Available for plans : Foundation, Growth, Strength.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- What is Form 16?
- How to send Form 16 to employees?
- How to download Form 16 files from TRACES?
- How to upload Form 16 files in Keka?
- How to send Form 16 files to employees?
What is Form 16?
Form 16 is an important tax document issued by employers to their employees. It serves as a certificate of income earned and tax deductions made during a particular financial year.
Form 16 contains 2 parts:
1. Part A: It contains details such as the employer's name, PAN and TAN, employee's name and PAN, and a summary of TDS deducted and deposited with the government.
2. Part B: It contains the breakup of salary, exempted allowances, and deductions under Chapter VI A along with the total tax payable.
Form 16 is primarily used by employees to file their income tax returns with the tax authorities.
How to send Form 16 to employees?
To send Form 16 to employees, you need to follow the below steps:
- Download Form 16 Part A and Part B files from TRACES.
- Upload the signed Form 16 Part A and Part B files in the Keka HR portal.
- Send Form 16 to your employees via bulk mail.
How to download Form 16 files from TRACES?
You can download the Form 16 Part A and Part B files from TRACES by following the steps below:
Login to the TRACES website, enter the user ID, password, TAN, and confirm the captcha.
Go to the downloads tab and select Form 16.
Next, select the financial year for which you have to download the form and click on “Go”.
Once you click on “Go”, a tab will open displaying the authorized person's details. These details are populated from the profile information on TRACES. These details would be printed on the TDS certificate.
After verifying the details, select either one of the KYC validations, i.e. either Digital Signature Supported KYC Validation or Normal KYC Validation (Without Digital Signature) to validate the KYC.
Once the KYC is validated, the success page appears with the request numbers for the Form 16 Part A and Part B generation.
To track your requests and download the generated Part A and Part B files, navigate to Downloads and select Requested Downloads.
Click on "Bulk Form 16 Part A file" and "Bulk Form 16 Part B file" to download as ZIP files once the status changes to "Available".
To convert the downloaded ZIP file into PDFs, download the Part A and Part B PDF Converter utilities. To download the utilities, Go to click here to download the utility.
A new page will open, here you can download the converter utilities for both Part A and Part B.
In the downloaded Part A PDF converter utility, upload the Part A ZIP file, enter your TAN as the password and attach your digital signature. Select the destination folder for extracting the Part A signed PDF files for all employees and convert the files.
Similarly, for Part B files, use the Part B PDF converter utility, upload the Part B ZIP file, enter your TAN as the password, and attach your digital signature. Select the destination folder for extracting the Part B signed PDF files for all employees and convert the files.
Attaching your signature while converting the files is optional, but to directly upload the signed files in Keka and send them to your employees, it is recommended to attach your signature at the time of converting the ZIP files. - Now, you will have 2 folders with signed Part A and Part B files respectively.
How to upload Form 16 files in Keka?
You can upload and send the Form 16 to your employees in two ways:
- Upload signed Part A and Part B files directly into Keka
- Use Document Signer App to merge and sign unsigned Part A and Part B files
Upload signed Part A and Part B files
To upload signed Part A and Part B files to Keka:
Navigate to the Payroll (1) section and click on Payroll Admin (2).
Go to the Form 16 tab, and click on Upload Form 16.
In the screen to upload files, upload signed Part A PDFs and signed Part B PDFs as two separate zip files in the respective sections on the screen.
Please note that the accepted file format is a ZIP file. You need to compress the Part A files into one zip file, and Part B files into another zip file to upload them here.
Important: Employees' PAN is used to map files with the employees.
- The PDF files inside the zip file should have the employees' PAN number as the first 10 characters in their name.
- The PAN in the file name should match with the employees' PAN added in Keka. 
Once the files are successfully uploaded, click on Save Uploaded Files to save the files for all the employees.
You can also attach Annexure to Form 16 (Details of salary paid and allowances exempted) and Form 12BA (Details of perquisites and other fringe benefits) by clicking on the checkbox.
These files will be sent to the employees along with Part A and Part B files in the mail. 
Uploading and saving the file against each employee might take a few minutes. Once the files are successfully saved, you can see the status here.
If there are errors in the file upload, you can view the reasons for the error by clicking on the employee count for whom files have not been uploaded or by clicking on "To view the reasons for failure, click here".
This will show you the list of errors for each employee. You can resolve the errors and upload the files again.
On re-uploading files, if files are uploaded for an employee for whom files were already previously uploaded, then the new file will replace the older file.
Use Document Signer App: Merge and sign unsigned Part A and Part B files
To merge the Part A and Part B files and sign them digitally, you can use the document signer app. To do this, follow the steps below:
Go to Document Signer App and login in using your credentials.
Only the global admin can log into the Document Signer app using his/her Keka credentials.
Once you're logged in, click on Generate Form 16.
If you have enabled the setting to sign Form 16 digitally, then on clicking Generate Form 16, you will be prompted to select the digital signature that needs to be attached to the uploaded files. Select the correct digital signature and click on OK.
It is recommended to upload unsigned files in Document Signer app.
If signed files are uploaded, then upon merging the files, the existing signature gets invalidated and the merged files need to be re-signed within the Document Signer app.
It is recommended to enable the setting 'Sign Form 16 documents digitally' in the settings tab to sign the merged Part A and Part B files.
Once the digital signature is selected, in the next step upload the Form 16 Part A ZIP file. Please ensure the ZIP file contains the Part A PDFs with employee's PAN as the first 10 characters. The files should not be inside a folder in the ZIP file.
After uploading the files successfully, click on Next.
Upload the Form 16 Part B ZIP file. Similar to Part A, the ZIP file should contains the Part B PDFs with employee's PAN as the first 10 characters. The files should not be inside a folder in the ZIP file.
It is recommended to enable the setting "Upload Part B of Form 16 separately instead of a full set" as you will get the option to upload the Part B files only if the setting is enabled.
For FORM 16 to be considered a full set, you need to upload both Part A and Part B files.
Once the Part B files are uploaded successfully, click on Generate to merge the Part A and Part B files and digitally sign them.
Once the files are successfully merged and signed, the files are automatically uploaded to your Keka portal. You do not need to manually upload these again in the Keka portal using upload option.
Sometimes you might see an error stating "Unable to complete signing" after uploading the files. This error occurs due to an invalid digital signature. While detecting the digital signature, you will get an option to see More Choices if there are multiple certificates available in the system. Browse and select the correct digital signature to resolve this error.
To configure Form 16 settings mentioned above, add form 12BA and salary Annexure with the uploaded files or to enable password protection for Form 16, navigate to the Settings tab.
How to send Form 16 files to employees?
Once Form 16 Part A and Part B files have been successfully uploaded, you can send the files over mail to your employees.
Individual mail: Send mail to one employee at a time
Click on Send in the Send Email column for the employee you want to send the mail to.
A pop-up window will appear. On clicking Confirm, the email will be sent to the employee with the files in a password protected ZIP file.
The password to the protected ZIP file is the employees' PAN as added in Keka.
Bulk mail: Send mail to multiple employees at once
To send Form 16 via email to multiple employees at once, select the employees by selecting the checkbox next to their name or select the checkbox on top to select all the employees and click on Send Form 16.
Note: The employees should have a work email added in their profile to be able to send them Form 16 via email.
For relieved employees, Form 16 can be sent on personal mail. You will be prompted to add an email ID for the relieved employees after clicking on Send Form 16. 
We hope this article was helpful in understanding how to download Form 16 files, upload them in Keka and send them directly to your employees. For any additional queries please feel free to get in touch with our product experts!
Was this article helpful?
That’s Great!
Thank you for your feedback
Sorry! We couldn't be helpful
Thank you for your feedback
Feedback sent
We appreciate your effort and will try to fix the article