Payroll & statutory · Updated September 2026
The EPFO, or Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation, is the government body that runs India’s main retirement savings schemes for private-sector workers. It sits under the Ministry of Labour and Employment and administers three linked schemes: the Employees’ Provident Fund, the Employees’ Pension Scheme and EDLI life cover. If money is being deducted from your salary as PF, the EPFO is where it goes.
Three things, mostly. It holds and invests the contributions, declares the interest rate on EPF balances each financial year, and pays out claims, withdrawals, transfers, pensions and death benefits. It also runs the member portal and the employer portal that the whole system depends on.
For an employee, the EPFO is the reason you have a UAN that follows you between jobs, a passbook you can check online, and a single place to raise a withdrawal or transfer claim. For an employer, it is the authority you register with within 30 days of crossing the coverage threshold, and the portal where you file the monthly ECR and pay the challan.
People use the two interchangeably, but EPF is the scheme, the pot of money and the rules around it, while the EPFO is the organisation that administers it. You contribute to EPF; you file returns with, and claim from, the EPFO.
Log in to the member portal at the EPFO website with your activated UAN and password, or view the passbook on the associated passbook site. A missed-call and SMS service also returns the last contribution and balance for an activated UAN.
No. It is a statutory retirement fund administrator. It does not offer accounts you can transact from freely; withdrawals are allowed only on defined grounds such as leaving service, retirement, or specified advances.
Your UAN stays the same. You raise an online transfer claim so the balance from the old member ID moves to the new one, rather than withdrawing and losing the continuity that keeps withdrawals tax-free after five years.
To see how EPF sits inside your pay, use the PF Calculator and the CTC to In-Hand Salary Calculator. Our guide to payroll processing covers where EPFO filing fits in the monthly cycle, and if you are choosing a system to handle it, start with payroll software for India.