Offer letter acceptance email and joining letter: what to check, what to send, and what Nepal’s Labour Act requires

Read the whole letter once, then go through it line by line. Anything you agree to now is hard to change later, and anything said at the interview but missing from the letter does not exist on paper.

• Who it is from. Letterhead, a date, a reference number, and the signature of someone with authority to hire — the head of HR or a director.
• The post. Title, department, place of work and who you report to.
• The type of job. The Labour Act names five: regular, work-based, time-based, casual and part-time (s.10). A time-based job should give its end date.
• The salary, broken down. Basic salary, each allowance, and the monthly total — and whether that total is before or after deductions. The next section shows why the split matters.
• Benefits. The Social Security Fund or a provident fund, the festival allowance, insurance and leave.
• Probation. Six months at most (s.13). If you are not dismissed during it, you are confirmed automatically.
• Working days and hours. Not more than eight hours a day and forty-eight a week (s.28).
• The joining date. It must leave room for the notice you owe your present employer.
• The accept-by date, and how to accept. A signed copy, a reply by email, or both.
• The conditions. Usually document checks, references, a medical or a police report.
• What was promised but is not written. A bonus, a laptop, work from home, a review after probation. Ask for it in the letter or in a reply that the employer confirms.

Basic salary (आधारभूत पारिश्रमिक) is the part that every other right is counted from. The Social Security Fund contribution, the gratuity, the festival allowance of one month’s basic each year (s.37) and the annual increment of at least half a day’s basic (s.36) are all worked out on basic. Allowances — dearness, house rent, transport — count in your gross pay, but not in any of those.

So two offers with the same total are not the same offer. Rs 1,00,000 paid as Rs 70,000 basic and Rs 30,000 allowances gives you a larger festival allowance and fund than Rs 50,000 and Rs 50,000. Where an offer does not fix the basic at all, the Labour Rules 2075 treat 60% of pay as basic (rule 77(3)).

Gross is what is paid before anything is taken out. Net, or take-home pay, is what reaches your bank: gross less your share of the Social Security Fund — 11% of basic, matched by 20% from the employer — and the income tax deducted at source. Here is one month, worked out with the site’s salary calculator under the 2083/84 tax slabs:

Reply to the email the offer came in, so the offer and your answer sit in one thread, and send it before the accept-by date — after it, the offer may have lapsed. Use a subject line that says what the email is: Acceptance of job offer — [post] — [your name].

Keep it short, and put these in it:

• Thanks, the post, and the date or reference of the offer letter.
• The words I accept. “I am happy with the offer” is not an acceptance.
• The salary, probation and joining date as you understand them. If you have misread something, this is where the employer will notice.
• The signed copy, if the letter asks for one — signed on every page it asks you to sign, and scanned in full.
• A question about the first day: which originals to bring, and when and where to report.
• Your phone number under your name.

The joining date in an offer is often a proposal. If you are in a job now, check the notice period in your appointment letter or contract before you agree to a date. Under the Labour Act you resign in writing, and the employer must accept the resignation within fifteen days; if it does not, the resignation counts as accepted the day after those fifteen days end (s.141).

Ask for a different date in the acceptance itself, with one reason and one date that works. Then the employer is not left guessing whether you have accepted.

Ask once, before you accept, with a figure and a reason. After you have accepted, the terms are settled. A reason the employer can check works best: your present salary, a published pay scale, or duties the new post adds.

If you ask for more, ask for it in the basic salary. An increase paid as an allowance does not raise your fund, gratuity, festival allowance or annual increment.

• A larger basic, not only a larger total.
• A salary review at the end of probation, written into the appointment letter.
• A later joining date, if your notice period needs it.
• Leave you have already booked, such as a family wedding or an exam.

Decline in writing as soon as you have decided — the employer may have a second candidate waiting. Keep it short and thank them. A reason is courteous, but you do not owe one.

Some offers should be turned down, or at least checked hard before you answer:

• No written offer. A promise on the phone or in a chat message gives you nothing to hold. The Labour Act counts the appointment letter as part of the employment contract (s.2(ढ)), and forbids putting anyone to work without a contract except in casual work (s.11).
• A fee for the job. “Registration”, “training”, “uniform” or “processing” money before you join is the commonest sign of a fake offer. We found nothing in the Labour Act that lets an employer charge you for a job.
• Pay below the minimum. Less than Rs 19,550 a month for a full-time job. The minimum is fixed as Rs 12,170 basic and Rs 7,380 dearness allowance, so check the basic line as well as the total. A term that gives you less than the Act is void (s.3(2)).
• Probation longer than six months, or unpaid “trial weeks”. Probation is six months (s.13), and pay runs from your first day of work (s.34(1)).
• Pressure to decide today, or a request for your bank details or original certificates before anything is in writing.

A joining letter, also called a joining report, is the note you hand to HR on your first day, saying that you have reported for duty on that date. It is not the acceptance. The acceptance answers the offer; the joining letter starts the record from which your pay, leave and probation are counted. Date it the day you start, and ask the office to sign or stamp your copy as received.

The law does not list the papers you must bring. It does require the employer to keep a record of each worker’s name, address, family details, citizenship, phone number and email (Labour Rules 2075, rule 81(1)), and you must tell the employer when any of them change (rule 81(2)). A false certificate handed in for an appointment is misconduct under the Act (s.131(1)(ञ)). What employers commonly ask for:

• Your citizenship certificate, the original and a copy.
• Academic certificates and transcripts, originals and copies.
• Experience letters, and the release letter from your last employer.
• Your PAN, if you have one — many employers ask for it for the tax they deduct from your salary.
• Your SSID, if you were in the Social Security Fund before. The new employer adds you with your old number instead of registering you again; SSF Nepal explains how to find it.
• A bank account for your salary, in the name on your citizenship.
• Passport-size photographs, usually two.
• The signed offer letter, and anything the offer said to bring, such as a medical report or a police report.

In Nepali offices the joining letter is a हाजिर letter, and its subject line is विषय: हाजिर हुन आएको सम्बन्धमा. It is the same word the rules use: the Civil Service Rules 2050 speak of a civil servant “पदस्थापन भई हाजिर हुन आएको”, and a Supreme Court decision uses it of a teacher reporting to a school after appointment. Translations such as उपस्थिति जनाउने पत्र are understood, but the word in the rules and in the letters we found is हाजिर.

Write the dates in Bikram Sambat, as Nepali office letters do, and give the reference of the offer letter so the office can find the file. The letter ends with निवेदक, your signature, name, post, address and phone number.

Once you have accepted, the employer issues the appointment letter (नियुक्ति पत्र), and larger employers a contract as well. In the Labour Act they are one thing: “employment contract” includes “the letter of appointment given by the employer to the labour” (s.2(ढ)). No one may be put to work without one, except in casual work — seven days or fewer in a month (ss.10–11). The Act gives no deadline in days, but since it forbids work without a contract, ask for yours by your first day.

Check what you are given against this table. A term that gives you less than the Act is void to that extent (s.3(2)), whatever you signed.