Your final settlement should contain five items: salary up to your last working day, end-of-service gratuity or indemnity, cash for unused annual leave, notice-period pay where owed, and any contract extras such as a repatriation air ticket — minus only lawful deductions (loans, advances, or damage you formally owe).
Before your last week: download your contract, last 6 payslips, and your leave record. Run your numbers on this site — gratuity, leave encashment and unpaid salary — and save the PDF breakdowns.
Check the salary basis. UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman gratuity use basic salary; Saudi Arabia and Kuwait use fuller wage definitions. If your payslip's "basic" was recently reduced on paper while your duties stayed the same, raise it with HR in writing before you sign anything.
Watch your dates. In Kuwait, resigning before 3 years means zero indemnity; in Saudi Arabia, before 2 years means zero award, and crossing 5 or 10 years jumps your share by a third. A few weeks of patience can be worth thousands.
Never sign a "full and final settlement received" paper before the money is in your account or the figures match your own calculation. If your employer refuses to pay, every Gulf state has a free labour-ministry complaint route — MOHRE (UAE), Musaned/HRSD (Saudi), ADLSA (Qatar), PAM (Kuwait), LMRA/SIO (Bahrain) and the Ministry of Labour (Oman).