ABRY (Aatmanirbhar Bharat Rozgar Yojana) is a benefit provided to incentivize employers of establishments, registered under EPF & MP Act, 1952, for the generation of new employment and to support new employees entering the formal/organized sector with a monthly wage of less than _15000/ & re-employing persons from low wage bracket who lost their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The ABRY scheme was open for registration of new employees from October 2020 to March 2022 (earlier June 2021) and once registered, the benefit would be provided for 2 years from the date of registration.
As ABRY is a benefit provided to employees and to ensure correctness in the deduction and reporting of provident fund to the EPFO department, this has been implemented in Keka.
Through this update, you will be able to process and file PF separately for those employees who are under ABRY without deducting PF from their salary. This feature will let you automate the PF contribution and filing for the employees who are covered under ABRY.
Enabling ARBY
Let us take a look at the steps involved in enabling ABRY for your organization -
Go to the Payroll (1) section, then click on Settings (2), under Pay Groups (3) click on the configure icon next to the desired pay group you wish to make the change.
Now, click on the Contributions (1) tab and click on the 3 dot icon and select Update PF Settings (2).
Here you will be able to check the checkbox to enable the ABRY scheme eligibility for your organization. You will also be able to select if both employee and employer shares of PF are covered or just the employee share.
Note - Please keep the following guidelines in mind before making any changes to the eligibility criteria. - If the number of employees in a company is less than 1000 then as per ABRY both employee and employer shares will be paid by the government itself. - If the number of employees in the company is greater than 1000 then as per APRY only employee share will be paid by the government. - If the company has employees <1000 when registered for ABRY and then the employees increased to 1000+ the government still pays both the shares from government's end. - An employee would be eligible for ABRY only if the EPF wages are less than _15,000 per month. In case the wage goes beyond _15,000 during the scheme period then he/she will become ineligible immediately.
Enabling ARBY for a particular employee
Now, to enable the ABRY scheme for an employee within the organization, go to the respective employee profile and click on the Finances (1) tab. Here, under Summary (2), navigate to the Statutory Information card and click on the Edit (3) icon next to it.
A overlay window will appear where you can check the checkbox that states This employee is eligible for ABRY compliance, and then click on Update to save this change.
Under Statutory Information, you will now be able to see a badge stating that the employee is Eligible for ABRY.
When viewing the salary breakup of the employee, you will now see a new section called Additional Benefits from ABRY scheme at the bottom, you can view the PF details of the employee here.
If the employee was not covered under the ABRY scheme then the PF will be deducted from employee's salary and the breakup would appear as shown below.
Post Payroll Action - PF summary
Go to the Payroll (1) section, then click on Run Payroll (2), here click on the month (3) for which the payroll has just been run.
Scroll down to the Provident Fund section. Here you will be able to see the number of employees covered under the ABRY scheme out of the total number of employees. You can click on View Breakup to view additional details of the total amount remitted by the government and by the organization.
The total cost will only include the PF that is to be remitted by the organization and the amount remitted by government under ABRY will not be part of total cost in a month.
Note - While the PF amount for employees covered under the ABRY scheme is borne by the government, the additional admin charges are not, and are to be borne by the organisation. Admin charges borne by the organisation are shown as other charges.
For additional information on the ABRY scheme click here.
We hope you now have a good understanding of the ABRY scheme and how to enable it on the Keka platform.
Please feel free to get in touch with one of our product experts for any additional queries!