A Provident Fund is a retirement savings scheme that is compulsory and managed by the government. Both the employee and employer contribute to this fund, which is designed to provide financial support to the employee when they retire. This scheme is regulated by the government and the way it is set up varies depending on the rules of the organization in the Keka portal.

Sometimes, it may be necessary to override the Provident Fund amount calculated by the system. This occurs when the payable days for new employees or employees who have taken leave without pay are less, and the value calculated by the system may be different from the value that you want to contribute. In such cases, Keka allows you to override the contribution amount, giving you more control over your Provident Fund.

There are three methods through which PF contribution can be overridden: 

1. Overriding PF of an individual employee
2. Overriding PF of employees in bulk
3. Overriding PF of employees in bulk through Excel

Overriding the PF contribution of an individual employee

Navigate to the following location on the Keka portal.

Payroll(1) >> Payroll Admin(2) 

In the Operations(3) tab, go to the Overrides(Salary Components/Contributions/TDS) section and select PF (Provident Fund Overrides - Employes and Empliyee Share, Including VPF)(4)

In the Provident Fund - Employee Options screen, select the paygroup that the employee belongs to If you have set up multiple pay groups. Search and select the employee you want to override the PF for & click on Edit.

On the Override PF screen, toggle the ‘Do you want to override monthly PF Value?’ to Yes. 

In the Desired PF Override window, enter the monthly value or the formula that you want to override with and select Update.

For example, you can enter a value like 1800 or a formula like [Basic]*0.12. 

You can also update the voluntary provident fund if the employee has chosen to contribute to that or leave it at zero. 

You also have the option to prorate the PF amount based on the number of working days that the employee has worked. 

If you dont want this overriden PF amount to be reflected in the next month, then you have to select No in "Do you want to override monthly PF value?" for the next month so that the system again starts calculating PF as per the original configurations in the salary structure.

According to the regulation, it is mandatory to update both employee & employer contributions. The employer contribution shouldn’t exceed the employee contribution.

How to override the PF component of employees in bulk

 If you want to override PF for your employees in bulk, here’s what you do. 

On the Keka HR portal, go to Payroll >> Payroll Admin 

In the Operations tab, go to the Overrides(Salary Components/Contributions/TDS) section and select PF (Provident Fund Overrides - Employes and Empliyee Share, Including VPF

In the Provident fund – Employee Options window, select the pay group that employees belong to if you have multiple pay groups configured. 

Now, select all the employees for whom you want to override the PF values and select Bulk Override PF.

On the Bulk Override PF screen, add the monthly amount or formula for PF calculation.

You can use any of the existing salary components enabled in the employee's salary structure to define the formula to calculate the PF. Click on +Existing Salary Component to see the list of components. Select the relevant component from the drop-down and make changes. 

For Example – 1800 or [Basic]*0.12

Click Update to save the changes.

Overriding the PF component of employees in bulk through Excel

There’s another option where you can bulk override PF values for employees using an excel file. Here’s how you do this. 

Navigate to the following location on the Keka portal.

Payroll(1) >> Payroll Admin(2) 

In the Operations(3) tab, go to the Overrides(Salary Components/Contributions/TDS) section and select PF (Provident Fund Overrides - Employes and Empliyee Share, Including VPF)(4)

On the Provident Fund- Employee Options window, select the right pay group if you have multiple pay groups configured and click Import in Bulk. 

This will open up the Upload Provident Fund Override window. You can download the excel template from here by clicking on Download the Excel Template. 

In the downloaded file, change the PF override field to ‘Yes’ for the employees you want to override PF for. You can enter the updated PF values in the next columns indicating both the Employee and Employer share. 

Save this file and switch back to the Update Provident Fund Override window and select Upload Excel File.

In the next window, you will have to match the columns in the excel sheet to the fields on Keka. If you are using the excel template that you downloaded from the portal, you may not have to match manually unless you have added or edited the columns in the excel file.  

Click Continue to preview the data you have updated. 

Preview the data here in the Preview Data section and see if there are any errors. If you have done the updates correctly, you will not have any errors on this screen.  Once done, select Complete. 

For detailed instructions on how to import data to Keka using excel files, click here.

This will update the PF values for the employees based on the changes you made in the excel file. 

You can only add an amount when overriding through Excel import & will have to download separate spreadsheets for different pay groups. If you wish to override based on a formula, please follow the steps for bulk updating as discussed in the Overriding PF of employees in bulk section above 

You should now be able to override PF for individual employees as well as a group of employees with these simple steps.

Still unsure about how to override PF values? Reach out to our team and we will be glad to help you out!