Does this cover my employees automatically, or do I need to do something?

It applies automatically based on contract type and phase date. New or updated contracts entered on 6 October 2025, fixed-term contracts on renewal or extension on 6 March 2026, and indefinite-term contracts on 6 August 2026. No new signature is required, because the contract moves to the enforceable form through technical integration once both parties approve it in Qiwa. That is exactly why a phase can pass without an establishment noticing it is now in scope.

When can an employee file an execution request?

When they have not received their wage in full within thirty days of the due date, or when they received it partially and ninety days have passed since the due date. At that point they file an electronic execution request directly through Najiz, with no need to raise a labor lawsuit or submit extra documents, because the contract documented in Qiwa carries an execution number from the Ministry of Justice.

What if I actually paid, but outside the wage protection system?

Payment is verified automatically through integration with the Mudad platform, so a transfer from a personal account, a cash payment, or a lump sum with no monthly breakdown may not register as a matching payment at the right time. A paper receipt does not substitute for a digital trace in the channel the system reads. Practically: route every payment through the official channel, even a one-off exception.

How long do I have to object, and what should I have ready?

Five days from the date you are notified of the execution request through Najiz, during which you either object or pay. That window is very short next to normal business cycles, so real readiness is administrative before it is legal: a named owner checking Najiz and Qiwa notifications daily with a holiday backup, current contact details on file for the establishment, and the ability to pull a matching wage payment record within hours rather than days.

A Wage 30 Days Late Now Opens an Enforcement File in Najiz, With No Labor Case

Qiwa led Saudi search trends today by a clear margin. The platform itself is not new, but what has changed around it over the past year deserves a moment from every business owner: the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development, working with the Ministry of Justice, has made the wage clause in a documented employment contract an enforceable instrument.

The phrase sounds purely legal. Its effect is entirely operational. Before this decision, a dispute over a late wage began with a labor complaint, moved through a settlement track, and only then became a lawsuit. Now the contract documented in Qiwa is directly enforceable, and the employee files an electronic request in Najiz without additional documents or drawn-out judicial procedures. The distance between a hiccup in your payroll cycle and an open enforcement file against your establishment is far shorter than most owners assume.

Three phases, and the third is probably yours

The decision rolled out in three stages, as announced by the ministry:

Phase one, 6 October 2025: new contracts, or existing contracts whose terms were updated.
Phase two, 6 March 2026: fixed-term contracts upon renewal or extension after expiry.
Phase three, 6 August 2026: indefinite-term contracts.

Phase three is the broadest, and it passed roughly six weeks ago. The indefinite-term contract is the standard form for Saudi employees, which means a large share of your workforce entered scope in a single step, without requiring any action or fresh signature from you. The move to the enforceable form happens through technical integration between the platforms once both parties approve the contract in Qiwa, not through a manual step you would notice at the time.

The mechanism in three numbers: 30, 90, and five

Three numbers compress the whole path, and they are the ones that should govern your system settings:

30 days: if the employee has not received their wage in full within thirty days of the due date, they may file an electronic execution request.
90 days: if the wage was received partially, the right to request execution begins ninety days after the due date.
Five days: once the establishment is notified of the execution request through Najiz, it has five days to object or pay.

The third number is the administratively dangerous one. Thirty days is a reasonable window, long enough to catch and fix a payroll fault. Five days is not a window that survives a notification landing in an inbox nobody watches, or on the mobile number of an employee who has left, or in a Najiz account whose password sits with an outside firm handling the file. Objecting is not procedural decoration here. It is your only opportunity to correct a data error before enforcement continues on its track.

Why a paperwork defense does not work

The rule that changes the game is that verification of wage payment happens automatically through integration with the Mudad platform, not through documents your establishment submits on request. That inverts how many finance departments think about proof.

From what we see inside businesses, the most confusing cases are not employers who refused to pay. They are employers who genuinely paid, but in a way the system cannot see: a transfer from a personal account outside the wage protection system, cash handed over at a branch, or a lump sum covering several months with no breakdown tying it to the month it settles. In every one of those cases the system reads an absence of payment while the establishment is certain it paid. The dispute is no longer about good faith. It is about whether a matching digital trace exists at the right time.

There is a second, quieter gap: the difference between the figure written in the Qiwa contract and the figure your payroll system actually pays. The documented contract is the reference. If the wage in your system rests on an old structure, or on a later verbal agreement that never made it into the contract, you are paying one number while being measured against another.

Five things to check in your system this week

Reconcile contracts against payroll. Export the wage figures from Qiwa contracts and compare them line by line with your payroll run. Every gap between the two is open exposure, and the fix is updating the contract, not just adjusting the run.
Pin down the due date. The thirty days run from the due date. If that date is loosely defined in your system, or drifts with management approval, you do not actually know when the clock starts.
Route every payment through the official channel. Any payment outside the wage protection system does not exist from the automated verification standpoint, whatever receipt you keep.
Name an owner for notifications. Assign a specific person to check Najiz and Qiwa notifications daily, with a backup for holidays. The five-day window does not pause because the responsible employee is traveling.
Alert before the deadline, not after. Set an automatic alert at day fifteen of any delayed wage item, not day twenty-nine. The point is to find the fault while you still have room to fix it.

The Origami view

This decision is a clear instance of a pattern we now see in every sector we work in: regulators verify compliance automatically through integration between platforms, rather than by reviewing documents an establishment sends in. The same logic appeared in e-invoicing when the link to the authority became the source of truth, and it appears today in wages across Qiwa, Mudad, and Najiz. The consequence is that your internal system is no longer a private ledger. It is one party in an equation a third party reads in real time.

What we recommend in practice is not buying a new system, but closing the gap between the systems you already own. Most establishments that ran into trouble here did not lack a payroll system. They had a payroll system that did not talk to contract data, and payments that did not all pass through the channel the regulator reads. Reconciling those three sources on a schedule is a few days of work. The cost of skipping it arrives all at once, at a moment you do not choose.

A practical conclusion

This change asks nothing of you in the way of registration or signature, and that is precisely why it is easy to miss. Indefinite-term contracts entered scope automatically on 6 August 2026. The right move today is narrow and concrete: reconcile Qiwa contract wages with your payroll run, confirm every payment flows through the wage protection system, and name someone to watch Najiz notifications daily. Three tasks that fit inside a week, and they spare you dealing with an open enforcement file on a five-day clock.

Sources

Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development — adoption of the wage clause in the documented employment contract as an enforceable instrument, in cooperation with the Ministry of Justice, to accelerate resolution of labor disputes, including the conditions for filing an execution request and the objection period.
Ministry of Justice - Najiz platform — electronic filing of execution requests and issuance of the execution number for the documented contract.
Qiwa platform — documentation of employment contracts and approval by both parties.
Mudad platform — the wage protection system and automated verification of wage payment.

A Wage 30 Days Late Now Opens an Enforcement File in Najiz, With No Labor Case