on a spreadsheet or a disconnected attendance tool is managing all of that manually.

Reporting backs it up. Real-time leave balance reports, LOP summaries, overtime reports, and leave encashment figures are available on demand. Zoho Analytics integration lets you build custom dashboards if you need more. [

Where Zoho Payroll falls short 

Zoho Payroll does not offer native biometric hardware integration or GPS-based geofencing for field attendance. If your workforce is spread across construction sites, warehouses, or retail floors where physical clock-in verification is the primary requirement, the ESS portal-based attendance model has limits. However, this can be solved using integration with Zoho People

The leave and attendance features are also tied to the Premium plan. If you are on the Standard plan and want integrated leave management, you will need to upgrade.

Pricing 

Zoho Payroll UAE starts from AED 15 per employee per month, billed annually. The Premium plan includes leave, attendance, ESS portal, custom functions, record locking, advanced approvals and much more. A 14-day free trial with full feature access is available with no credit card required.

Bayzat

Bayzat is an all-in-one HR platform combining payroll, leave management, benefits administration, and a health insurance marketplace. For mid-market UAE businesses Bayzat can manage group health insurance alongside HR and payroll.

Its leave management supports automated UAE labour law compliance checks, mobile-first approval workflows, and attendance tracking through GPS mobile check-in. facial recognition and third-party biometric device integration. Payroll and WPS compliance are handled natively within the platform.

Where Bayzat pulls ahead  

Where Bayzat earns serious consideration is the insurance layer. Access to over 30 UAE-licensed health insurers, live comparison, and group policy management within the same platform as payroll is genuinely useful for companies where benefits complexity is driving the software decision.

Where Bayzat falls short 

Where it is harder to recommend for smaller businesses: pricing is not publicly listed. Every prospect requires a sales conversation before they know what they will pay. For a 20-person startup trying to model software costs independently, that friction is real. 

Its limited native integration library often necessitates manual CSV exports to sync payroll data with external accounting or productivity tools.

Bayzat is best evaluated by mid-market companies (50 plus employees) where the full platform scope justifies the engagement.

Jibble

Jibble offers a free plan with unlimited users, a Premium plan at $4.49 per user per month, and an Ultimate plan at $7.99 per user per month.

For what Jibble is designed to do, it does it well. Staff can clock in and out using mobile, tablet, web, MS Teams, or Slack, with biometric facial recognition and GPS location tracking available even on the free plan. For field-based teams in construction, F&B, or retail where site-level verification matters more than payroll integration, Jibble is a practical and low-cost tool.

Leave management is included: employees can apply for time off through the app, managers approve it, and the calendar updates automatically. For a standalone attendance and time-off tool, it works.

The gap is payroll. Jibble has no payroll engine. It does not generate SIF files, calculate DEWS or gratuity, or handle WPS compliance. Any attendance data that needs to inform payroll must be exported as a spreadsheet and manually imported into a separate UAE payroll platform. For businesses where payroll accuracy and WPS compliance are non-negotiable, that manual bridge is a risk that compounds every pay cycle.

Jibble also does not offer a built-in shift scheduling feature for companies with a workforce that works multiple shifts at different times, and there is no built-in communication tool.

Jibble makes sense as a standalone attendance tracker. It does not make sense as the backbone of a UAE-compliant payroll workflow.

Feature comparison: Leave and attendance focus

Total Cost of Ownership: The Realistic View

Zoho Payroll gives you a known number before you sign up. Starting from AED 7 per employee per month on the Standard plan, with a clear upgrade path to Premium for leave and attendance.The 14-day trial means you can validate the fit before committing.

Bayzat requires a sales conversation before you know your cost, it means you cannot run the numbers independently. Companies evaluating Bayzat should factor in that the pricing reflects the full platform, including features you may not use.

Jibble looks cheapest on paper, and for a standalone attendance tool it may be. The calculation shifts when you add a separate UAE payroll platform to the stack, plus the time cost of exporting, cleaning, and importing attendance data every month. The free tier is genuinely free; the hidden cost is the manual payroll reconciliation it creates downstream.

Who should use what

Zoho Payroll is the right choice if you want payroll, leave, and attendance managed in one place without manual handoffs between systems. Transparent pricing, a clean mobile app, full WPS and DEWS compliance, and leave data that flows directly into pay runs make it the lowest-friction option for UAE businesses from 10 to 2000 employees. If you already use Zoho Books, Zoho Expense, or Zoho People, the integration case is even stronger.

Bayzat earns consideration if your HR decision is being driven by health insurance management complexity. At mid-market scale and above, the embedded benefits layer is a genuine differentiator. Payroll and leave management are solid alongside it.

Jibble is the right choice if your primary requirement is field attendance verification, particularly GPS and biometric clock-in at scale, and you are comfortable managing payroll in a separate system. For any business where WPS compliance and end-of-service calculations are involved, Jibble needs a payroll platform sitting alongside it.

About Zoho Payroll

Zoho Payroll is part of Zoho's suite of 55+ integrated business applications, trusted by more than 100 million users worldwide. The UAE edition is built for local compliance from the ground up: WPS, SIF files, DEWS contributions, GPSSA and ADPF pension support, and end-of-service gratuity, with leave and attendance built in on the Premium plan.

About this document 

This comparison was researched using official product websites, publicly available help center documentation, and verified third-party review platforms including Capterra, G2, and GetApp UAE. All pricing figures cited reflect publicly listed rates as of early 2026. Bayzat does not publicly list pricing; no figures are stated for that platform.