Free download - rules verified November 2026
Salary sheet format in Excel: the employer's payroll register
A salary sheet is not a bigger payslip. This register gives you net pay for each person and what the business actually pays out: employer PF, EPS, EDLI and ESI, EPFO and ESIC challan totals, a bank transfer list, and a check that the money going out ties to the payroll cost.
For employers with 5 to 500 employees. No signup, no watermark.
Download
Employer payroll register
Employer payroll register (salary sheet)
Four sheets in one workbook, with sample data you can overwrite. Rules for the Rs 25,000 PF ceiling, ESI, EPS, EDLI and admin charges are inputs on the Settings sheet.
Download .xlsxPayroll
One row per employee, 50 rows. Inputs A to J, everything else calculates.
Challans
EPFO account-wise totals, ESIC, PT, TDS, cash out and a check cell.
Bank list
Net pay per employee with account and IFSC columns for the transfer.
Settings
PF ceiling, ESI limit, rates and the admin minimum. Change here, not in formulas.
Employer cost
What one employee really costs, month by month
Employee takes home
₹46,800
Business pays out
₹53,250
- Gross salary
- ₹50,000
- Employer EPF (3.67%)
- ₹917
- Employer EPS (8.33%)
- ₹2,083
- EDLI (0.5%)
- ₹125
- EPF admin charge (0.5%, before the Rs 500 monthly minimum)
- ₹125
- Employer ESI (3.25%)
- ₹0
That is ₹3,250 on top of gross, or 6.5% more than the salary on the offer.
The gap most sheets hide
Net pay is not the payroll cost
Take the three sample employees in the download. Their bank transfers add up to ₹1,00,336. Their gross is ₹1,09,733. After employer PF, EPS, EDLI and ESI (₹7,727) and the EPF admin charge (₹500, the monthly minimum), the payroll costs ₹1,17,960. That is 18% more than the bank debit, and a founder who budgets from the transfer list will be short every month.
| Bank transfers (net pay) | ₹1,00,336 |
|---|---|
| Gross earned | ₹1,09,733 |
| Employer contributions | ₹7,727 |
| EPF admin charge | ₹500 |
| Total payroll cost | ₹1,17,960 |
Challans
How the sheet maps to EPFO and ESIC payments
On the EPFO side the ECR splits the money into accounts. The sheet totals them so the figures match what you key into the portal:
- Account 01: employee PF plus the employer's EPF share (employer 12% minus the EPS part).
- Account 10: EPS pension, 8.33% of PF wages, capped on the Rs 25,000 ceiling.
- Account 21: EDLI, 0.5% of wages up to the ceiling.
- Account 02: admin charge, 0.5% with a monthly minimum that applies to the establishment, not each person.
ESIC is the employee 0.75% plus employer 3.25%, only for employees whose full-month gross is Rs 21,000 or less. Professional tax and TDS are deposited separately, so they get their own totals instead of being hidden inside net pay.
Reconciliation
Why the sheet, the bank debit and the ECR disagree
The ceiling changed mid-year
The PF wage ceiling went from Rs 15,000 to Rs 25,000 on 17 September 2026. A sheet carried forward from August still caps PF wages at Rs 15,000, so employee PF is Rs 1,800 instead of Rs 3,000 for anyone at the ceiling, and the ECR shows a different figure. The template reads the ceiling from one cell. Reports of EPFO guidance split September in two: 16 days at the old ceiling and 14 at the new. Confirm the treatment with the notification and your adviser.
Admin charge forgotten
The admin charge and EDLI are not deducted from anyone, so they never appear on a payslip. They only show up on the challan, which is why the challan always looks higher than the sum of payslip deductions.
Rounding per line, not on the total
Rounding each employee's PF and ESI and then adding gives a different total from rounding the grand total. The ECR is built from per-employee rounded amounts, so the sheet must be too.
ESI tested on earned pay
An employee whose full-month gross is within the limit stays covered even in a month with heavy loss of pay. Testing earned pay drops them from the challan for that month and creates a gap against the ESIC portal.
The Challans sheet ends with a check cell: payroll cost, minus cash out, minus other deductions. It must read 0. If it does not, one of the lines above is wrong.
Related
Pair it with the other free payroll tools
Feed paid days from the attendance sheet format in Excel, issue individual slips with the salary slip generator or the salary slip Excel template, and check an offer's take-home with the in-hand salary calculator. To stop maintaining the sheet by hand, see payroll automation and payslips and Form 16.
Got questions?
Salary sheet in Excel: FAQs
Register, challans and reconciliation.
- A salary sheet, also called a salary register, payroll register or salary statement, is one monthly table of every employee's earnings, deductions and net pay. It is what the finance team uses to pay salaries and file statutory returns, as opposed to the individual payslip each employee receives.
- A salary slip is one person's view. A salary sheet is the employer's view across everyone: it adds the employer's PF, EPS, EDLI and ESI cost, challan totals, a bank transfer list and a check that cash out ties to payroll cost.
- The ECR challan has separate accounts. Account 01 holds employee PF plus the employer's EPF share, account 10 is EPS pension, account 21 is EDLI and account 02 is the admin charge. The Challans sheet totals each one from the Payroll sheet.
- Yes, from the Settings sheet. The EPF wage ceiling moved from Rs 15,000 to Rs 25,000 from 17 September 2026 (notification S.O. 5109(E)). The template applies one ceiling per month. September 2026 was a split month, so a sheet rebuilt for September needs its PF wages set manually.
- Net pay is only part of the money going out. The business also pays the employee's PF and ESI it withheld, the employer's share on top, professional tax and TDS. The reconciliation block on the Challans sheet adds these up and reports any difference.
- No, it is charged on the establishment's PF wages with a minimum monthly amount. The sheet calculates it on the total and applies the minimum from Settings. Check the current figure on the EPFO notification.
More free tools
More free HR and payroll tools
Related to payroll and salary, and the rest of the toolkit.
- Salary slip generatorPDF and Excel payslips with PF, ESI, PT and LOP.
- Salary slip format in ExcelThree templates with working formulas.
- In-hand salary calculatorCTC to take-home, new and old regime.
- CTC calculatorThe CTC you need for a target take-home.
- Gratuity calculatorGratuity payout with Labour Code wage rules.
- Leave encashment calculatorValue of unused leave on exit.
Done with month-end reconciliation by spreadsheet? Zeba runs payroll from attendance, computes employer cost and challan totals, and issues every payslip.