How to Fix Payroll Errors: Will Including Extra Employees Affect Our Annual Return?

Dear Seniors,

This is Rajendra, and I am working as an Asst. HR with a manufacturing firm. I joined this company in October '11. We have registered one more company under PF within the same group. We use one software for the payroll process. The HR person who was working in my place before did not separate the names of other firms' employees (say, 15 members) from the software.

Since October, I have been generating the challans directly from the software, which calculates the deductions for the other fifteen employees as well. I am manually preparing separate challans for these fifteen employees of the newly registered firm. I discovered this issue while preparing the challan for January '12. I removed those deductions and made the challan manually. I have submitted challans for three months - Oct, Nov, and Dec '11, including these 15 employees' deductions. However, we did not submit their names as per our records.

Impact on Annual Return

My question is, will this have any effect on the annual return? Please guide me. There was nobody to explain and hand over the responsibilities to me when I joined. It took me four months to gain a clear understanding of the HR processes in the company.

Regards,
Rajendra

Dear Rajendra,

Does your payroll software have the provision to calculate salary and PF for separate companies? If it is possible, you can reprocess these months' payroll and generate PF reports separately for these months to see if there are any differences. If not possible, another option is to use Tally ERP-9 software for payroll/PF processing for Company No.2, which could provide a solution.

Are you remitting through manual challans or online?

Regarding the Annual Return, study how the monthly returns were filed. Understand and identify any mistakes that were committed and then revert for a solution.

For your guidance:

"EPFO Facilitates Online Filing of Returns"

The Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), which has taken steps for total computerisation to improve subscribers and employers, has developed e-return software to simplify the filing of various returns by employers. The tool and the user manual, guidelines for filing e-return are available on the EPFO website EPFO.

Employers of establishments covered under the EPF and MP Act should henceforth download the software and file all monthly returns electronically from April 2011 onwards. The annual returns in form number 3A for 2011-12 should also be filed before April 30 using the software, along with a hard copy of form number 6A to upload the member balance and issue the annual statement of accounts expeditiously to the subscribers."

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