Shift Scheduling Software for Egypt and the Gulf: Rules, Rosters and Overnight Shifts

Shift scheduling software tells every employee when to start, when to finish and when to rest, then checks what actually happened on the fingerprint terminal or mobile app against that plan, so lateness, early leave, absence and overtime are calculated without spreadsheets. If you run a factory, restaurant, clinic, retail chain or warehouse in Egypt or the Gulf, this guide covers the shift types you need, what Egypt's Labour Law 14 of 2025 and the Saudi Labor Law say about hours, rest and overtime, and how to build a roster that holds up in a payroll review or a labour inspection.

Key takeaways

• Egypt caps actual work at 8 hours a day or 48 a week, and presence at work at 10 hours a day as a general rule.
• Overtime in Egypt is the hourly wage +35% (day) or +70% (night); in Saudi Arabia it is the hourly wage +50% of the basic hourly wage.
• Overnight shifts that cross midnight are the single biggest source of attendance and payroll errors in tools that weren't built for them.
• Egypt has no mandatory Ramadan reduction for the private sector; Saudi Arabia sets 6 hours a day for Muslim employees.
• The real value is the chain: shift → punch → leave → payroll → owner's daily view.

Legal information here is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the official text or your adviser before applying it.

What is shift scheduling software, and why isn't a spreadsheet enough?

A shift is more than a start and end time. It's a bundle of rules: check-in time, check-out time, break length, grace minutes, weekly rest days, when overtime starts, and what happens when someone forgets to punch out. Shift scheduling software stores those rules once and applies them every day to every employee, based on the shift assigned to them on that date.

A spreadsheet works for a small team on one fixed shift. Add a second branch, a night shift or a Ramadan timetable, and it becomes a source of constant argument: who was really late, and why does the night guard show as absent one day and double-punched the next?

Shift types your software must handle

• Late-compensating shifts let staff make up late minutes by staying after the official end time. Your software has to distinguish "late but compensated" from "late and not compensated", or you'll end up deducting from people who already made up the time.
• Flexible shifts don't measure lateness from a fixed start time; they measure it from the end of the arrival window or from missing hours.
• Split shifts (two blocks a day) and rotating rosters (morning → evening → night cycles) are common in hospitality and continuous operations. In BashKatib both are coming soon, together with a weekly schedule builder.

What Egypt's Labour Law 14 of 2025 says about shifts

Labour Law No. 14 of 2025 took effect on 1 September 2025, replacing Law 12 of 2003. The rules below are summarised from the law text, the EY alert and the ILO EPLex profile.

Hours and breaks

• 8 hours a day or 48 hours a week of actual work, excluding meal and rest breaks (Art. 117).
• At least one hour of breaks in total, and no more than 5 consecutive hours without one (Art. 118).
• Presence from start to finish, breaks included, is capped at 10 hours a day (Art. 119). Ministerial Decisions 289 and 290 of 2025 allow up to 12 hours for intermittent and special-nature work.

So an 8:00–20:00 shift (12 hours of presence) only works if your activity falls under those decisions; good software warns you when a shift exceeds the limit.

Weekly rest

Employees are entitled to at least 24 consecutive paid hours of rest after no more than 6 consecutive working days (Art. 120). Your roster has to block seven-day runs and allow rest days per group, not only per company.

Overtime, night work, rest days and holidays

• Overtime = hourly wage +35% for day hours and +70% for night hours (Art. 121).
• Work on the weekly rest day: double the day's wage plus a substitute rest day the following week.
• Work on an official holiday: the day's wage plus twice that wage, per Ministry of Labour circulars, or a substitute day if the employee asks in writing.
• Prior approval for overtime is no longer required, but the employer notifies the ministry within 7 days for exceptional or urgent work.

Watch out: the sources we reviewed don't define "night hours" for overtime purposes. Don't copy a figure from a blog. Define the night window in your company policy after checking with counsel, and let the software apply it consistently.

Ramadan in Egypt's private sector

Neither Law 14 of 2025 nor the implementing decisions we reviewed impose reduced Ramadan hours on private employers. The annual government reductions apply to civil servants. Many companies still shorten the day by policy. If you do, use a Ramadan schedule with clear start and end dates, so nobody gets marked late against normal hours.

Keep a record

The implementing decisions refer to keeping a paper or electronic register of actual hours, overtime and rest. Software that keeps every punch and every edit, with a timestamp and a reason, gives you that register by default.

Saudi Arabia and the Gulf

If you have Saudi branches, the Saudi Labor Law (as amended from 19 February 2025, summarised by King & Spalding) differs in several places:

In the UAE, Federal Decree-Law 33 of 2021 sets overtime at +25% of basic pay, and +50% between 22:00 and 04:00. If you operate across countries, your software should apply overtime multipliers by the branch's country, not one company-wide setting.

How to build a roster, step by step

1. Start from demand, not people. How many staff do you need each hour, per branch and department?
2. Define shifts as templates. Name, start, end, break, grace minutes, and whether it crosses midnight.
3. Write the time policy. Lateness and early-leave tiers and their consequences, half-day and full-day thresholds, missing-punch handling, overtime triggers and daily caps.
4. Set rest days per group. Continuous operations rarely all rest on Friday.
5. Assign shifts with effective dates, per employee or group, so changing a shift today doesn't rewrite last month.
6. Overlay approved leave and public holidays so people on leave aren't marked absent and holiday work gets the right multiplier. See our leave management guide.
7. Connect the capture method: fingerprint terminal, mobile app or branch QR kiosk. See the biometric attendance guide.
8. Review exceptions daily: who hasn't checked in since their shift started, who punched outside the site, who forgot to check out.
9. Lock the period before payroll so numbers can't move after salaries are calculated.

Getting overnight shifts right

Take a 22:00–06:00 shift. If the software treats each calendar day separately, it sees a check-in on Sunday with no check-out and a check-out on Monday with no check-in, and may flag one of the days as absent. The fix:

• Attribute the shift to its start day and look for the check-out within a sensible window after midnight.
• Apply the night overtime multiplier using the night window your policy defines.
• Respect rest between shifts. Someone finishing at 06:00 shouldn't be rostered for 08:00 the same morning.

Connecting shifts to attendance, leave and payroll

The roster pays off when it becomes the reference everything else is measured against:

• Attendance: every punch is compared with that day's shift and produces a day status (present, late, early leave, absent, half day, on leave, holiday) plus minutes late and overtime.
• Permissions (excuses): a one-hour late-arrival permission covers that hour only, not the whole day.
• Leave: approved leave cancels the shift for that day; cancelling the leave recalculates attendance.
• Payroll: approved minutes flow to payroll as lateness deductions or overtime at the correct legal multiplier.
• Hourly staff: the shift sets expected hours and punches set actual hours. See the hourly employee management guide.

Buyer's checklist

• Fixed, flexible and overnight (past-midnight) shifts.
• Rest days per group and Ramadan schedules with effective dates.
• Overtime multipliers by country (Egypt, KSA, UAE).
• Date-effective shift changes that don't corrupt past months.
• Punches from ZKTeco terminals, a geofenced mobile app and a QR kiosk.
• A live "not checked in since shift start" view.
• Approved minutes flowing to payroll after period lock.
• An audit trail for every manual edit.
• Full Arabic and English interface, Excel and PDF exports.
• Published per-employee pricing.

How BashKatib helps with shift scheduling

BashKatib is built for Egyptian and Gulf companies that run real shifts:

• Shift types: fixed, flexible with core hours, late-compensating, overnight shifts that cross midnight, and Ramadan schedules (6 hours by default for KSA, optional for Egypt), with weekend configuration per day of the week.
• Date-effective assignments per employee or group, plus bulk shift updates from the employee list.
• Time policy: grace minutes, lateness and early-leave tiers (penalty minutes, fraction of a day or fixed amount), half-day and full-day thresholds, missing-punch rules, and country-default overtime multipliers: Egypt +35% day / +70% night / rest day ×2, KSA +50%. Choose the salary-calculation basis (26, 30, calendar or custom days).
• Trusted punches from the employee app with device binding, passkey (phone fingerprint or Face ID), geofence and optional selfie; from a rotating-QR kiosk; from ZKTeco terminals; or by Excel import. More on the attendance page.
• Review queue for out-of-zone, new-device or missing punches, with employee correction requests and manager approval.
• Overtime and permission requests with multi-step approvals, flowing straight into payroll.
• Timesheets (employee × day grid) for pre-payroll review, then period lock.
• AI voice daily briefing: instead of opening reports, the owner hears a spoken summary in Egyptian or Gulf Arabic, MSA or English: expected headcount, who's late, who hasn't checked in against their shift start, best and worst branch, and what needs a decision. See the AI voice briefing.
• Reports on attendance, lateness ranking, absence and overtime, with exports. See reports.

Coming soon: rotating rosters, the weekly schedule builder and split shifts. Later: employee shift swaps.

Pricing: attendance and shifts are included from the Starter plan (EGP 25 or SAR 8 per employee per month, billed annually). Growth (EGP 45 or SAR 14) adds payroll, kiosk mode, ZKTeco integration and the owner's daily voice briefing. Prices are as of writing and exclude VAT; see pricing for current details.

Frequently asked questions

What does shift scheduling software actually do?

It stores each shift as a set of rules (start, end, break, grace minutes, rest days, overtime triggers), assigns shifts to employees by date, then compares real punches against the planned shift to calculate lateness, early leave, absence and overtime automatically for payroll.

What are the maximum working hours under Egypt's Labour Law 14 of 2025?

Actual work may not exceed 8 hours a day or 48 hours a week, excluding breaks. Total presence at work, including breaks, is capped at 10 hours a day, with up to 12 hours allowed only for intermittent or special-nature work covered by ministerial decisions.

How is overtime paid on night shifts in Egypt?

Law 14 of 2025 sets overtime at the hourly wage plus 35% for day hours and plus 70% for night hours. The sources we reviewed do not define the night window, so set it in your company policy after checking with counsel.

Are Ramadan hours reduced for private-sector employees?

In Egypt, Law 14 of 2025 contains no mandatory Ramadan reduction for the private sector; government reductions apply to civil servants, though many companies reduce hours by policy. In Saudi Arabia, Muslim employees work 6 hours a day or 36 a week during Ramadan.

How should software handle a shift that runs past midnight?

The whole shift should belong to the day it starts, so an evening check-in and the next morning's check-out form one working day. BashKatib supports overnight shifts that cross midnight this way.

Does BashKatib support rotating rosters and shift swaps?

Today BashKatib supports fixed, flexible, late-compensating and overnight shifts, Ramadan schedules and date-effective assignments. Rotating rosters, the weekly schedule builder and split shifts are coming soon; employee shift swaps are planned for a later phase.

Put your shifts on autopilot

Try BashKatib free for 14 days on the full Pro plan: set up your branches' shifts, connect your fingerprint terminals or the employee app, and see your first real attendance report within days. Start your free trial or book a demo and we'll help you configure a time policy that fits your operation.