Methodology & Sources

Our mission

We exist to give Filipino employees, BPO workers, and Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) a fast, accurate answer to three practical questions:

• Is today a Philippine holiday — and if so, what type?
• How much should I be paid (holiday pay, 13th month, overtime)?
• If I'm an OFW, when should I send money home, and what should I watch out for in my host country?

We are not a government agency, a payroll provider, or a financial institution. We are an independent information site that aggregates public, official Philippine and host-country sources and presents them in a faster, more usable form than reading proclamation PDFs.

Sources we use

All factual claims on OFW Finance trace back to one of the following official sources. We do not rely on news articles or blogs as primary sources for legal or payroll data.

Philippine holidays

• Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines — Nationwide Holidays index
• Presidential Communications Office (PCO) — for proclamation announcements (e.g. Proclamation No. 1006 for 2026 holidays, Proclamation No. 1189 for Eid'l Fitr 2026)
• Supreme Court E-Library — full text of Presidential Proclamations
• Republic Act No. 9492 and RA 9849 — statutory holiday law (governs the recurring 10 regular holidays)

Pay rules and the Labor Code

• DOLE Labor Advisory No. 12-25 — pay rules for 2026 holidays
• DOLE Bureau of Working Conditions — all current labor advisories
• Labor Code of the Philippines (Presidential Decree No. 442, as amended)
• National Wages and Productivity Commission (NWPC) — current daily minimum wage by region

13th month pay

• Presidential Decree No. 851 — original 13th month pay law (1975)
• TRAIN Law (RA 10963) — ₱90,000 tax-exempt ceiling
• DOLE Labor Advisory No. 18, s. 2021 — 13th month guidelines
• Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) — withholding tax rules

OFW and remittance data

• Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) — OFW remittance statistics
• Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) — formerly POEA, OFW deployment data and protection
• Host country official labor and tax authorities — see the OFW country guides for direct links to HK IRD, UAE MoHRE, Saudi HRSD, US IRS, and the relevant Philippine embassies.
• FinCEN (United States) — reporting thresholds for foreign accounts

US and Australian holidays (for the BPO calendar)

• 5 U.S.C. § 6103 / US Office of Personnel Management
• Fair Work Ombudsman (Australia)

How we verify and update data

Holiday dataset

The 2026 holiday list comes directly from Proclamation No. 1006, s. 2025signed by President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. on September 3, 2025. Eid'l Fitr 2026 was added based on Proclamation No. 1189 (March 20, 2026). Eid'l Adha 2026 remains pending an official proclamation; we display it as “to be announced” until the President signs it.

We run an automated daily cron job that scrapes the Official Gazette and the Presidential Communications Office for new proclamations referencing Eid'l Adha. When a match is detected, an editorial alert is sent and the dataset is updated within hours of the official signing — never automatically from a third-party article.

Calculators

All pay multipliers used by the holiday pay calculator (100%, 130%, 150%, 200%, 260%, overtime +30%, night shift differential +10%) come directly from DOLE Labor Advisory No. 12-25 and the Labor Code. Every formula is covered by an automated test suite (Vitest) that runs on every code change, so regressions are caught before deployment.

The NCR daily minimum wage used as a default (₱695) corresponds to Wage Order NCR-26, effective July 18, 2025, per the NWPC. We do not automatically pull live wage data — if you are in a different region, override the default with your actual rate.

OFW country guides

Each country guide (Hong Kong, UAE, Saudi Arabia, USA) is built from a combination of host-country official sources (linked at the bottom of each guide) and Philippine consular/diplomatic resources. We mark each guide with a visible “Last verified” date so you can judge data freshness.

Limits of our calculators

Our calculators are designed for the most common cases. They will give you a good estimate, but they cannot replace a full payroll run by your HR department. Specifically:

• The holiday pay calculator assumes a standard 8-hour workday and the NCR pay rule structure. Sector-specific rules (e.g. seafarers, field personnel, managerial employees who are exempt from holiday pay) are not modeled.
• The 13th month pay calculator does not deduct withholding tax, SSS, PhilHealth, or Pag-IBIG contributions — it computes only the gross 13th month amount.
• Commission-based compensation is a nuanced case in Philippine labor law. See the 13th month page for the three scenarios we recognize.
• Remittance fees and exchange rates shown on the Send Money page are illustrative ranges. Always confirm the exact amount on your provider's site before sending.

For payroll, tax, or legal decisions with significant financial impact, consult your HR department, the DOLE Bureau of Working Conditions, the Bureau of Internal Revenue, or a qualified labor lawyer.

Update frequency

• Holidays: dataset is updated within hours of any new Presidential Proclamation. The Eid monitor cron runs daily at 08:00 Asia/Manila.
• Pay rules: re-reviewed every year when the new DOLE Labor Advisory is published (typically October–November).
• NCR minimum wage: re-checked at each Wage Order announcement by the NWPC.
• OFW country guides: re-verified at least every 6 months. Each guide displays its individual last-verified date.
• Remittance comparison: provider fees and exchange rate ranges are reviewed quarterly.
• Code and tests: 64+ automated tests run on every deployment; calculator regressions are blocked before release.

Independence and how we are funded

OFW Finance is not affiliated with the Philippine government, DOLE, BSP, or any bank, remittance company, or recruitment agency. We are an independent information site.

Some links on the Send Money page and OFW country guides go to remittance providers (Wise, Remitly, Western Union) via affiliate tracking. If a reader signs up through one of these links, OFW Finance may earn a small commission at no extra cost to the reader. Affiliate links never affect the order in which providers are presented, or the factual claims we make about them. We choose providers based on actual service quality for OFWs sending money home, not commission rates.

See our Privacy Policy for the full affiliate disclosure.

Editorial revision history

• 2026-05-22 — Methodology page published. UAE weekend description updated to reflect 2022 federal workweek change. 13th month commission handling expanded into three scenarios.
• 2026-05-21— Eid'l Adha automated monitor deployed (daily cron). Direct links to BWC Labor Advisory PDFs added. NCR minimum wage default updated to ₱695 (Wage Order NCR-26, effective July 18, 2025).
• 2026-05-21 — Holiday pay calculator and 13th month calculator covered by 64 automated regression tests. JSON-LD Organization, WebSite, and BreadcrumbList added.
• 2026-05-20— Initial public release. Holiday data sourced from Proclamation No. 1006, s. 2025 and Proclamation No. 1189 (Eid'l Fitr 2026).