Paying cleaners in Malaysia: EPF, SOCSO and the six things a spreadsheet gets wrong

A full-time cleaner on RM1,700 basic in Malaysia costs the company roughly RM2,000 a month once you add the employer's EPF (13%), SOCSO (about 1.75%) and EIS (0.2%), and the cleaner takes home about RM1,500 after their own 11% EPF, 0.5% SOCSO and 0.2% EIS. The percentages are easy. What goes wrong in a cleaning company's payroll is everything around them: which part of the pay each contribution applies to, overtime for manual workers, non-citizen cleaners, part-timers, and the 15th-of-the-month deadline. This article walks through all of it with real 2026 figures.

What are the EPF, SOCSO and EIS rates for a cleaner in 2026?

For a Malaysian cleaner under 60 earning RM5,000 or less, the employer pays 13% EPF, roughly 1.75% SOCSO and 0.2% EIS; the cleaner pays 11% EPF, roughly 0.5% SOCSO and 0.2% EIS. SOCSO and EIS are capped at a wage ceiling of RM6,000, which no cleaner reaches, so for this trade the cap does not matter.

Two notes on that table. SOCSO and EIS are not calculated as a straight percentage; PERKESO publishes a wage-band table and you pay the amount for the band. And EPF rounds up to the next ringgit using KWSP's Third Schedule, which also works in bands of RM20. Both of these are small, but a spreadsheet that multiplies by 13% will be a ringgit or two off almost every month, and KWSP's portal will reject or re-compute it.

What does one cleaner's payslip actually look like?

Take a Malaysian cleaner, under 60, in a typical month: basic RM1,700, a fixed RM100 attendance allowance, RM150 of overtime, and an RM80 transport allowance. Gross pay is RM2,030, but the contributions are not all calculated on RM2,030.

On an EPF base of RM1,800, the employer pays RM234 and the cleaner RM198. On a SOCSO base of RM1,950 (the RM1,900–2,000 band), the employer pays RM34.15 SOCSO and RM3.90 EIS; the cleaner pays RM9.75 SOCSO and RM3.90 EIS.

No PCB (monthly tax deduction) applies at this income once the standard reliefs are counted, which is the case for almost every cleaner in Malaysia. If you are paying a supervisor RM3,500 or more, run them through LHDN's PCB calculator.

What does a spreadsheet get wrong?

The six mistakes below are the ones we have made ourselves or seen in payroll files other operators sent us. Each one is either an overpayment, an underpayment, or an illegal deduction from the cleaner.

1. Applying 13% to gross pay. In the example above, 13% of RM2,030 is RM263.90, not RM234. The company overpays RM30 and, worse, deducts 11% of RM2,030 (RM223.30) from the cleaner instead of RM198. Over-deducting a worker's wages is a breach of the Employment Act, not just a rounding error.

2. Leaving overtime out of SOCSO. The opposite mistake. Overtime is excluded from EPF but included in SOCSO and EIS. A spreadsheet with one "contributable wages" column cannot be right for both.

3. Treating non-Malaysian cleaners as "no EPF". That was true until 30 September 2025. From 1 October 2025, employers must contribute 2% and deduct 2% for every non-Malaysian employee on a valid work pass, with the first payment due 15 November 2025. The only exemption is domestic servants employed in a private home, and a cleaner on your company's payroll is not a domestic servant. The same cleaner is covered under SOCSO (the Employment Injury Scheme was extended to foreign workers in 2019, and the Invalidity Scheme from July 2024) but not under EIS. A row that says "foreign: skip all three" is now wrong on two counts.

4. Calculating overtime on the wrong hourly rate. Cleaners are manual workers, so they are entitled to overtime regardless of what they earn. The Employment Act hourly rate is monthly wages ÷ 26 ÷ 8. On RM1,700 that is RM8.17 an hour, so overtime is RM12.26 an hour on a normal day (1.5×), RM16.35 on a rest day (2×) and RM24.52 on a public holiday (3×). A spreadsheet that divides by 30 calendar days underpays every overtime hour by about 13%; one that divides by 22 working days overpays by about 18%. Only 26 is the legal divisor.

5. Not paying contributions for part-timers. Since the Employment (Part-Time Employees) Regulations 2010, a part-timer working between 30% and 70% of a full-timer's hours still gets EPF and SOCSO, plus pro-rated leave. "Part-time, so cash only" is not a category that exists in the law.

6. Missing the 15th. EPF, SOCSO and EIS for September wages are all due by 15 October. Late EPF is charged interest at the year's dividend rate plus 1% (minimum RM10), and a dividend charge on top if it slips past the end of the month. Late SOCSO is 6% a year on the outstanding sum. Non-payment is an offence with fines of up to RM10,000 per case. A spreadsheet does not remind anyone; the portals only send a letter afterwards.

How much does a cleaning company really pay per cleaner-hour?

Using the example above, RM2,302 a month for roughly 8 hours × 26 days is RM11.07 per cleaner-hour before transport, chemicals, uniforms, supervision or idle time between jobs. This is the number to hold against your prices. Our own home-cleaning rate is RM150 for two cleaners for two hours, which is RM37.50 per cleaner-hour sold; the gap between RM11 and RM37.50 has to cover travel between jobs, the hours nobody booked, equipment, insurance, the person answering the phone, and profit. If a competitor is quoting RM20 per cleaner-hour, either their cleaners are not on EPF and SOCSO, or their staff are not doing many paid hours a day. Either way it is worth asking which.

What must the payslip show?

The Employment Act requires an itemised payslip for every wage period. For a cleaner that means: basic, each allowance, overtime hours and rate, each statutory deduction, net pay, and the employer's contributions. Keep the slips and the KWSP, PERKESO and EIS receipts for seven years; the auditors and the Labour Department both ask for the receipt, not your spreadsheet.

When is a spreadsheet still fine?

If you employ fewer than five cleaners, all Malaysian, all full-time, and you pay fixed salaries with little overtime, a careful spreadsheet plus the free KWSP i-Akaun and PERKESO Assist portals is enough, and it would be dishonest to tell you otherwise. Paying RM480 a month for software to avoid a RM30 rounding error does not add up at that size.

A spreadsheet stops being fine when any of these appear: a non-Malaysian cleaner, part-timers, overtime that changes every month, a cleaner turning 60, or more than one person touching the file. Each of those is one of the six mistakes above waiting to happen, and the cost is not the ringgit; it is the back-payment letter twelve months later.

We built payroll into our own operations system because we hit mistakes 1, 2 and 3 ourselves with 35 cleaners. Whatever software you evaluate, including ours, test it with one non-citizen cleaner, one month of overtime and one part-timer, and check the three bases it calculates. Plans are at /pricing; if you want someone to walk through your current payroll file with you, leave a note at /enquiry and say how many cleaners you have.

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Rates in this article: EPF Third Schedule and KWSP employer guidance (2026); PERKESO contribution table with the RM6,000 ceiling (effective 1 October 2024); EPF (Amendment) Act 2025 for non-Malaysian contributions from 1 October 2025; Employment Act 1955 as amended in 2022 for overtime and payslips; Minimum Wages Order 2024 (RM1,700 from 1 February 2025, 1 August 2025 for employers with fewer than five employees). Figures are for the month written and change when the government changes them; check the KWSP and PERKESO portals before you file.