How a Payslip Is Structured and How PF Is Calculated
A salary slip, or payslip, is the monthly statement an employer gives an employee that breaks down what was earned, what was deducted, and what was actually paid. It splits neatly into earnings on one side and deductions on the other, with the difference being net pay. Small businesses, startups without a payroll system, and HR staff who need a quick one-off document use a generator like this to produce clean payslips without buying software, and because it runs entirely in the browser, sensitive salary data for employees never leaves the device.
The structure is standard across Indian payslips. Earnings typically include basic pay, house rent allowance (HRA), dearness allowance (DA), conveyance, medical, special allowance, bonus, and overtime; these sum to gross earnings. Deductions include the employee's Provident Fund contribution, ESI where applicable, professional tax, TDS, and any loan recovery; these sum to total deductions. Net pay is simply gross minus total deductions. The one calculation the tool automates is PF: the employee contribution is 12% of basic pay, and there is an optional wage ceiling that caps the PF-eligible basic at Rs 15,000, which is the EPFO threshold many employers apply. Net pay is also printed in words, using the Indian numbering system, as payslips conventionally do.
Here is a concrete payslip. Suppose an employee has basic 30,000, HRA 15,000, DA 3,000, and special allowance 5,000, giving gross earnings of 53,000. On the deductions side, PF is calculated with the ceiling on, so it is 12% of the lesser of basic and 15,000, which is 12% of 15,000, or 1,800; professional tax is 200 and TDS is 2,500, giving total deductions of 4,500. Net pay is therefore 53,000 minus 4,500, which is 48,500, printed as Rupees Forty-Eight Thousand Five Hundred Only. If the ceiling were turned off, PF on a 30,000 basic would instead be 12% of 30,000, or 3,600, and net pay would drop accordingly, which shows why the ceiling toggle matters.
A startup founder without a payroll platform generates monthly payslips for a handful of employees, using the multi-employee mode to produce one PDF per person and download them all as a single ZIP. An HR executive issuing a payslip for a new joiner uses the PF auto-fill with the ceiling on to match the company's policy, then adjusts the other deductions manually. A contractor who needs a formal salary document for a visa or loan application generates a clean, professional-looking payslip with the correct net pay in words. A finance assistant reconciling a month's payroll checks each net figure against the bank transfer amounts before releasing salaries.
The common mistake is misapplying the PF ceiling: some employers compute PF on full basic and others cap it at 15,000, and using the wrong one changes both the deduction and the net pay, so the toggle is explicit rather than hidden. Another is forgetting that a payslip generator is not payroll software: it renders a document from the figures you enter, but it does not compute your statutory PF, ESI, or TDS liabilities, file returns, or generate Form 16. Treat the output as a formatted record, and confirm the statutory components with your accountant or payroll provider. A further point many people miss is that a payslip should reflect the actual days worked and any loss-of-pay days for the month, because a pro-rated salary changes both the gross and the deductions; enter these accurately rather than assuming a full month. Everything, including the multi-employee ZIP, is generated locally in your browser, so employee names, salaries, PAN, and bank details are never uploaded anywhere, which matters a great deal for a document this sensitive.
