What the register records
One row per employee per month, with columns for employee code and name, designation, days in the month, paid days, LOP days, overtime hours, each earning component, gross, each deduction, net paid, mode and date of payment, and the employer's EPF, EPS, EDLI, ESI and LWF contributions. Totals at the foot of the register are what the accounts team books and what the ECR and ESI challan must agree with.
For a contractor or security agency the register is usually kept per establishment or per client site, so that man-hours billed to a client can be traced to the wages paid for that site. A monthly register for the whole company that cannot be split by site fails both the client audit and the principal employer's compliance check.
- Attendance columns: days, paid days, LOP, overtime hours
- Earnings columns: basic, DA, HRA, allowances, overtime, arrears, gross
- Deduction columns: employee EPF, ESI, PT, TDS, LWF, advances, net paid
- Employer columns: EPF and EPS, EDLI and admin charges, ESI, LWF employer share
- Payment columns: bank transfer date, reference, or cash acknowledgement
Statutory requirement and retention
The Code on Wages requires every employer to maintain a register of wages in the prescribed form, and the rules allow it to be kept electronically. Contract Labour rules separately require the contractor to maintain a wage register and a muster roll, and the principal employer to verify that wages were paid. PSARA obliges security agencies to keep a register with the salaries of guards and supervisors, which in practice is satisfied by the wage register plus the PSARA register.
Keep the register for at least the period your state rules prescribe, and in practice longer: EPF and ESI inspections routinely look back several years, and gratuity and bonus claims can arise well after an employee leaves.
Register versus muster roll, and how audits use it
The muster roll records attendance: who was present on which day. The wage register records money: what that attendance was paid. The two must reconcile, and the reconciliation is the audit. An inspector picks a worker, counts present days on the muster roll, checks paid days on the register, multiplies by the minimum wage for the category, and compares with net paid plus deductions.
The other standard checks are register totals against the EPF ECR and the ESI challan, register overtime against the overtime register, and a sample of payslips against register rows. Keeping all three records in one system rather than three spreadsheets is what makes these checks pass without a week of rework.
- Reconcile paid days on the register to present days on the muster roll
- Reconcile the EPF column total to the ECR amount paid by the 15th
- Reconcile the ESI column total to the ESI challan
- Reconcile site-wise gross to client billing for contract workforces
An agency with 85 guards across six client sites keeps a site-wise wage register. For a guard on ₹15,600 monthly wages with 26 paid days, the row shows gross ₹15,600, employee EPF ₹1,872, ESI ₹117 and net ₹13,611, plus employer EPF and EPS of ₹1,872, EDLI and admin of ₹156 and employer ESI of ₹507. The register total for EPF across all 85 guards must equal the ECR paid by 15 October; a difference of even one guard's ₹1,872 means a joiner was paid but not added to the ECR, which is exactly what a PF inspection finds.
Attend Mitra produces the salary register from the attendance-linked payroll run, with paid days, LOP and overtime drawn from the same records as the digital muster roll, and exports it to CSV or XLSX. For security and facility companies, site-wise man-hour exports let the register and client billing be reconciled from one source.