Is Form 23 (PF) Mandatory for Employees, or Is There an Alternative Acknowledgment?

Query on Form 23 (PF) Issuance

Please guide me, is Form 23 (PF) mandatory to issue to employees or not? If not, what slip can be issued to employees for acknowledgment of PF? Please reply with your valuable comments at the earliest.

Regards,
Vinothkumar

It is always good if you distribute Form 23 PF slips to the employees. However, employees will approach you for clarifying their doubts regarding the deduction of PF from their salary. While distributing, you can inform them about the particulars of Form 23.

Regards,
Pandey
[Phone Number Removed For Privacy Reasons]

Considering all of the records are online and employees access their details from the portal or through SMS, is it necessary to provide a physical PF slip? Does it hold any significance?

With due respect, Saswatabanerjee ji, an educated employee can download a passbook from the website. However, many workmen are not as educated, and even today, a number of workmen do not have an idea of how to operate computers. Therefore, as employers, it is our duty to distribute the PF slips to such workmen.

Arun J.

What is the way to download a PF slip from e-Sewa? Kindly share the details.

Regards,
Vinothkumar

Please follow these steps to access your PF slip:

1. Go to the online ECR/Challan submission portal.
2. Log in using your employer's User ID and Password.
3. The Employer E-Seva Home Page screen will appear.
4. Click on the download tab.
5. Select the PF Slip download option.
6. Choose the year for which you want to download the PF slip.
7. If you cannot find the link for the current PF period, please contact your RPFC office.

Thank you.

The Provident Fund Form No. 23 is essentially the annual statement of employees' and employers' contributions. This form is generated and issued by the EPFO, not by the employer. Form No. 23 will be issued by the EPFO only after the reconciliation of contributions for the respective financial years. Various procedures exist to complete this, including filing Form No. 123, Form No. 6, etc. Once finalized and your account is approved, Form No. 23 will be generated and distributed to employers. Upon receipt, the employer should distribute it to the concerned employees.

Regards,
Adoni Suguresh
Senior Executive (Personnel, Administration & Industrial Relations)
Retired Labour Laws Consultant

Thank you for your valuable comments. However, my query still remains unclear. I am currently employed in a private company as an Executive HR. Our office is located in Tamil Nadu while the Head office is situated elsewhere, outside Tamil Nadu. The centralized PF is managed at the Head office. The HR in the corporate (Head) office mentions that it is not mandatory to issue Form 23. In my previous experience at a Public Limited Company, PF slips were distributed every year. I would appreciate your insights on this matter.

Regards,
Vinothkumar

Your previous company operated in a scenario where there was no online PF portal. Now, with the portal being established and stabilized, the need for manual filing is over. In fact, it has no value today since it is not even recognized. Instead, the employee is able to generate the same account statement, etc., online at their convenience.

What some of the large companies have started to do is that HR is offering to help train employees in using the portal. In the worst-case scenario where the employee can't use the internet at all, they are generating the reports from the employee's login and giving it to them whenever they need.

Your previous company operated in a scenario where there was no online PF portal. Now, with the portal being established and stabilized, the need for manual filing is over. In fact, it has no value today since it is not even recognized. Instead, the employee is able to generate the same account statement, etc., online at their convenience.

Training Employees on Using the PF Portal

What some of the large companies have started to do is that HR is offering to help train employees in using the portal. In the worst case where the employee can't use the internet at all, they are generating the reports from the employee's login and giving it to them whenever they need.

Thank you all for the valuable comments and for clarifying my doubts. I'll train our employees on how to log in to the member portal as well as the UAN portal and download the PF passbook.

Regards,
Vinothkumar

I am reopening this thread as I have some doubts. Previously, we used to receive an automated email from the ECR portal stating something like "Form 23 for the accounting year YYYY-YYYY is available on the ECR portal for download." At that time, we would download and distribute individual Form 23 slips to our employees. This year, we did not receive such an email, but we did find that the Form 23 is available for download in the Unified portal.

As we all know and as mentioned previously in this thread, employees have access to all the PF information online, so it may not be useful for many employees to get this Form 23. However, some employees may find it useful. But my question is not about usefulness.

Here are my questions:

(1) From a statutory/legal point of view, are employers required to distribute Form 23 to employees? If so, can you kindly point out the basis for such a requirement?

(2) The Form 23 we downloaded has statements for past employees, some who left 2+ years ago and had no contribution from our company in 2016-17. I checked in the unified portal; they have been marked as exited. So why are the statements of these past employees being included in the report we download? Are we responsible for distributing these also?

Thanks.