PF and ESI, calculated and filed from payroll

Excel and manual process vs PeopleVio

EPF settings you control

Every establishment handles PF slightly differently — capped at the wage ceiling or on full wages, with or without VPF, with particular components counted as PF wages. PeopleVio lets you set these once for your company, and every payroll run follows them.

• Employee and employer contribution rate: 12% or 10%
• Contribution basis for each side: capped at the wage ceiling, or on actual wages
• Which components count as PF wages: basic, other allowances and variable pay
• EDLI, admin charges and voluntary PF (VPF) on or off
• Wage ceiling overrides with an effective date, for rule changes
• Establishment name, EPFO regional office and registration date

ECR files that match payroll

The ECR (Electronic Challan cum Return) is the monthly file you upload to the EPFO portal. When it's built by hand, the most common problems are mismatched wages, missing non-contributory days and member details that don't match EPFO records.

PeopleVio generates the ECR from the same payroll run that produced the payslips, so wages and contributions always agree. Loss-of-pay days are reported as non-contributory days. EPS is excluded for members it doesn't apply to — for example, employees aged 58 or more, or members excluded from the pension scheme at joining. When salaries are revised with effect from an earlier month, arrear ECRs cover the earlier wage months. Files are checked for common member errors before you download them.

ESIC contributions and the monthly return

ESI applies to employees whose gross wages are within the ESI ceiling. PeopleVio calculates the employee and employer contributions in payroll, on the wage components you choose — basic, HRA, other allowances and variable pay — and tracks contribution periods so coverage continues correctly when an employee's wages cross the ceiling partway through a period.

Each month, PeopleVio produces the ESIC monthly contribution return as an .xls file ready for the ESIC portal, and you can record ESIC challans alongside your PF challans. Branch office and dispensary details are kept in your ESIC settings.

Staying ahead of the 15th

PF and ESI are both due by the 15th of the following month, and late PF payment attracts interest and damages. PeopleVio tracks payment status for every wage month. For months that are still unpaid, admins with EPFO access receive email reminders before the due date, and once a month is late, PeopleVio shows the estimated interest and damages so you can see the cost of waiting.

Combined with challan tracking and an audit trail of changes, this turns PF and ESI from a monthly scramble into a routine: run payroll, download the files, pay, and mark the month as paid.

When PF and ESI apply to your business

PF generally becomes mandatory once an establishment employs 20 or more people, and ESIC applies to establishments with 10 or more employees in areas where ESI is implemented. Once covered, employers must register, deduct the employee share, contribute the employer share and file returns every month, even if headcount later drops.

At the employee level, ESI covers employees whose gross wages are within the ESI ceiling, while PF is calculated on PF wages — usually basic plus DA — with your company choosing whether to cap contributions at the wage ceiling. Wage ceilings and rules change from time to time, so PeopleVio lets you set ceiling overrides with an effective date rather than waiting for a software update. Our guides on PF calculation and ESIC applicability explain the current rules in detail.

Common PF and ESI mistakes — and how to avoid them

Most compliance notices start with small, repeated errors rather than deliberate non-compliance. Calculating PF and ESI in the same place as salary removes most of them.

• PF on full basic despite loss of pay — PeopleVio uses wages actually earned
• Non-contributory days missing from the ECR — loss-of-pay days are reported automatically
• EPS deducted for members over 58 — EPS is excluded where it doesn't apply
• Arrears added to the current month's ECR — arrear ECRs cover the right wage months
• ESI stopped too early when wages cross the ceiling — contribution periods are tracked
• Late payment because nobody remembered — reminders arrive before the 15th

Audit trail and records for inspections

When an EPFO or ESIC inspector asks questions, the answers have to come from records, not memory. PeopleVio keeps the monthly contributions, the ECR files generated for each wage month, arrear ECRs and challan records together, with an audit trail of changes.

Because contributions are calculated from the same payroll that produced each payslip, you can show exactly how a member's PF or ESI was arrived at for any month — the wages earned, the non-contributory days and the rates applied. That makes inspections and employee queries far quicker to answer, and keeps your records consistent from one year to the next.

Getting started with EPFO and ESIC in PeopleVio

Switching on statutory compliance is a one-time setup. Once the EPFO and ESIC modules are enabled for your company, enter your establishment details — PF establishment code, EPFO regional office and registration date, ESIC employer code, branch office and dispensary — and choose your EPF settings: contribution rates, capped or actual wages, which components count as PF wages, and whether EDLI, admin charges and VPF apply.

Next, add PF and ESI details to each covered employee: UAN, PF member ID, any previous member ID, ESI details, and whether they're eligible for EPS. From the next payroll, contributions are calculated automatically and the ECR and ESIC return are ready to download.

If you've been filing PF manually, compare PeopleVio's first ECR with your last manual one before you upload it. Most companies find the main differences are non-contributory days and rounding that the manual sheet got wrong — which is exactly what the switch is meant to fix.

PF and ESI compliance software price in India

PeopleVio is priced per active employee per month, starting at ₹59 on monthly billing or ₹49 billed annually, with lower rates for larger teams. Here's what a typical team pays each month:

Prices exclude GST. See the pricing page for every tier.