HR Operations Checklist for Egypt SMBs: Payroll to Biometrics

A logistics company in New Cairo ran 47 employees on a manual attendance sheet for two years. When they finally audited the records, they found 11 staff had accumulated leave balances the company legally owed them — worth roughly EGP 380,000 in settlement liability. The sheet wasn't wrong because anyone cheated. It was wrong because nobody had a process.

If your HR operation runs on WhatsApp screenshots, shared Excel files, or a payroll system that doesn't talk to your attendance device, you have the same exposure. Here's how to close it.

Overtime Under Egyptian Labour Law: The Numbers That Matter

Law No. 12 of 2003 sets the floor. Overtime on regular workdays is paid at 135% of the hourly rate for the first two hours, then 170% beyond that. Work on the official rest day (Friday) earns 200%. Work on a public holiday earns 300%.

Where most SMB payroll runs go wrong:

• Using gross salary as the overtime base instead of the basic wage (which excludes variable allowances)
• Treating the Friday premium as a flat daily bonus rather than calculating from the hourly rate
• Missing the cap: the Labour Law limits compulsory overtime to two hours per day without employee consent

Build a single formula cell in your payroll model that pulls from one source — basic wage, not total compensation — and lock it. If your payroll system lets different users enter the base rate manually per run, it will drift. For a deeper walkthrough of overtime and gratuity formulas, the Payroll Calculation Egypt guide breaks down the full calculation chain.

Leave Policy Templates: What to Standardise Before You Automate

Automation doesn't fix a bad policy — it just executes it faster. Before connecting a leave module to anything, lock down five things in writing:

1. Accrual method: Does leave accrue monthly (1.75 days/month for 21-day entitlement) or is it front-loaded at the start of the year?
2. Carryover cap: Egyptian law permits carryover but not indefinite accumulation. Set a cap — typically 30 days maximum — and enforce it at year-end.
3. Approval chain: Who approves, who is the backup approver, and what's the SLA (we recommend 48 hours maximum)?
4. Emergency leave vs. annual leave: Define what qualifies. Vague policy leads to arguments and inconsistent approvals.
5. Half-day rules: Does a half-day before a Thursday evening cut actually deduct 0.5 days or is it informal?

Write this as a one-page internal document, get sign-off from management, then upload the rules into your HR system. If the system can't reflect your policy accurately, it's the wrong system.

Attendance Geo-Fencing: Setup That Actually Works

Geo-fencing — blocking clock-ins from outside a defined GPS radius — solves buddy-punching for field teams and remote offices. But bad setup creates a different problem: legitimate staff flagged absent because their phone GPS drifted 80 metres.

Practical settings that reduce false positives:

• Set the allowed radius to 150 metres minimum for urban locations (GPS accuracy in Cairo varies significantly by building density)
• Allow a 5-minute grace window after the geo-fence check, so staff who arrive at the boundary can walk to their desk before the system logs them
• Use multiple valid zones for companies with shared premises or staff who legitimately work from a client site — a single-zone setup fails these cases immediately
• Log the GPS coordinates with each punch, not just pass/fail — your HR manager needs the audit trail when disputes happen

For branch operations spread across governorates, the geo-fence zone management becomes its own administrative task. The multi-branch attendance guide covers how to structure zone hierarchies without creating a maintenance nightmare.

Biometric Attendance Device Buyer Guide for MENA

The device market is flooded. Here's what separates a good purchase from a support headache:

Face Recognition vs. Fingerprint

Fingerprint devices cost less (EGP 1,800–4,500 per unit) but fail in environments where staff wear gloves, work in heat, or have worn fingertip ridges — common in manufacturing and construction. Face recognition devices (EGP 4,000–9,000) handle these environments better and are faster at high-traffic entry points (think 200 staff clocking in within a 15-minute window). The face recognition buyer guide covers accuracy ratings, liveness detection specs, and what to ask vendors before signing.

Connectivity Requirements

• Confirm the device supports your network protocol (TCP/IP is standard; some older models are RS485 only)
• Check offline capacity — how many punches can it store locally if the network drops? 50,000 is the minimum acceptable for a 100-person site
• Verify the SDK or API the vendor provides matches what your HR software can consume. A device with no open API creates a permanent manual export step

Supplier Questions That Matter

Ask for local after-sales support in Egypt specifically. A device with a 12-month warranty backed by a Shenzhen email address is not the same as one with a Cairo service centre. Get the support SLA in writing: how many hours to respond, how many days to replace a faulty unit.

Payroll Reconciliation Checklist: Run This Before Every Transfer

Payroll errors are easiest to catch before the money moves. Build this 10-point check into your monthly close — ideally on Wednesday of the last work week of the month so your team has Thursday to fix exceptions before the weekend.

1. Headcount: active employees in payroll = active employees in HR system
2. New joiners: confirmed start date, correct pro-ration applied
3. Leavers: final settlement calculated, end date reflects last worked day
4. Overtime: source is attendance system export, not manual entry
5. Overtime base wage: verified against contract, not total package
6. Deductions: social insurance contributions current (employee 11%, employer 26% as of current rates)
7. Leave taken: matches approved leave records, not just manager-verbal confirmation
8. Allowances: any new or changed allowances approved in writing this month
9. Bank account list: compared against last month — flag any new IBANs or account changes
10. Total payroll variance vs. last month: anything above ±5% requires a line-item explanation before sign-off

Attendux automates steps 1–4 and 7 by pulling directly from attendance and HR records, which cuts reconciliation time from roughly 18 hours to 3 for a 150-person company. Steps 5, 6, 8, 9, and 10 still need a human review — no system should be the last line of defence on bank account changes.

When Your Systems Don't Talk to Each Other

The most expensive HR setup isn't the one with no software — it's the one with three disconnected systems: a biometric device that exports CSV, a payroll tool that imports Excel, and a leave tracker in Google Sheets. The re-keying step between each is where errors enter and where audit trails break.

Before buying anything new, map your current data flows on a whiteboard. Mark every point where a human manually transfers data from one system to another. Each of those points is a risk. Your first purchase decision should be closing the highest-risk gap, not adding a fourth system.

Ready to talk?

If you're auditing your HR processes or evaluating payroll software for a team between 20 and 500 people in Egypt or the Gulf, we're happy to walk through what a connected setup looks like for your specific structure — industry, branch count, pay cycle, and compliance requirements included. Reach out through the ProgMine contact page and we'll schedule a working session, not a sales call.