Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

WatheeqaHR is a cloud platform for employee operations at small and mid-sized companies in the UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and Oman: attendance imports, leave, internal payroll ledgers, payment tracking, country-aware end-of-service estimates, and document expiry alerts.

This policy explains what data we collect, why we collect it, how we protect it, and your rights. As a UAE-registered company, we apply the UAE Personal Data Protection Law (Federal Decree-Law No. 45 of 2021) as our baseline standard; where a customer's own country imposes additional obligations on how they use WatheeqaHR, that customer remains responsible for their own compliance.

2. Data we collect

Company account data: company name, owner/user names, email addresses, and passwords. Passwords are always hashed and cannot be viewed by anyone.

Employee data entered by your company: name, employee number, department, title, joining/end dates, attendance device ID, basic salary and allowances, and country-specific payroll identifiers if you choose to enter them — for example, UAE WPS fields such as IBAN and labour card number, or another supported country's equivalent statutory reference numbers.

Attendance records imported from device export files, limited to in/out punch times.

Document data: document type, expiry date, and notes only.

3. What we do not collect

We do not store passport, Emirates ID, or identity document images.

We do not store full document numbers for passports or Emirates IDs.

We do not store biometric templates such as fingerprints or face templates. We import attendance times from Excel/CSV files only and do not connect directly to biometric devices.

4. Why we use the data

To operate the service for your company: attendance and absence calculations, payroll generation, document expiry alerts, and accountant reports.

To send operational notifications by email, in-app notifications, and WhatsApp if your company enables it.

We do not sell your data or your employees' data to third parties, and we do not use it for advertising.

5. Data isolation and security

Each company is isolated. Every record is tied to your company ID and cannot be accessed by another company.

Access inside your company is controlled by roles such as owner, admin, HR, accountant, and viewer.

Data is encrypted in transit with HTTPS/TLS, and passwords are stored using bcrypt hashing.

Sensitive changes such as salary, attendance, and payment actions are recorded in an audit log with who did it, when, and why.

Backups are transferred securely and kept for a limited period.

6. Service providers

We use trusted providers to run the service, including Amazon Web Services (AWS) for cloud hosting of the database and servers — currently hosted in Frankfurt, Germany, within the European Union, under appropriate data-transfer safeguards for data leaving the country — Amazon SES for email, and Twilio/Meta for WhatsApp messages if enabled by your company. These providers process data only to deliver the service.

7. Retention and deletion

We keep your company data while your subscription is active.

When you cancel, you can export your data in Excel/CSV format. After cancellation, company data is permanently deleted within a maximum of 90 days.

Financial records are not silently deleted inside the service. Reversals are documented with a reason to preserve record integrity, and all company records are deleted when the company itself is deleted.

8. Your rights

You can access, correct, export, and delete your data.

You can object to or restrict certain processing.

You can submit a complaint to the UAE Data Office.

Important note: for employee data, your company is the data controller and WatheeqaHR is the data processor. Employee requests should go to the company management first, and we help the company fulfil them.

9. Contact

For privacy questions or to exercise your rights, contact privacy@watheeqahr.com or use the settings page inside the app.

We may update this policy from time to time. We will announce material changes inside the app before they take effect.