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Posted by legal services on January 3rd, 2020

EPF is the Employee Provident Fund scheme which falls under the Provident Fund and Miscellaneous provisions Act 1952. It is managed by the Employee Provident Fund Organization of India.

The EPF scheme says that any organization who has 20 or more than 20 employees working in it has to register beneath EPFO. If the organization does not register itself and the government finds it is essential for him to register then, the government can send a notification to the employer to enroll under this provision of this Act by giving him notice of not less than 2 months.

According to the EPF rule, any employee who has salary equal to 21,000 INR or less than this is incorporated under the EPF scheme. And after it, the employer and employee both have to pay the contribution which is 10% in general class and for some exceptional cases, it is 12% of their basic salary involving DA (Dearness Allowance) & RA(Retaining Allowance).

An employee who is registered under the Provident Fund Scheme can check his/her PF balance by multiple options the government is providing. It can be done using the online EPFO website, using the EPFO official App, by SMS service or missed call service too.

The types of facilities the government has provided to check EPF balance online and via other methods has given control to an employee to

• Plan his/her options for investments, expenses.
• Apply for Loan against the EPF balance

Methods To Check EPF Account Balance

As mentioned above there are mainly 4 methods by which you can check your EPF balance and they are:

• Using EPFO Portal
• By using the Missed Call Facility
• By using the EPFO app (UMANG App)
• By sending SMS

Let’s see how to use all these options one by one & step by step in detail

Using EPFO Portal

You have to login into the EPFO portal with your desktop or mobile which is www.epfindia.gov.in and login into it.

Before proceeding further to check your EPF balance, the employer has to activate the UAN (Universal Account Number).  UAN (Universal Account Number) is a unique number given by Employee Provident Fund Organization (EPFO) to all the employees who are registered in the EPF scheme.

Note: The employees should only have one UAN (Universal Account Number) in their whole working life. It does not matter how many companies they have worked for, the UAN should be one & unique per employee.

Once the UAN is activated by the employee, then follow the steps:

1. Login to the EPFO portal ( www.epfindia.gov.in ) with your details.
2. Reach to the “Our Services” Tab.
3. Click on the option “for employees” which comes in the drop-down list.
4. Choose the option of “Services” and click on “Member Passbook”.
5. A new page will open in your browser, fill your “UAN and password” details there & press “Login”.

Once logged in, you can easily check your EPF account balance and also the EPF statement.

Using The Missed Call Service

An employee can check the status of his/her EPF balance easily by using the missed call service also. For, that you need to give a missed call on 011-22901406 by your registered mobile number. This service will work only for the members who have:

• Completed KYC (Know Your Customer) details against UAN
• The members who are enrolled on the UAN portal
• Registered their mobile number with the UAN at the website.

If an employee is registered with all these above steps then he/she has to just follow two steps to check the EPF status:

1. Give a missed call on 011-22901406 from your registered mobile number, the call will be automatically disconnected after two rings.
2. Once, you have given the missed call, very soon the PF details via SMS will be received on his/her mobile phone.

This is the second method to know your PF balance.

Using The UMANG Mobile App

UMANG (Unified Mobile App for New Governance)       is an mobile application available on Android’s Play Store which provides access to all the e-Gov services of Central, State or Loca government. Using the same you can check your EPF status:

The employee must activate its UAN number to access this feature. Then follow the steps:

1. Download the App from the Play Store in your Android Mobilephone.
2. Register into the App with your Mobile number & the MPIN.
3. Press on the EPFO service option in the app.
4. After that, enter your registered mobile number and the UAN, you will be logged in your account and can check the PF balance easily.

Using The SMS Facility

Using the SMS facility to check your PF balance details, an employee needs to combine its UAN number with your KYC details. After that, he/she will be able to use the SMS service to check the PF balance.

After this, the employee needs to follow these steps:

1. Send SMS on 7738299899 from your registered mobile number.
2. The format of the text the message needs to be as “EPFOHO UAN” and send it to 7738299899.

Note: If you need to receive your PF balance details in a particular language then mention it in the message like “EPFOHO UAN ENG”. ENG here refers to the language in which you want to receive the details, you can choose whatever language you prefer like for Telugu you need to type “TEL” in place of “ENG”.

The languages in which this facility is available are English, Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Bengali and Kannada. 

Conclusion

These were the main 4 methods of Online Portal, SMS service, Missed call service, App service by which an employee can check EPF details and plan his/her expenses or investments easily. For More legal services click here