What this salary sheet is for and who uses it
A salary sheet is the working document behind payroll: one row per employee, one month per file, every earning and deduction visible before a rupee leaves the bank. Owners of small firms, payroll executives at 20 to 200 employee companies, and accountants who prepare salaries for several clients use it to compute net pay, check statutory deductions and produce the figures that go into payslips and the bank transfer file.
This template is built for Indian payroll. It prorates fixed salary on paid days, applies the EPF wage ceiling of ₹25,000 that took effect on 17 September 2026, tests ESI eligibility against the ₹21,000 gross ceiling, and leaves professional tax and TDS as manual cells because both depend on state and individual declarations. It also shows the employer's PF and ESI share so you can see the true monthly cost, not just take-home.
It is not a payroll system. It does not maintain history, generate ECR files or issue Form 16. For a company that has outgrown the sheet, the last section explains what changes when attendance-linked payroll takes over.
What is inside: the Salary Sheet and Settings tabs
The workbook has two sheets. The Salary Sheet holds one row per employee with these columns in order: Emp ID, Name, Designation, Days in Month, Paid Days, LOP Days, Basic, DA, HRA, Other Allowance, Gross (fixed), Earned Basic, Earned Gross, OT Hours, OT Amount, Total Earnings, PF Employee, ESI Employee, PT, TDS, Advance, Total Deductions, Net Pay, Employer PF, Employer ESI and CTC for Month.
Columns you type are shaded; columns with formulas are locked-style white. You enter Days in Month, Paid Days, the fixed salary components, OT Hours, PT, TDS and Advance. Everything else calculates. LOP Days is simply Days in Month minus Paid Days.
The Settings sheet holds every rate and ceiling as a named, editable cell: EPF wage ceiling (25000), employee PF rate (12%), employer PF rate (12%) with a note on the 8.33% EPS and 3.67% EPF split, EDLI (0.5%) and admin charge (0.5%), ESI gross ceiling (21000), employee ESI (0.75%), employer ESI (3.25%), and the overtime multiplier (2). When a rate changes, you change one cell, not 200 formulas.
- Earned Basic = Basic × Paid Days ÷ Days in Month; Earned DA and Earned Gross follow the same proration.
- OT Amount = OT Hours × (Earned Gross ÷ 26 ÷ 8) × OT multiplier, using the common 26-day, 8-hour divisor.
- PF Employee = MIN(Earned Basic + Earned DA, 25000) × 12%, so contributions cap at the ceiling automatically.
- ESI Employee = IF(Gross fixed ≤ 21000, ROUNDUP(Earned Gross × 0.75%, 0), 0); Employer ESI uses 3.25% on the same test.
- CTC for Month = Total Earnings + Employer PF (including EDLI and admin) + Employer ESI.
How to use it month by month
Start by copying last month's file and renaming it for the current month. Update Days in Month (28 to 31). Then paste Paid Days from your attendance summary; if you use the attendance sheet with salary calculation the Payable Days column maps directly. Fixed components stay the same unless someone had an increment.
Enter OT Hours from the overtime register, PT from your state slab (see the professional tax calculator), and TDS from the monthly tax projection for each employee. Type any salary advance recovered this month. Net Pay and Total Deductions update as you go, and a conditional-format rule turns Net Pay red if it goes negative.
Before finalising, sort by Net Pay and eyeball the top and bottom five. Then filter ESI Employee greater than zero and confirm each of those employees really has fixed gross of ₹21,000 or less. Print to PDF for the file, and copy Emp ID, Name and Net Pay into your bank's NEFT upload format.
- Use the PF calculator and ESI calculator to spot-check two or three rows the first time you use the sheet.
- Freeze panes at column D so names stay visible while you scroll across deductions.
- Keep one file per month; never overwrite, because the sheet is your salary register for inspection.
How to customise the formulas
The most common change is the proration divisor. The template uses Days in Month because most monthly-salaried companies pay on calendar days. If you follow the 26-day practice for minimum-wage workers, replace Days in Month with 26 in the Earned Basic and Earned Gross formulas, or add a divisor cell in Settings and reference it.
For the September 2026 transition month, PF has to be computed on a split basis: 1 to 16 September at the ₹15,000 ceiling and 17 to 30 September at ₹25,000. The Settings sheet includes a second ceiling cell and a note; for that one month, compute the two halves separately and enter the total in PF Employee as a value. From October 2026 onward the single ceiling applies. The PF calculation guide walks through the arithmetic.
If your salary structure has more heads, insert columns between Other Allowance and Gross (fixed) and extend the Gross formula. Keep Basic and DA as the first two components because PF and gratuity depend on them. If any employee has opted for voluntary PF above the ceiling, override the PF Employee cell with a typed value and colour it to mark the exception.
Compliance context: what the sheet must get right
Under the Code on Wages, basic plus DA plus retaining allowance must be at least 50% of total remuneration; if your allowances exceed that, the excess is added back to wages for PF and gratuity. Check the structure once with the Gross column: if Basic plus DA is under half of Gross, the sheet flags the row in the Earned Basic column comment.
ESI applies in implemented areas to establishments with 10 or more employees (20 in some states). An employee who crosses ₹21,000 mid-contribution-period keeps contributing until the period ends (April to September or October to March), so do not switch ESI off in the month of an increment; override the IF test for that employee until the period closes. Employees earning up to ₹176 per day are exempt from their own share but the employer still pays.
Professional tax is a state levy with a constitutional ceiling of ₹2,500 a year, and several states, including Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, do not levy it at all. Confirm slabs with your state commercial tax department. TDS on salary must reach the government by the 7th of the following month, PF and ESI by the 15th. The sheet gives you the monthly totals for each challan at the bottom of the relevant columns.
When the sheet stops working and what to do
The sheet breaks down at three points: when Paid Days has to be typed from a separate register and people argue about it, when the number of statutory exceptions (mid-period ESI, voluntary PF, arrears, multiple PT states) exceeds what colour-coding can track, and when you need a payslip for every employee rather than one summary row. Each month then takes days instead of hours.
Attendance-linked payroll removes the manual bridge. In Attend Mitra, paid days, LOP and overtime hours flow from face, GPS or biometric attendance into the payroll run; EPF, ESIC, PT and TDS settings apply automatically; and the output is payslip PDFs, a salary register and a NEFT bank file. You can still export to Excel for review or import the wage master from this template. See how the salary calculation from attendance works, and what a compliant salary slip format should contain.