Construction labour compliance in India is not one law. It is at least three — the BOCW Act, the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, and the Payment of Wages Act — and each one wants its own register. Most sites discover this during an inspection rather than before one.
The good news is that every one of these registers is built from information you already collect at the gate. The bad news is that if you collect it on paper, assembling them takes days you do not have.
The eight registers
| Register | Central Rules form | What it proves |
|---|---|---|
| Persons Employed | Form XV | Who worked on this site, with identity details |
| Wages | Form XVII | What each person earned, and for which period |
| Muster Roll cum Wages | Form XVIII | Attendance and wages together, day by day |
| Deductions for damage or loss | Form XX | Recoveries for damage — separate from advances |
| Fines | Form XXI | Fines imposed, and the 3% cap they must respect |
| Advances | Form XXII | Kharchi given and recovered |
| Overtime | Form XXIII | Extra hours and the rate they were paid at |
| Accidents | Form XXIV | Injuries, with BOCW registration details |
The form number is not the same everywhere
This is the part that catches national contractors. BOCW and CLRA rules are state-notified, and states number their forms differently. The register you call Form XVI in one state is a different number in the next.
So the form number has to be data, not code. Payroll Bharat stores the label per state, keeps the register itself stable, and — importantly — the register says so when it is falling back to the Central Rules default rather than a state-specific notification. A default that pretends to be a state rule is worse than no answer.
Fines, deductions and advances are three different things
Sites routinely treat all three as "paisa kaata" and record them in one column. The law does not. They print on three different registers because they are three different legal events:
- An advance (kharchi) is money lent, to be recovered. The worker owes it.
- A fine is a penalty for misconduct, capped at 3% of the wage period — and that cap is enforced, not advisory.
- A deduction is a recovery for damage or loss caused by the worker, and it needs its own justification.
Recovery runs in that order — fines, then deductions, then advances — and each is capped so net pay can never go below zero. Whatever the draft printed is exactly what gets debited on approval; the breakdown is frozen so the two cannot drift.
The 50% cap is reported, not enforced
The Payment of Wages Act limits total deductions in a wage period to 50% of wages. It is tempting to make software refuse anything above that. We deliberately do not.
The money is genuinely owed. Refusing to record a recovery does not put the site back inside the line — it just removes the evidence that you were ever outside it. So the figure is computed, shown, and flagged, and the decision stays with a person who can be asked about it.
The fine cap is enforced because the law caps the fine itself. The deduction cap is reported because the law caps the recovery rate, not the debt.
A partly recovered entry is locked
Once any part of a fine or advance has been recovered, the entry cannot be deleted — only waived. That way the register still shows what was imposed and what was forgiven, which is the whole point of keeping it. A register you can quietly edit is not evidence.
Minimum wage: always reported, paid only if you ask
When a day’s earnings fall below the notified minimum wage for that skill category, the shortfall is always computed and shown. Whether it is topped up automatically is a setting, and it is off by default.
That combination is deliberate. A default that silently increases a live customer’s next payout is not a feature. But opting out must leave you informed, not blind — so the shortfall is reported either way.
Getting there from where you are
Every register above is generated from one thing: the daily muster. If attendance is captured per worker, per site, per day — with the contractor and the rate stamped on each row — the registers are a report, not a project.
If it is on paper, that is the piece to move first. Everything else follows. Payroll Bharat can import a month of muster from Excel or read a photographed paper register, so the switch does not mean re-keying a year of history.
More on the Daily Wages module, or see how contractor bills are built from the same muster.