Salary certificate template and wording — تعريف بالراتب in Arabic or English

The wording of a salary certificate, in full

What people actually look for is not the template but the wording — the sentences the letter is made of. This is the standard set the tool assembles by default. Every Arabic sentence is taken from a published Saudi template and shows its source beside it in the picker; the English below is our translation, and the Arabic is the operative text:

• Opening: “Greetings,”
• Statement: “This is to certify that Mr./Ms. [employee], of [nationality] nationality, ID no. [ID number], has been employed with [company] in the position of [job title] since [date of joining] and remains so to date.”
• Payment: “The salary is paid monthly by bank transfer.”
• Disclaimer: “This certificate is issued at the request of the person concerned, for submission to you for the stated purpose only, without any liability on the establishment.”
• Closing: “Issued for your information and reference.”

Alternative wording in the tool

Each slot offers more than one accepted sentence, presented as a picker. The opening can instead be “Peace be upon you,” or “Please accept our highest regards and esteem,” and the disclaimer has a broader form stating that the company bears no liability for any use of the letter outside the purpose for which it was issued.

Pick whatever matches your company’s policy. The bracketed placeholders are replaced with your data in the printed letter — rather than you hunting runs of dots through a Word file.

The amount in words — what the other tools do not do

Writing the salary out in words beside the figure is what makes the letter hard to alter. The available tools either leave the box blank for you to type, or omit it entirely.

Here it is computed from the actual Arabic grammar: the reverse gender agreement numbers 3–10 take, and the singular, dual and plural forms of the currency. It writes the net rather than the gross, because the net is what a bank actually underwrites against.

Salary certificate, employment certificate, proof of income — one document or several?

Four or five names circulate for what is usually a single document, and the difference lies in the everyday name and in who is asking rather than in the content of the letter.

«تعريف بالراتب», «خطاب تعريف بالراتب» and «شهادة تعريف بالراتب» are three ways of naming the same thing, and the ones banks and government bodies use most. «صيغة تعريف راتب» is not a different document either — it is a search for the wording itself.

«تثبيت راتب» — salary confirmation — is usually asked for when the recipient wants assurance that the salary is fixed and ongoing rather than a figure for one month, as with financing applications and visas. The letter that answers it is the same letter: job title, start date, salary and its components, and that it is paid monthly.

«Employment certificate» and «certificate of employment» are the same letter again, named for the fact of employment rather than the salary in it — the wording an embassy or a foreign employer tends to use. Where the request is only to confirm that someone works here, the salary lines can be left out and the letter still answers it.

So this tool produces one letter that serves all of those requests. What changes is the addressee and the stated purpose, and both are fields you write yourself.

What makes a bank accept it

There is no single prescribed statutory form, but institutions agree in practice on four things: company letterhead, an authorised signatory, an official stamp, and a recent date.

Banks generally require the letter to be no more than three months old, and some prefer thirty days. Some bodies also ask for Chamber of Commerce attestation, which happens after the letter is issued.

• Company letterhead and logo
• Employee’s full name and ID or Iqama number
• Job title and date of joining
• Salary and allowances itemised, then the net
• The amount written out in words
• The purpose and the addressee
• Signatory name, title, signature and stamp

A salary certificate in English

The bodies that ask for English are usually embassies processing a visa, foreign banks, and university admissions outside the Kingdom. Switch the site language to English and the whole letter prints in English — sentences, dates and the amount format — from the same data you already entered, with nothing retyped.

The Arabic is the operative text and the English is a translation alongside it. If a body asks for both, issue the two files from the same draft so the figures cannot diverge.

Many searches end in the word “Word”, looking for an editable file. The output here is a PDF on purpose: this is a document that gets signed and stamped, and an editable file is not. To change a detail, reopen the draft saved in your browser and regenerate.

Qiwa’s certificate, or your employer’s letter?

Qiwa issues a salary certificate for private-sector employees registered in the system, and GOSI issues a wage certificate. If the government one satisfies your purpose, it is the easier route.

But it is fixed-format and Arabic-only. It cannot be addressed to a particular embassy, and it cannot be issued on your company’s letterhead with its stamp. It also does not cover retirees, military personnel, or domestic workers under an individual sponsor — and for those the employer’s own letter is still what is asked for.

A letter from an individual sponsor

A domestic worker — a driver, a housekeeper, a private nurse — is sponsored by an individual, not a company. There is no letterhead, no commercial registration, and no Qiwa record, yet banks and embassies still ask for the same letter.

The sponsor writes and signs it in a personal capacity: put the sponsor’s name in the company field and their ID number where the commercial registration goes, leave the logo empty, and set the signatory to the sponsor’s name with “Sponsor” as the title. The rest of the wording is unchanged.

A warning: altering salary details is forgery

This tool only formats what you type. It issues nothing official, and the issuing entity alone is responsible for the accuracy of what it says.

Altering the salary, the job title or the dates on an otherwise genuine certificate is material forgery. Saudi Arabia’s anti-forgery law provides for imprisonment of one to five years and a fine of up to SAR 500,000 in some cases, and a conviction for an offence involving dishonesty can cost an employee their end-of-service gratuity.