EPF Calculator 2023: Excel based (Free) Download

A good yet simple Employee Provident Fund Calculator or EPF Calculator can tell you many useful things like EPF Maturity value among other things.

So if you are a salaried employee who regularly contributes to his / her Employee Provident Fund EPF Account, then you would be interested in knowing the following:

• How much money can you accumulate in EPF by retirement?
• How much EPF retirement corpus will I have?
• How much tax-free withdrawal is allowed from EPF at retirement?

For answering these and similar EPF corpus calculation related questions, I have created a small free excel EPF Corpus Calculator 2023. This EPF calculator acts as a tool that you can use to estimate the EPF retirement corpus when you retire at 60 or even earlier.

You can also call this calculator as EPF maturity calculator. But whatever you wish to call it, it is a simple, easy-to-use and can be used as a Provident Fund Calculator as well.

So here is the link to download it free:

Download (FREE) Employee Provident Fund Excel Calculator (2023)

How to use this EPF Calculator?

Let me briefly tell you what inputs are required to use this Employee Provident Fund Calculator:

• Current Age
• Retirement Age
• Your Monthly Salary (Basic Pay + Dearness Allowance)
• Expected Increase in Salary every year (in percentage)
• EPF Interest Rate: Current EPF Interest rate is 8.65%.
• Employee’s EPF Contribution (as a % of Salary) – Generally 12%
• Employer’s EPF Contribution (as a % of Salary) – Generally 3.67%

Once you provide these inputs, the EPF Calculator does all the hard work for you and tell you How much EPF Corpus is accumulated by Retirement.

Let’s talk a bit about a few of the above in more detail

• Employee EPF Contribution: This is your contribution towards your EPF corpus. As per latest EPF rules, the employee contribution is 12% of Basic Pay + Dearness Allowance.
• Employer EPF Contribution: Employers also contribute 12% but it is distributed across the EPF (Employee Provident Fund) and the EPS (Employee Pension Scheme). The Employer’s EPF Contribution is divided between 3.67% into EPF and 8.33% into EPS. In reality, the contributions are made on a wage ceiling (Basic Salary + DA) or new salary threshold of Rs 15,000. But if the income exceeds the wage threshold of Rs 15,000, then there are 3 standard methods for calculating the contribution amount. And the employer is free to use any one of the methods. But since this is a simple calculator, we keep it at 3.67% in EPF as Employer’s Contribution.
• EPF Interest Rate: As of now, the EPF interest rate is 8.50% (FY 2019-20). But this rate is revised every year. You can also check the past changes in historical EPF interest rates.

Related Reading – Where does EPF invest your money?

The calculator takes the EPF contributions of the employee and the employer, and then calculates the interest on the contribution during that year and also on the EPF balance at the start of the year. The important thing to understand here is that EPF interest is computed each month but it is deposited once only at the end of the financial year.

Here is a small example to clarify this:

Lets say your salary (Basic Salary + Dearness Allowance) = Rs 50,000 per month. Now following are the contributions made by you (employee) and the employer:

• Employee’s contribution towards EPF = 12% of Rs 50,000 = Rs 6000
• Employer’s contribution towards EPS = 8.33% of Rs 50,000 = Rs 4165
• Employer’s contribution towards EPF = 3.67% of Rs 50,000 = Rs 1835

So the Total EPF contribution every month = Rs 6000 + Rs 1835 = Rs 7835.

The EPF interest rate for FY 2018-2019 was 8.65%. So let’s use this for the example.

As mentioned earlier, interest on EPF is calculated monthly.

So the EPF interest rate applicable per month is = 8.65%/12 = 0.7083%

Assume that you (the employee in this case) joined the job exactly on 1^st April 2018. So your and your employer’s EPF contributions started for the financial year 2018 – 2019 from the month of April.

Here is how it is calculated:

• EPF Account Balance (Start of April 2018) = Rs 0
• EPF contribution (April 2018) = Rs 7835
• EPF Account Balance (End of April 2018) = Rs 7835
• Interest on EPF Balance (April 2018) = Nil (No interest in the first month)
• EPF Account Balance (Start of May 2018) = 7835
• EPF contribution (May 2018) = Rs 7835
• EPF Account Balance (End of May 2018) = Rs 15,670
• Interest on EPF Balance (May 2018) = Rs 110.99 (0.7083% of Rs 15,670)
• EPF Account Balance (Start of June 2018) = Rs 15,670
• EPF contribution (June 2018) = Rs 7835
• EPF Account Balance (End of June 2018) = Rs 23,508
• Interest on EPF Balance (June 2018) = Rs 166.50 (0.7083% of Rs 15,670)
• And so on…

Remember, the monthly EPF interest is calculated every month. But it is deposited once only at the end of the financial year (on or after 31st March 2019 in the above example).

The EPF calculator excel template also shows the year-wise contributions of the employee and the employer along with the yearly interest amount generated on the EPF account.

Employee Provident Fund (or EPF) is a great savings product that allows employees to save a proportion of their salary every month. And it is one of the first savings that most young employees begin with. It’s mandatory so there is no discretion about whether to save or not. It’s like a forced saving which is not a bad thing for many people who find it tough to save on their own.

As an employee, you will definitely want to know how much provident fund has been accumulated during your years of service or you may want to know how much you can accumulate in EPF by retirement. The EPF Calculator gives you all answers to all such questions.

So how to calculate PF Corpus Amount? Download and use the EPF Calculator excel sheet below:

EPF Calculator (2023): Free Excel Sheet Download

EPF is one of the safest debt-based savings instruments available in India as it is backed by the government. And it gets a super investor-friendly tax treatment that makes EPF a tax-free investment instrument for the salaried class having the status of EEE, i.e. Exempt-Exempt-Exempt category of savings products. This means:

• 1st E – investments in EPF up to Rs 1.5 lac per year eligible for deduction under Section 80C.
• 2nd E – Interest earned on EPF is tax exempted.
• 3rd E – EPF Maturity amount is exempt from tax.

With all such benefits, many of you may ask “Can I voluntary contribute more than the statutory limit to EPF?”

The answer is yes you can. An employee can contribute an additional amount (over the 12% of basic salary in EPF) and that is called the Voluntary Provident Fund or VPF. However, the employer is not bound to do a matching contribution. And VPF is a not a separate account. It is only a means of investing additional money in the same EPF account. Both VPF and EPF have same interest rates. You can have a look at historical VPF interest rates in India if you want.

And since most people keep switching jobs regularly, it is important to understand what happens to their EPF accounts when they leave one job and join another one. It is at this point that we should explore the concept of Universal Account Number (or UAN) and also, how UAN related to EPF?

The UAN (or Universal Account Number) is a 12-digit number allotted to the employee who is contributing to EPF. And UAN remains the same throughout the lifetime of an employee and doesn’t change with jobs. So when an employee changes job, he is given a new Member ID for EPF. This new Member ID is then linked to the common UAN number of the employee. So an employee can have multiple Member IDs for multiple jobs but all linked to a common UAN.

That was all there is to our discussion about using this Excel-based Free Employee Provident Fund EPF Calculator.

But…

Is EPF alone enough for Retirement?

You may play with numbers in the EPF Calculator which may show a big EPF corpus amount at the time of retirement. But are you sure that the number which this Provident Fund Calculator shows for EPF Corpus would be enough for your retirement?

To be honest and being a SEBI-registered Investment Advisor (and having worked with many clients), I can tell you that your savings in EPF corpus alone will not be enough for retirement.

If it sounds surprising, then let me repeat it for impact…

EPF Employee Provident Fund alone will not be enough for your retirement.

A good retirement portfolio should have a smart mix of both equity and debt in it. So debt aspect can definitely be handled via provident fund like EPF and PPF and NPS to an extent. But since retirement for most young savers is decades away, it is very important to have equity investments as part of your retirement savings plan. And that can be handled by regular SIP in good Equity Mutual Funds.

So if you are looking to plan your retirement properly (and you really should do it because retirement is a big and nasty problem!), then you should begin as early as possible and start investing in a suitable retirement savings portfolio.

If you find it tough to answer questions about retirement like – how much I need to save for retirement, how much retirement corpus is required, how much to invest monthly for retirement, etc., then its better to take professional help to plan your retirement:

Stable Investor Financial Planning Service

So it’s necessary to get serious about saving for your retirement before its too late.

EPF is one of the few products that have been designed specifically for retirement savings. Others being PPF and NPS. And don’t think the mandatory savings you do via EPF contributions will be sufficient. You need to save more. Much more.

So that completes our detailed discussion in which I shared the Excel based EPF Calculator (2023). The latest EPF interest rate is 8.50% (for the Financial year 2021-22). Hopefully, this EPF calculator excel sheet will help you understand the retirement savings product Employee Provident Fund (EPF) better and also act as a decision-making tool to make informed investment decisions about how much you can save in EPF corpus for retirement savings using this Provident Fund Calculator.