What this payslip template is for
A salary slip is the employee's record of what was earned, what was deducted and why. Employees need it for home loans, visas, rented flats and tax filing; you need it because the Code on Wages and most state Shops and Establishments rules require that wage slips be issued, and because a clear slip cuts salary queries to almost nothing.
This template suits companies that already compute salaries in a sheet or a basic accounting package and need a clean, consistent slip to hand out. It prints on one A4 page, exports to PDF, and because every value comes from a Data sheet you do not retype anything on the slip itself. Firms that want the format in Word or PDF can paste the finished layout; the Excel version is the master because the totals calculate.
It is designed for Indian statutory fields: UAN, ESIC number, PAN, PF, ESI, professional tax, labour welfare fund and TDS. If you need to understand what each of these lines means before you fill them, read the salary slip format explained guide first.
What is inside: the Payslip and Data sheets
The Payslip sheet is the printable page. At the top is a company header block: company name, address, and a 'Payslip for the month of' cell. Below it, the employee block has Name, Employee ID, Designation, Department, Date of Joining, PAN, UAN, ESIC Number and Bank Name with Account Number. Next comes the attendance block: Days in Month, Paid Days, LOP Days and Leave Taken.
The body has two side-by-side tables. Earnings lists Basic, DA, HRA, Conveyance, Special Allowance, Overtime and Arrears, each with a Fixed and an Earned column. Deductions lists PF, ESI, Professional Tax, TDS, LWF and Advance. Both tables end in a total row driven by SUM. Below them: Gross Earnings, Total Deductions and Net Pay, where Net Pay is Total Earnings minus Total Deductions. A 'Net Pay in words' cell is left for manual entry, followed by an authorised signatory line and a note that the slip is computer-generated.
The Data sheet has one row per employee with every field the slip needs, in the same order. Cell B2 on the Payslip holds the Employee ID you want to print; every other cell on the slip looks up that ID in Data using INDEX and MATCH. Change B2, and the whole slip repopulates.
- Earnings total: =SUM(Earned Basic:Earned Arrears); Deductions total: =SUM(PF:Advance).
- Net Pay: =Total Earnings − Total Deductions, formatted with the rupee symbol and two decimals.
- Lookup pattern for each field: =INDEX(Data!C:C, MATCH($B$2, Data!A:A, 0)).
- LOP Days: =Days in Month − Paid Days, so the attendance block cannot contradict itself.
How to use it: from salary sheet to one PDF per employee
Paste your month's figures into the Data sheet. If you prepare salaries in the salary sheet with formulas, the columns line up: Emp ID, Name, Designation, Paid Days, each earning, each deduction and Net Pay copy across in one block. Add the static fields (PAN, UAN, ESIC number, bank details) once and carry them forward every month.
On the Payslip sheet, type the first Employee ID in B2, check the slip, then File → Export → PDF. Repeat for each employee, or record a short macro that steps through the Data rows and saves a PDF named by ID and month. For 30 employees this is a ten-minute task; for 300 it is where you start wanting software.
Type the Net Pay in words by hand. Excel has no built-in function for Indian number words (lakh, crore), and third-party add-ins are inconsistent, so a typed line is more reliable than a formula that prints 'one million' to an employee in Indore.
- Set the print area to the slip block only and use 'Fit to 1 page wide' so the PDF is always a single page.
- Protect the Payslip sheet and leave only B2 and the words cell unlocked to prevent accidental edits.
- Send slips individually; never attach the Data sheet, which contains every employee's salary.
How to customise the slip
Rename or add earning heads to match your salary structure. Keep Basic and DA first, since PF and gratuity are computed on them, and keep the Earned column driven by proration so the slip shows why the earned amount is lower in a month with LOP. If you pay a night-shift or site allowance, add it above Overtime so the Earned total formula still covers the range.
Add a year-to-date block if employees ask for it at tax time: a small table with cumulative gross, PF and TDS drawn from a second Data sheet that holds monthly totals. Add the company logo in the header and the CIN or registration number if you are a company; contract labour vendors often add the client site name because principal employers ask for it.
For states that levy labour welfare fund, keep the LWF line and enter the half-yearly amount in the months it is due; otherwise leave it as zero rather than deleting the row, so the format stays uniform across months.
What a compliant Indian salary slip must show
The slip should show the wage period, the days for which wages are paid, each component of gross, each deduction with its statutory basis, and net pay. It should carry the employee's PF (UAN) and ESIC numbers so they can reconcile their passbooks, and the employer's identity. Deductions must be the ones permitted by law: statutory contributions, tax, authorised advances and recoveries, and fines only where a proper procedure was followed.
Cross-check the statutory lines: employee PF is 12% of basic plus DA up to the ₹25,000 ceiling (from 17 September 2026); employee ESI is 0.75% of gross for those with fixed gross up to ₹21,000; professional tax follows your state slab and is nil in states like Delhi and Haryana. The glossary entry on salary slips and the definition of net salary cover the vocabulary employees usually ask about.
Keep a copy of every slip issued. Wage slips are part of the records an inspector can ask for, and employees will ask for old slips years later for loans and background checks.
When Excel payslips stop working
The template holds up while headcount is small and salaries are stable. It strains when you add employees every month, when arrears and mid-month joiners require partial slips, and when you need slips for a year retrieved by anyone other than the person who saved the files. Typing Net Pay in words 150 times is also where errors creep in.
Attend Mitra generates payslip PDFs, singly or as a ZIP, from an attendance-linked payroll run: paid days, LOP and overtime come from attendance records, EPF, ESIC, PT and TDS apply from the settings, and employees download their own slips from the self-service app. The system does not file statutory returns or issue Form 16, so your consultant still handles those. The payslips guide explains how the generated slip is structured and what employees see in the app.