Provident Fund Documentation

Introduction

Process Steps

Employee Information Collection – HR

Member Registration

If UAN already exists, then entering Joining date

Exit dates for offboarding.

Approving the New joiners in Member portal

Download a draft ECR File for uploading data.

PF Calculation and formula explanation

Uploading the ECR File process

Challan generation

Payment

Common Errors and solution for errors

Introduction:

Welcome to the comprehensive documentation on the EPFO (Employees' Provident Fund

Organization) employer process, designed to streamline your understanding of the crucial steps
involved in managing provident fund contributions for your employees. Whether you are a new
employer seeking guidance or an HR professional looking to enhance your knowledge, this
documentation aims to serve as your go-to resource.

Eligibility:

o As per law, it is mandatory for organisations to register for the EPF scheme if they have more
than 20 employees working for them.
o Organisations with less than 20 employees can also join the EPF scheme on a voluntary
basis.
o Employees who earn more than Rs.15,000 must register for an EPF account; however, they
must get approval from the Assistant PF Commissioner.

Contribution:

In the EPF scheme, both the employee and the employer make contributions towards a provident
fund account. The employee and employer each contribute 12% of the employee's basic salary and
dearness allowance towards EPF. After the employer retires, they receive a lump sum that includes
both their own and the employer's contributions, in addition to interest on both. Currently, the rate
of interest on EPF deposits is 8.15% p.a.

Administrative Responsibilities: The employer is responsible for deducting the employee's share of
the contribution from their salary and depositing both the employee's and the employer's
contributions to the respective EPF accounts on monthly basis.

Reporting: Employers are also responsible for reporting and submitting the necessary documents
and information to the government authorities, such as the Employees' Provident Fund Organization
(EPFO).

For further information please visit the official EPFO website as a primary source of information. It
often provides the most up-to-date forms, rules, and announcements.
1. EMPLOYEE INFORMATION COLLECTION By HR
 The data of onboarding and offboarding data should be submitted by HR as per the given
format.
 HR must submit the data as per below mentioned format and submit it by first week of the
month.

Name of the Joining DOB Phone Fathers Aadhar Pan UAN - if

employee (as per Date number Name No No exists
Aadhar)

 A format is also given below that need to be considered and submitted for offboarding.

Name of the employee UAN No Date of Reliving

A hard copy of the above documents must be filled.

2. THE PROCESS OF UAN GENERATION AND MARKING JOINING DATE

a. The UAN in respect of member with first time employment would be got generated by the
employer prior to filing of ECR by employer for that member.

b. Also the linking of the existing UAN of the member with the present employment would
necessarily be done by the employer before filing of UAN based ECR.

c. The member details i.e., name of member, date of birth, father’s / Husband’s name etc. would be
same for all the employments, since the details would be fetched from UAN database of member.

 Member Registration: If member has joined EPF for the first time:
- PF site EPFO: Home (epfindia.gov.in) → Enter Username and password of the company.
 - On home page, Go to Member tab → Register – Individual
- On clicking “REGISTER – INDIVIDUAL”.

- The Member Registration form will look as below and by default, Previous Employment
option would be “No”, which is valid for all first-time employment cases.
- For members with previous employment, the option must be changed to “Yes”. Enter all the
details. Here Choosing ‘No’ for new member registration.

- The employer must fill the details in the form.

Note: I. The field with * are mandatory.

II. Name should as per the Aadhaar if not error will pop up.

- It is mandatory to fill any of the KYC details (Aadhar, Pan)

Need to add one screenshot.

- Which will be validated with the given details.

 - Click on Save button, after filling the details.
- A dialogue box appears here “Are you sure you want to save the member data?”
- Click ‘ok’.

 The member was earlier member of EPF prior to joining the present establishment:
In such cases, the process has been revised as follows:
- The member declares the UAN/ EPF Account Number details to the employer through
declaration form as per the existing process.
- The employer is required to link the present employment with the provided Universal
Account Number before filing ECR.
- The member details as available in the provided UAN would be used in the ECR of the
present employment.
- The employer can start remitting dues through ECR for this linked UANIf UAN already exists.
- On clicking “REGISTER – INDIVIDUAL” select Previous employment option - Yes.

- Here the Name must match with the name mentioned in Aadhar. If not, system shows error
as Name mismatch.

- So, it’s necessary that the details should be as per Aadhar.

- Once the details are matched the below page will appear with all the details.

- As we can see all the details are already filled, we must give Date of Joining, qualification
and monthly wages on joining.
- Monthly EPF wages must be given as 15000 as we follow the same for any employee of
SIDGS.
- In case, if the employee wages are below 15000 in payroll sheet and we submit 15000 in
EPF portal then ECR file can’t be uploaded due to this error. The solution for this error can
be found in error with solutions page.

- Save and click ok.

3. APPROVING SUBMITTED RECORDS:
- For approval of submitted records, click on “APPROVALS” under the menu tab “Member”.

- On Clicking approvals, screen would appear as below.

- In the screen, there are pending activities shown. Against the activities, there are options -
View, Approve and Reject.
- View – By clicking View we can see the details of the registered individuals.
- Approve – By clicking approve we are approving the candidate details as they are the
employee in SIDGS.
- Reject – For rejecting the application submitted.
- With this Member registration and approval process is completed and employee is
considered as part of the SIDGS company.

4. EXIT PROCESS:
- Here we need data as per the above-mentioned table format in Employee information
collection content.
- Go to Member Tab, click on Member profile.

- Member details are displayed as above.

- Click on Mark Exit option.

- Give same Exit date for both Exit Date (EPS), Exit date (EPF).

- Give Exit Reason by clicking on drop down arrow we can see the options.
- Click save after filling the details.

5. DOWNLOAD A DRAFT ECR FILE TO UPDATE THE DATA FOR UPLOADING.

ECR draft file helps us to upload the data in EPFO portal for generating challan. This file contains
name of the employees currently in SIDGS and their UAN numbers.
- Go to EPF portal → Payment’s tab → ECR/Return Filing

- ECR upload

- Select Download ECR file.

- Give details as wage month and File type.

- File Type should be ECR only.
- Click on ECR file Download. We will get a ECR file in Excel format.
- Give the File name. Remember File Name shouldn’t contain space in between.
- Don’t copy paste anything in ECR file.

6. PF CALCULATION AND FORMULA.

- We will work on 2 excel sheets which is salary sheet and PF working sheet along with draft
ECR file.
- Now copy this Column A and B data from draft ECR file to excel working sheet.
- Go to Payroll sheet that has employee payroll data and give VLOOKUP formula for getting
gross wages. Here we must make sure that employee name must match with ECR file
member name. In this case we can even apply VLOOKUP first to match names then get the
gross salaries.
- Now most importantly we should remove formulas as ECR upload only accepts numbers
without any formatting.
- So, in this case copy the data (gross salaries) from excel working sheet do paste special –
select only values and paste in the same working sheet.
- Now we need EPF wages as I have stated above, we give fixed 15000 to all the employees in
the EPF portal during Member registration.
- So EPF wages will be 15000 to all the employees.
- EPS wages and EDLI wages will be 15000 to all the employees.
- Now in the above image you can see there are ‘zeros. Those are employees who left the
SIDGS, but we didn’t mark exit for them.
- When we don’t mark, exit every time we download a ECR draft it shows the employee’s
name in ECR. so, it necessary to mark exit as soon as the employee leaves the company.
- We must fill the other rows now i.e., EPF contribution. EPF contribution will be 1800 which
is fixed deduction. We can either follow fixed deduction or 12%.
- As we follow fixed deduction, we give 1800.
- Next is EPS contributions and EPF EPS Difference is 1800 we divide this 1800 as 8.33% and
3.76% respectively.
- 8.33% is 1250 EPF contribution, 3.76% is 550 EPF EPS difference.
- Save
- With this the required data is updated.
- We need to convert this excel sheet to CSV file.

- Give file name without space in between.

- Select CSV (Comma delimited) option as shown in the above image.
- Click save.
- Now we need to open the previously saved CSV file in notepad.
- Open a notepad.
- Go to File tab. Select open (CTRL+O)

- Open the folder we save the CSV file. We can’t find the file in that folder until we select all
files option as shown below.
- Now select the comma separated values file as shown below.
- Click open.

- The opened notepad file will appear as shown below.

- We can’t upload file with comma and spaces.

- So firstly, go to the end and remove line space in this notepad. You can see in the image.
- Click backspace to remove the line spacing.
- Now we should replace commas as ECR can’t be uploaded with commas.
- We must replace commas with #~#.
- Click ‘Ctrl+H’ and Give , in find what option box
- Give #~# in replace with option box.
- Click Replace all.

- Now all the commas will be replaced with #~#.

- Save this file and do not give space in file name.

- With this ECR file is ready to be uploaded.

7. UPLOADING THE ECR FILE PROCESS

- In the EPF employer portal, Go to payments Tab.
- Click on PAYMENT (ECR).

- Select ECR Upload.

- Choose the month of which we are uploading the data.

- Choose the last working day of the month for which we are uploading.
- Now select the notepad file which we saved as below.
- Select ECR option in file type.
- Contribution date is 12%
- Enter remarks as month and year of ECR data we are filing.
- As shown in example image below
- Click Upload.

- We get a page as shown below, we get 2 options Verify | Reject.

- Reject option is if we still want to change the details we can go with reject.
 - Verify option is when we are sure with the data and ready to process click on verify.
- Once the file is validated successfully, we get validated in status column.

Error in validation of ECR File – How to resolve or understand the error.

- If the file isn’t uploaded successfully then we can see validation failed in status column.
- An error file will be generated.
- We can download the error file as shown below to know the errors and resolve them
accordingly.

- After resolving the error, we need to follow the same procedure to upload the revised file.

8. Challan generation
- After successfully uploading the ECR file we can see the options on the same page as shown
below.

- we can see status is shown as verified. Now the pending action is preparing challan.
- Challan is to be prepared in order to process the payment. Click on prepare challan for the
wage month that we want to pay the challan.
- By clicking on the prepare challan option we can see the details and amount to be paid for
the month.
- Here we can see the clear subtotals of EPF wages, EPF contributions, difference between
EPF & EPS contributions.
- The green highlighted line shows the overall EPF amount to be paid for the month and
challan will be generated on the same.
- Below we can see Employer details.

- Which means here the employer must update the total number of employees in Company
in that month and Number of employees excluded (exit) in the same month.
- The total wages of the excluded employees.
- This data helps to evaluate the existing employment count and their wages as there would
be difference from next month as we also update excluded count.
- Now click on generate challan.
- Challan will be generated.
9. PAYMENT
- Once the challan is generated, we get to see the Edit & Finalise option for the challan details
row.

- If we still want to make any changes, we can click on edit. If we click on Finalise the option
of Pay will be displayed.

- A receipt also can be generated from the Column of Receipt File.

- Once we are sure to process the payment, we can click on Pay option which will be
redirected to Net banking portal.

10. Common errors and solutions for the errors

11. FAQ with answers