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Employee Information Form

The form you hand a new employee on day one — as a fillable PDF they type into and email back. Built to collect exactly what SARS, UIF and the Compensation Fund actually need, with the POPIA consent the old templates all leave out.

Stop retyping bank details off a photograph of a form.
Answer a few questions about your business and this generates a fillable PDF the employee completes on their phone or laptop and emails back — plus an employer's guide telling you what to check on return and where each field goes. It prints clean and blank too, for the ones who prefer a pen. Nothing you type leaves your browser.
Just looking? See finished examples first:
Why this matters more than it looks: e@syFile rejects an IRP5 without a properly structured residential address and postal code, and a wrong branch code or account number is a payment that bounces and a payroll run you do twice. The form asks for the fields the systems actually validate — not four blank lines labelled "address".

1 Your business

This is the business the employee is joining. It appears in the form's letterhead. If you've used another SmmeComplyZA tool on this device, a banner will offer your saved details so you don't retype them.
The logo is stored in this browser only, so it's remembered next time you open the tool on this device. It is never uploaded anywhere.

2 Which sections do you need?

The core sections are always included: personal details, tax, address, contact, employment, banking, next of kin, declaration and POPIA consent. These four are switched on as they apply to you.
Medical scheme details Scheme, membership number, principal member and number of dependants. Switch this on if you contribute to or deduct for a medical scheme — without the dependant count payroll cannot apply the medical scheme fees tax credit correctly, and the employee's PAYE comes out too high all year.
Foreign national block Nationality, passport number, work permit number and expiry date. Worth leaving on even if you're not expecting one — the employee ticks past it in two seconds, and employing someone without a valid permit is a criminal offence under the Immigration Act. The expiry date is what you diarise.
Retirement fund details Fund name and member number, where you operate an employer fund.
Employment equity self-declaration Population group, gender, occupational level and disability status, for EEA1 purposes. Only switch this on if you are a designated employer (50 or more employees, or turnover over the schedule 4 threshold for your sector). Race and disability are special personal information under POPIA — the form states the EE purpose, marks every answer voluntary and gives a "prefer not to say" option on each. Don't collect it if you don't have to report it.
Stuck? You're not alone.

"The employee says they don't have a tax number."

Then they register for one themselves — SARS no longer registers employees through the employer for this purpose. They go to eFiling, register a profile on their ID number, upload an ID copy and proof of address, and the number is usually issued immediately. Let them start work and hand the number over when it comes; the form has a tick for "not registered yet" so the rest of it isn't held up. What you cannot do is quietly run them on the payroll with no number and hope the IRP5 goes through at year end — it won't.

"e@syFile keeps rejecting my IRP5 on the address."

Nine times out of ten it's the structured address. SARS wants the parts separately — unit or complex, street number, street name, suburb, city, postal code — and it validates the postal code. A single line reading "12 Main Rd, Joburg" will fail every time. That's why this form asks for the pieces in separate boxes instead of giving the employee four ruled lines to fill however they like.

"What's this 'relationship to account holder' question for?"

Two reasons. SARS asks for it on the IRP5, and it's your fraud control: if the salary is going into an account that isn't the employee's own, you want that on a signed form with a reason next to it, not discovered later. "Own" should be the answer nearly every time. A third-party account for a new employee is worth one phone call before the first payment run.

"Can I just email the PDF and let them type into it?"

Yes — that's the point of it. It opens in Adobe Reader, Preview on a Mac, most phone PDF viewers and Chrome. They fill it, save, and email it back. Tell them to save before attaching, because a few mobile viewers will send the blank original if they don't. And ask for the signature page either signed on screen or printed, signed and photographed — the declaration and POPIA consent are worth nothing unsigned.

"How long do I keep all this?"

Employment records under the BCEA: three years from the end of the employment. Tax records: five years from the date of the return they relate to. POPIA says you may not keep personal information longer than you need it for the purpose, so the honest rule is to keep the file for five years after the person leaves, then destroy it properly — shred paper, delete the scans, empty the deleted items. The employer's guide this tool prints says the same thing in a line you can put in your file.