Salary Allotment for Seafarers: How Your Family Gets Paid at Sea

Quick answer: Salary allotment is the arrangement by which a seafarer directs part of their monthly salary to be paid directly to a family member’s or their own home bank account while they are still at sea, rather than the entire amount accumulating until sign-off. Most shipping companies let you set an allotment amount or percentage before joining, or update it through the company’s crewing portal or manning agent once onboard, with the remainder paid as a lump sum or wage balance at the end of the contract.

One of the most common questions from new cadets and their families is a simple one: “how does the money actually reach home while I’m at sea for months?” The answer is salary allotment — a standard, well-established part of how seafarer pay works, but rarely explained clearly. This guide covers how it works and how to set it up sensibly.

What Is Salary Allotment?

An allotment is a portion of your monthly wage that your employer pays out directly — usually to a bank account you nominate — on a regular schedule while your contract is ongoing, rather than holding the full amount until you sign off. It exists specifically because seafarer contracts run for months at a time, and families back home need regular income during that period, not just a large sum at the end.

The remaining, non-allotted portion of your salary (sometimes called the wage balance) typically accumulates and is settled at the end of the contract, alongside any leave pay, overtime, or other dues.

How to Set Up an Allotment

1. Decide your allotment amount or percentage. Some companies let you specify a fixed monthly amount; others work on a percentage of your basic pay. Decide this based on your family’s regular monthly needs.
2. Nominate the receiving account. This is usually a bank account in your own name (an NRE account is the right choice if you have NRI status — see below) or, in some company setups, an account in a family member’s name.
3. Submit the allotment request through your company’s HR/crewing department or manning agent, typically as part of your pre-joining paperwork.
4. Confirm the payment schedule. Allotments are usually monthly, but confirm the exact date range and any cut-off for the request to take effect from your next pay cycle.
5. Keep a record of your allotment instruction — the confirmed amount, account details, and start date — for your own reference and for resolving any payment discrepancy later.

Why the Receiving Account Matters: NRE vs Regular Savings

If you qualify for NRI status under Indian tax rules (broadly, 182–183+ days outside India in a financial year, depending on the applicable threshold for your situation), your foreign-flag vessel salary is treated as tax-free income. This treatment is cleanest when the income is routed through an NRE (Non-Resident External) account — a special account category designed for exactly this purpose, with tax-free interest and full repatriability.

Directing your allotment to a regular resident savings account instead doesn’t automatically make the income taxable, but it can complicate your documentation and tracking, since a resident account isn’t set up to clearly separate NRI-status foreign income from other funds. Setting up an NRE account before your first contract — or as early as possible — avoids this friction later.

Common Allotment Mistakes

• Allotting the full salary and leaving no wage balance. This can leave you with little to show at contract-end settlement, since everything has already gone out monthly — decide your allotment amount deliberately rather than defaulting to the maximum.
• Sending allotments to a regular savings account despite qualifying for NRI status, which muddies your tax documentation unnecessarily.
• Not confirming the allotment actually started. Always check your first month’s payslip or bank credit against what you requested — a request that wasn’t processed correctly is easier to fix in month one than after several months.
• Losing track of who has access to the receiving account. If the allotment goes to a joint or family-nominated account, make sure everyone involved understands it’s meant to cover ongoing household needs, not be treated as a lump sum to spend immediately.

A Simple Way to Think About It

Treat your allotment the way you’d treat a monthly salary if you were working onshore — sized to cover your family’s regular expenses — and let your wage balance, leave pay, and any bonus components accumulate toward the larger financial goals (repaying a training loan, building an investment corpus, a large purchase) you’re sailing for in the first place. For more on what to do with the wage balance once it lands, see our guide on investing your seafarer salary.

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