On this page you can read answers to the most frequently asked questions about the payment of the daily allowance.
Daily allowance applications are processed in the order in which they are received. Your daily allowance can be paid out once we have received all the information we need to process the application. The KOKO fund pays out daily allowances every weekday. Once we have made a payment, it will be in your account 1-2 banking days later.
First applications are always processed by an official, and the processing time depends on the backlog of applications at any given time and on whether you have included all the attachments required. A continuing application may be processed as an automatic payment, in which case it will only take two banking days from submitting the application to receiving payment in your account. However, you should always prepare for the eventuality that your application will be queued and take 1–2 weeks to process, even if you have had earlier applications processed as automatic payments.
You can check your status under application status on the front page.
The amount of your daily allowance is calculated based on your income data, which the fund normally gets directly from the income registry. When your application is being handled, you may be requested to send the monthly salary specifications in case the information received from the income registry is not adequately detailed.
We do not make advance calculations to estimate the amount of your daily allowance; we will calculate your daily allowance when you apply for it. There is an allowance calculator, but this should be considered indicative only.
For further information on how daily allowance is calculated, see calculating daily allowance.
The monthly wage that forms the basis of earnings-related daily allowance is not the same as your monthly salary, since the employee's pension contribution (TyEL) (3.76% in 2024) is deducted from the wages for the purposes of calculating the allowance. Also, not all of the wage components you were paid affect the amount of the daily allowance, such as holiday bonuses and tax-free income. For further information on which wage components contribute to your daily allowance, see monthly wage on which daily allowance is based.
Any financial compensation received from the employer upon the termination of employment (such as a ‘golden handshake’, support package, or severance pay) will disqualify you from earnings-related daily allowance for the term over which such compensation is periodised on the basis of the wages you received in your most recent employment relationship. The term of periodisation is calculated by dividing the amount of compensation by your average daily wages.
Holiday bonuses and holiday compensation related to terminated full-time employment are not periodised, nor do they have an impact on your earnings-related allowance when your employment relationship ends. However, holiday bonuses and holiday compensation received from part-time work or work considered to be business activity are adjusted according to the payment date.
A term of periodisation is followed by a 5-day waiting period, after which payment of daily allowance may begin.
The paid days, as well as the maximum payment period, are found in eService on the status page (counters), and the latest payment notification.
Payment of earnings-related daily allowance is preceded by a waiting period. The waiting period is a period corresponding to 5 full working days during which you would normally be paid daily allowance. Please note: The waiting period will be 7 days for all waiting periods starting on or after 1 January 2024.
Payment of daily unemployment allowance is also prevented by a suspension period, term of periodisation or any of the general restrictions on the entitlement to daily allowance. If you have applied to KOKO for a daily allowance and you have not been given a clear reason as to why you have not been paid the daily allowance, please contact us.
If you are paid a child home care allowance, this will be deducted from your earnings-related daily allowance. If your spouse is in part-time employment, is studying, or is an entrepreneur, any child home care allowance paid to him/her will be deducted from your daily allowance.
However, a child home care allowance paid to your spouse will not be deducted from your earnings-related daily allowance if:
- your spouse cares for the child(ren) himself/herself without receiving a daily allowance,
- your spouse is unemployed, because in that case the deduction will be made from his/her daily allowance,
- your spouse is being paid a maternity, paternity, or parental allowance in addition to the child home care allowance.
If your family is receiving a child home care allowance, you must support a report on the child home care allowance along with a copy of the Kela decision to the KOKO unemployment fund.
If you are paid holiday pay based on full-time wages, you are not entitled to a daily allowance for the holiday days. If, on the other hand, you are paid holiday pay based on part-time wages, you are entitled to an adjusted daily allowance for the holiday days. Read more about the effect of annual leave on the daily allowance here.
You must indicate on your daily allowance application which are the days on which you are on annual holiday. Send the vacation-time salary calculation to the fund when you receive it.
The earnings-related allowance is paid for a maximum of 5 business days per week. When you apply for the allowance in periods of a month, the amount of the payable allowance varies depending on the number of business days in the month.
Especially at the end of the year it is recommendable to check the income limit of your tax card: if the limit stated on the tax card has already been exceeded, the earnings-related allowance will be paid using the excess tax rate until 31.12. If needed, you can order a revised tax card for benefits from the tax authorities. More information on the taxation of earnings-related allowance: Taxation of earnings-related allowance.
The amount of the payable earnings-related allowance is also affected by the possible changes in other social benefits, child support supplement or adjustable income.
The amount of the daily allowance is not re-calculated based on an employment relationship shorter than 26 weeks. Every calendar week that meets the criteria of the employment condition accumulates your employment condition, however. Each such week will be added to your working registry by KOKO fund. If you have some working weeks that have accumulated earlier, your employment condition might be fulfilled. Your employment condition is re-fulfilled once you have accumulated a total of at least 26 calendar weeks with at least 18 working hours per week.
Once your employment condition has been fulfilled again:
- the amount of your daily allowance is re-calculated
- a new waiting period is set
- the maximum payment period is reset.
The amount of the daily allowance is not re-calculated, if the new maximum period of your daily allowance begins within a year from when it last began, and the amount was then calculated. A new waiting period is also not set if the last waiting period was set within a year. The maximum payment period of the earnings-related allowance is anyway always reset once the employment condition is fulfilled.
Payment of daily allowance may be resumed after you have accrued 26 calendar weeks of employment meeting the employment condition. However, weeks used for a previous calculation of the employment condition cannot be included in the calculation of meeting a new employment condition; also, weeks employed that were so long ago that they are outside the review period cannot be included. The decision to suspend your daily allowance will indicate how many weeks you have accrued towards meeting the employment condition by the time your maximum daily allowance period expired.
Once you have met the employment condition, you will be entitled to receive a daily allowance again. If you become unemployed or are in part-time employment and are not sure whether you have met the employment condition, you may register with the TE Office as a jobseeker and submit an earnings-related daily allowance application to KOKO 2 weeks after registration; we will then check whether you have met the employment condition.
A personal tax refund does not affect the daily allowance.