Under Section 192 companies are required to file 24Q on a quarterly basis. 24Q has details of salary paid and TDS deducted from employees salary. This article explains the process of generating 24Q on a quarterly basis.

Activities which need to be completed before 24Q can be generated are -
1. Payroll for all the months in the quarter should have been run and finalized and documents finalized by using the Close Payroll month option on Files page - refer article for more details
2. TDS challan details should have been updated as paid on the Update page - refer article for more details
3. Token number of the previous quarter 24Q should have been updated on Update page - refer article, this is optional
4. If the TDS liability for the months in a quarter is zero then you need to update Nil Challan before you can generate the 24Q - refer article

Steps to be followed to generate 24Q
System is designed to generate 24Q from the first quarter of the year from which the software has been used. You have an option to skip the quarters for which you have already filed the 24Q, click on "Skip 24Q" button to skip generation of 24Q for any quarter.

1. Select the TAN number from drop down (if there are multiple TAN numbers in the company)
2. Click on "Generate Form 24Q" button, you will see a popup with a list of challans which have been paid and not yet linked with any 24Q. Challans which have been linked to a month after the last month of the quarter for which 24Q is being generated will not come in the popup

3. Select the records which have to be included. Please remember to include all the challans which are associated with this 24Q and click on "Generate". You will be able to download the generated files. If you want to regenerate them you can "Delete 24Q Files" button or you can download and confirm these files using "Confirm 24Q Files" button.

4. Download 24Q text file in a folder in your system and use it to validate in the FVU utility which can be downloaded from TRACES. You can access latest version by clicking on the button "File Validation Utility"

5. You can delete any previously confirmed 24Q file using the option as shown below. You should of course take care not to delete a 24Q if it has been filed and if Form 16 has been generated on TRACES based on the filed 24Q. The software will allow you to delete the 24Q at any point of time.

Note :
1. If an employee has a PAN number and has paid zero tax in a particular month then the entry for this employee will still come but with zero TDS. If a Nil Challan has been filed for the month then it will used, if there is no Nil challan but a normal challan has been paid then the normal challan will be used in 24Q for this employee
2. If there are multiples challans for same TAN no for a month then one of the challans will be use for zero TDS entries
3. If there is no PAN and no TDS deducted for the month then entry will not come in 24Q for that month
4. Employee have no PAN but TDS has been deducted then entry will not come in Q4 for salary details
5. If PAN is not available and TDS has not been deducted then the entry in 24Q will not be there for the employee
6. Negative earnings are not allowed to be filed in 24Q and it is updated as 0 for the purpose of filing. If negative earning is recovered in subsequent month or months then the earning for the subsequent month is adjusted accordingly
7. If 24Q the following fields are updated based on the logic given below -
- Date on which Amount paid / Credited : this date is updated as minimum of payroll confirmation date or last day of the month, if last date of the month is a weekend or a holiday then one day before that
- Date on which tax Deducted : this date is updated as minimum of payroll confirmation date or last day of the month, if last date of the month is a weekend or a holiday then one day before that
- Date of Deposit : date on which TDS  challan is deposited

Steps to be followed to generate 24Q for Q4
At the end of the year 24Q for quarter 4 is to be generated. There are some additional steps to be taken for generating this file as this includes the summary of payments and deductions done for all employees throughout the year. There are a series of validations which are done for this process.

1.  If any challans linked to the TAN number are pending for payment for the financial year then you cannot proceed and you will have to update the payment details for these challans.

2. The list of employees whose Payroll or Full and Final is pending in the financial year for the TAN number can be downloaded. You can update these pending steps or you can proceed in which case there will be a mismatch in the Salary Details section of Q4 24Q and you will have to file a correction file. EazeHR will not provide the correction file.

3. If there is any employee whose age is more than 75 years as on 31-March of the financial year then you will get this message. For these employees you will have to ensure that the 194P declaration is correctly updated. Refer to the article on "Relaxation of filing tax return for senior citizens" for more details.

4. You will be reminded to update landlord's PAN number but this can be skipped.

After this you can generate the 24Q file.