Sick leave in 2021: features and example of filling out by the employer

The importance of correct filling

A certificate of incapacity for work is a strict reporting form. It must be filled out in accordance with established rules and regulations. Failure to enter information correctly can result in unpleasant consequences for the employer:

• The FSS will refuse to pay for sick leave, and then the employer will have to give the money to the employee from his own pocket, and then deal with the FSS in court;
• if the employee refuses to make the required payments, the employee will go to court and will most likely win the case.

Therefore, it is better for the responsible specialist to study the rules and regulations in advance, and only then proceed to filling out the document.

How to leave correctly

Regardless of the amount of sick leave, the citizen will receive a salary

. If he gets sick, this does not mean at all that there is a loss of salary or part of it. Of course, now everything depends on the employee’s insurance record and the correctly executed document.

It is worth remembering that sick leave is issued not only for the employee’s illness, but also when caring for another disabled family member, as well as if the SES sent him to quarantine, when sending him to a sanatorium for recovery.

In accordance with current legislation, it is necessary to open a certificate of incapacity for work on the first day of illness . This can be done by contacting a doctor at your place of residence. He is obliged to issue a sick note, which will reflect the name of the sick person, the employer with a legal form, position and diagnosis, as well as the time of application.

On sick leave, every employee has the right to count on monetary compensation for temporary disability . The remaining documents do not give such a right.

If a person has a fever, then in order to avoid the spread of infection, the Ministry of Health recommends calling medical personnel to your home, that is, the doctor comes home, opens a sick leave sheet and prescribes treatment. But he cannot issue the document. The doctor simply makes an appropriate entry on the card . After a subsequent visit to the doctor, a document is issued.

If a person has a high temperature, any type of intoxication or bleeding, or acute pain, then this requires immediate hospitalization . In this case, the sick leave begins to be valid from the day of hospitalization. Its registration is carried out not by the local doctor, but by the attending physician.

This is important to know: Is it possible to take sick leave after dismissal?

What is sick leave?

No employee is immune from possible illness. Having an official job allows him to receive compensation for a certificate of incapacity for work. This possibility gave rise to the need to use a single form of sick leave throughout the Russian Federation.

The current form of certificate of incapacity for work has been used since 2011. It is used in all regions of the country without exception. A sick note looks like this (clickable image):

Sick leave

The form contains columns that are filled out by the medical institution and the employer. Initially, the document is issued to the employee by a medical institution. How to take sick leave for an employee of an organization, read more in the article How to take sick leave.

The creation of a single form made it possible not only to unify the document format, but also to protect against forgery. The document has several degrees of protection, which eliminates the possibility of forgery and copying.

Registration procedure

The legislation establishes not only a list of organizations that can issue certificates of incapacity for work and the requirements for them, but also the procedure for indicating all information in the document. For the employee, the algorithm of actions will be as follows:

1. if you feel unwell or ill, contact a medical institution and ask for a sick leave certificate;
2. after discharge, receive a certificate of incapacity for work, check on the spot whether all dates and information are entered correctly;
3. write a statement at your place of work and attach a sick leave certificate.

This is where the employee’s actions end. Next, his application is accepted, a certificate of incapacity for work is filled out by a personnel specialist or another employee who is assigned these duties. Then the accountant calculates the amount of compensation, tears off the bottom part of the form and submits the document to the Social Insurance Fund.

The FSS reviews the submitted documents. If everything is fine with them, then sick leave is paid. For more information about the deadlines for accrual and transfer of funds by the employer and the Social Insurance Fund, see the article Payment of sick leave.

Is it possible to issue an electronic sick leave?

You can often hear the question from ordinary employees of an organization: I am sick, how can I take sick leave? Actually, the registration procedure itself is the same. The person must go to a medical facility. There the document will be drawn up by a specialist. Moreover, just a year ago there was no alternative to a paper document in most regions.

Federal Law No. 86-FZ of May 1, 2021 allowed medical institutions to use not only paper, but also electronic sick leave certificates. Some “pilot” regions have been using this document format since 2014.

After the law comes into force, sick employees may express a desire to receive an electronic certificate of incapacity for work (ELN), but there is one limitation: it is necessary that the participants in the information interaction system be:

• the medical institution to which the employee applied;
• employer.

By the end of 2021, more than 150,000 ELNs were issued, and almost a quarter of all medical institutions became participants in the system. This demand for electronic sick leave is explained by several factors:

• less work with paper documents;
• reducing the time required to fill out a document;
• eliminates the possibility of forgery of sick leave;
• there is no need to create accounting documents or organize the storage of papers;
• such a sheet will not be lost;
• verification is simplified for all parties;
• automatic accounting of forms and generation of reports on them;
• the employer can check information about a sick employee before he is discharged;
• You can correct the information through your personal account by making an appropriate request, without contacting a medical institution;
• responsible specialists do not have to travel to the Social Insurance Fund to submit sick leave certificates.

Important : to use ELN, the patient who applies must give written consent.

Stamps in the usual sense are not affixed to the electronic form. For this purpose, electronic enhanced qualified signatures are used. Each doctor has his own.

After entering all the information, the sick leave certificate is sent not to the employer, but to the unified Social Insurance information system. After this, the employer enters information through his personal account. Calculations of compensation for sick leave when using ELN can be carried out by:

• Social Insurance Fund workers in “pilot” regions;
• the patient’s employers in other regions (they are obligated to calculate and pay benefits, that is, the money first comes from the Social Insurance Fund, and then is transferred to the employee).

How can an employer accept a certificate of incapacity for work?

An employee will be able to issue an electronic certificate of incapacity for work (ELN) if the organization has the technical capabilities for this. also necessary to register a personal account on the website of the FSS of the Russian Federation (cabinets.fss.ru).

After completing the registration process, management will:

1. Receive notifications about certificates of incapacity for work (ELN) sent by employees.
2. View sick leave, print them, fill out the necessary fields.
3. Have access to various information, including certificates of incapacity for work submitted to the Social Insurance Fund register, etc.

If the employer has not registered a personal account, then he will not be able to accept sick leave.

Important! In accordance with Federal Law No. 86-FZ dated May 1, 2017, medical institutions can and are required to issue certificates of incapacity for work electronically.

Individual ELN number

A sick employee comes to a medical institution, provides his SNILS number and gives written consent to the creation of an electronic certificate of incapacity for work. The procedure then looks like this:

1. The document is processed in the internal system of the medical institution.
2. Transferred to the FSS for storage.
3. The employee receives an individual, 12-digit ELN (IN) number from the medical institution.

The sick leave number will be issued to the employee on the same day , immediately after written consent is provided.

Number transfer

When the employee recovers, he comes to the employer and reports the sick leave code:

1. The code is entered into the database through the FSS personal account.
2. Based on internal reporting in the organization, the amount of benefits is calculated (for example, through the 1C database). Read about how to work with electronic sick leave certificates in the VLSI system here.
3. The amount received is paid to the employee.
4. Data on the completed payment and settlements are sent to the Social Insurance Fund.

Receipt of the document by management

To correctly fill out the electronic certificate of incapacity for work, you must adhere to these points:

• Obtaining an ELN number
  When an employee applies for sick leave, the doctor draws up an ETN, enters data and issues the patient a unique code. It is impossible to fake it due to the presence of a qualified electronic signature (CES).

  The employee’s goal is to transfer the number to the organization’s accounting department.

  Read also:  Rights, duties and responsibilities of the chief accountant
• Checking and filling
  In the personal account on the FSS website, the accountant finds information on the received ELN code. Information on sick leave (for example, a period of illness) is used to calculate the amount of benefits.

  You should fill out the part of the electronic sick leave allocated for the employer:

  • Name of company.

  Average earnings for calculating benefits.

• Benefit amount.
• Experience.
• Registration number.
• Full name of the manager and chief accountant.

The document is certified by the employer’s electronic signature, which is used to submit reports electronically.

Who pays for sick leave?

The employer is an intermediary between employees and the Social Insurance Fund in the matter of filling out and submitting sick leave. Who makes contributions to the employee? As a general rule, the obligation to pay sick leave is assumed by:

• employer – he pays for the first 3 days of illness;
• FSS – compensates for the remaining days.

There are also cases in which the Social Insurance Fund assumes responsibility for full payment of sick leave. This applies to the following situations:

1. sick leave for pregnancy and childbirth - compensation is due for 140 days;
2. caring for an adult family member.

If, in a specific situation, an employee is interested in who will give him compensation, he must first figure out how long sick leave is issued for. It all depends on the severity of the disease and who is filing the sick leave. Read more about this in the article How to take sick leave.

In the case when an employee quits and registers with the Employment Center, and then gets sick, the federal fund becomes the payer. The amount of the benefit itself in such a situation is assigned in accordance with the law.

Registration rules: what documents are needed for sick leave

Only certain employees of a licensed medical institution have the right to open a certificate of incapacity for work. At the same time, they cannot draw up the document:

ambulance staff;

• workers at blood collection and transfusion points;
• employees of commercial medical centers that do not have a license to conduct the relevant medical practice;
• employees of the medical examiner's office;
• workers of sanatoriums and balneological centers.

When preparing the document, any corrections or inaccuracies are excluded. Accounting employees have the right to refuse to accept a certificate of incapacity for work if it is filled out incorrectly.

To obtain a sick leave certificate, certain documents will be required.

Expert opinion

Novikov Oleg Tarasovich

Legal consultant with 7 years of experience. Specializes in criminal law. Member of the Bar Association.

Documents for sick leave do not have to be provided to the attending physician on the day of going to the hospital. A certificate of incapacity for work can also be issued on the last day of treatment. However, it must indicate the time of the first visit to the doctor.

In particular, if an employee came to a hospital or clinic at the end of a work shift, then the certificate of incapacity for work can be opened the next day. Opening a sick leave the previous day is prohibited.

There are some nuances in its design:

• The reverse side must be filled out by the personnel department employees at the patient’s place of employment.
• The front side is filled out by the attending physician. It indicates not only the initials of the doctor, but also the full name of the medical institution.

This is important to know: What to do if you have extended sick leave for pregnancy and childbirth

Proper registration presupposes that the doctor has hospital documents.

These include:

• Main identification document: passport. In a situation where, for some reason, the patient does not have a passport, the medical institution is obliged to accept another document confirming the patient’s identity. In addition, it is allowed to present to the attending physician a temporary certificate, which is issued by the passport office if lost.
• Medical policy. Sometimes a conflict situation arises when the patient literally at the last moment learns that his policy has expired. A successful practice in recent years has been the service in which you can renew your policy directly at a given medical institution.

After submitting the documents for the sick leave, its registration and the subsequent return to work of the employee, the document is submitted to the accounting department of the legal entity, where it is filled out by an accountant based on the following documents:

• certificates of average earnings;
• TIN of the employee who underwent treatment.

After all formalities are completed and the fields are filled in, the accountant calculates the amount of compensation.

Reflection of sick leave information in internal documents

Submission of sick leave by an employee requires the HR specialist to correctly accept the document. The responsible employee must not only correctly fill out the certificate of incapacity for work, but also fill out/draw up other internal documents of the enterprise.

The organization draws up an order to assign benefits to a sick employee. The basis for this is the provided sick leave. The document does not have a single form, so companies draw it up independently, making sure to indicate information about the organization and the employee.

It is important to correctly reflect the sick leave certificate in other papers. First of all, in the accounting sheet. Additionally, the organization can keep a sick leave log.

Reflection of sick leave in the accounting sheet

A time sheet is a mandatory document of the enterprise, with the help of which the work time of each employee is tracked. Any failure to appear is displayed on the time sheet and justified by the employee. Moreover, for each reason there is its own designation in the form of a number or letter.

Employee illness is perhaps the most common reason for absence. To display it in the timesheet, one of the following markings can be used:

• «19»;
• "B".

You can use any of these options if the benefit is accrued to the employee. However, the letter designation is more popular, since the decoding “B - disease” is easier and faster to remember. In addition to the reasons for non-appearance, the time worked is also indicated. The number “0” is used for illness. You can even leave the column blank.

The largest number of questions regarding entering information about sick leave into the time sheet arises due to the fact that employees do not know whether days off are included in the sick leave. Read more about this in the article Calculation of sick leave: formula and examples. There is also a comment regarding holidays.

The general order of reflection implies that all days from the beginning to the end of the illness are marked in the report card with the letter “B”. All payments are made based on the total number of days on sick leave.

Important : if sick leave is issued for pregnancy and childbirth, then the personnel specialist uses a different marking in the form of the letter “P”.

In some cases, employers do not pay sick leave, but they still need to record the employee’s absence. For example, this is possible if an external part-time worker received benefits at another place of work. In this case, the letter “T” or the number “20” is entered on the report card.

Sick leave register

The sick leave logbook is not used in all enterprises. They are usually relevant for large organizations where it is important to systematize a large number of documents. The law does not establish a uniform form for such a journal, therefore all issues regarding its maintenance and the appointment of responsible persons are decided by each enterprise separately.

Keeping a log of sick leave allows you to quickly obtain information on the number of sick people and the duration of the disease. In addition, the document allows you to verify information with the accounting sheet and enter missing information there. It may look like this (picture is clickable):

Sick leave register

Calculation of sick leave

The organization bears the responsibility not only for accepting and filling out sick leave, but also for calculating it. This is usually done by an accountant. The calculations use a special formula for calculating sick leave. It has not changed in 2021. You will find step-by-step instructions for calculating the amount of sick leave pay for an employee in the article Calculating sick leave: formula and examples.

The main change compared to the previous year is a change in the billing period and, accordingly, an increase in the maximum permissible calculation base. In this regard, the maximum sick leave payment in 2021 has also changed.

When making calculations, accountants take into account a combination of several factors. The final amount of the benefit is influenced by the size of the average daily wage, length of service and the reason for receiving sick leave (in some situations, not 100% of the benefit is paid, but a smaller part). The length of service for sick leave in 2021 is used to calculate the coefficient. You will find their explanation in the article Calculation of sick leave: formula and examples.

From January 1, the minimum wage increased to 9,489 rubles. It will be taken into account when calculating sick leave in the following cases:

• the employee did not work officially for the previous 2 years, that is, did not have an official salary;
• the average monthly salary is below the minimum wage;
• total work experience does not exceed 6 months;
• The employee violated the rules while on sick leave.

Due to the increase in the minimum wage, the minimum sick leave payment in 2021 has also increased. Indicators and application rules are presented in the article Calculation of sick leave: formula and examples.

Documents for sick leave in the Social Insurance Fund

The employer has the right to reimbursement of funds spent on a certificate of incapacity for work if the following is submitted to the regional department of the Social Insurance Fund:

1. Application written in free form. In some places, the FSS offers employers its application forms. This simplifies and systematizes the process of receiving reimbursement for sick leave benefits.
2. Certificates of calculation for submitting a request for reimbursement of benefits (analogous to the previously relevant form 4-FSS).

In addition, the regional department of the Fund may request documentary evidence of the legality of the expenses that the organization was forced to incur.

Documents confirming the legality of payments are considered:

• a copy of the certificate of incapacity for work;
• a copy of the work book - to confirm the employment relationship;
• payment documents certifying the payment of compensation for sick leave.

The calculation certificate must reflect all information about the transferred contributions related to temporary disability to determine the amount of compensation that the Federal Insurance Service must reimburse.

This certificate is drawn up in free form, since there is no federal standard. However, it must contain comprehensive information on the basis of which the FSS will determine the amount of compensation.

This information includes:

the total amount of contributions (this means not only accrued and paid, but also credited and uncredited contributions);

Thus, the basic point during the period of receiving compensation from the Federal Insurance Service is filling out the Application form. Since there is no single, officially approved form of this document, employers write it in any form, independently.

At the same time, regional FSS practice the use of local application forms. This is very convenient for employers. All they have to do is visit the Foundation and pick up the form there. Filling out individual columns and lines will not only reduce time resources, but will also guarantee error-free data entry.

Expert opinion

Novikov Oleg Tarasovich

Legal consultant with 7 years of experience. Specializes in criminal law. Member of the Bar Association.

At the same time, the regional department of the Social Insurance Fund, offering employers its own form, pays special attention to the special line for entering the taxpayer number. Using it, FES employees can easily find out whether there are preferential conditions for an enterprise or organization.

Documents to the Fund are also submitted completed according to certain rules. In particular, the Social Insurance Fund has the right not to accept a sheet for payment if the letters when filling out the cells go beyond their boundaries. In addition, previously it was possible to fill out sick leave fields only with a capillary or gel pen. Today it is acceptable to use a ballpoint pen.

This is important to know: Is sick leave open on weekends?

The regional department of the Fund can be contacted not by the head of the institution itself, but by his representative. However, in this case, the company employee must have a power of attorney with him.

The form of the power of attorney is arbitrary. But it must be endorsed by the manager (signature with transcript). In addition, the power of attorney must bear the company's seal.

Payment of sick leave to care for children or sick relatives

An employee has the opportunity to receive compensation not only in case of illness. This right is retained even when an adult relative needs care or a minor child falls ill. Read more about the rules for calculating and the timing of such sick leave in the article How to take sick leave.

If a child is sick

The illness of a child gives the right to parents, guardians, trustees, and other relatives to take paid sick leave at work. How many days sick leave is issued in this case is stated in the article How to take sick leave.

Important : two people cannot stay with a child on sick leave at the same time. But during one illness they can issue a certificate of incapacity for work one by one. For example, if a child was sick from Monday to Friday, the mother can take sick leave for Monday and Tuesday, and the father for the remaining days.

Such sick leave is paid by the employer for the first 3 days. The remaining amount is transferred by the FSS. At the place of work, there is no need to provide additional documents other than a certificate of incapacity for work. The employer cannot require documents confirming relationship.

To register a sick leave for an adult, he must come to the medical facility together with the sick child. It is enough to take your passport and documents for the child with you (compulsory medical insurance policy and birth certificate).

Important : if a child gets sick while a parent is on vacation, the latter cannot take out sick leave.

If an adult is sick

Sometimes a person finds himself in circumstances that require him to care for sick relatives. At the same time, the inability to go to work significantly worsens the financial situation. That is why the Social Insurance Fund is ready to pay compensation for sick leave within the time limits specified by law (no more than 7 days per fact, no more than 30 days per year).

You can take out sick leave while caring for relatives. The law includes among them not only spouses, parents and children over 15 years of age, but also other relatives - brothers, sisters, aunts and others.

The fact that a relative is ill is not the only condition for receiving benefits under a certificate of incapacity for work. Additionally, the following criteria must be met:

• the patient really needs care - the doctor decides;
• the employee must care for the patient after the fact;
• the relative is being treated on an outpatient basis (in case of inpatient treatment, no one will issue a certificate of incapacity for work).

Being on such sick leave also presupposes some features of filling out a certificate of incapacity for work. It must indicate the name of the person in need of care. Also, the medical institution enters the code “09” in a special column, which stands for “care for a relative.”

The employer does not pay such sick leave at all. The FSS assumes all obligations. The employer acts solely as an intermediary.