Payslip Studio Help Documentation

A complete guide to the salary slip generator, from the first employee to the monthly files.

Last Updated: November 3, 2026

1. Getting Started

1.1 What you need

• A modern browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari or Opera) with JavaScript enabled, on a computer, tablet or phone
• Site data allowed for zerodataupload.com, so your companies and payslips are kept from month to month
• The company's details and, for each employee, the salary, the PAN, the UAN and the bank account

1.2 How the page is laid out

The pill at the top shows the company you are working on and whether your work is saved. Beside it are the employee button, which opens the list of employees, and the month, with arrows for the month before and after. On the right are Undo and Redo, Help and Download. The tabs below choose what the card shows: Payslip (one employee's slip for the month), Month (everyone at once), Company and Design. On a wide screen the payslip is beside the form and stays in view while you scroll; on a phone it is under the Preview tab.

1.3 Your first payslip

1. Choose Try an example company to look around a company with four employees, or Start with my own.
2. Fill in the employee's name, work state and the gross pay a month.
3. Check the month at the top and type the days of loss of pay, if any.
4. Choose Download, then PDF.

2. The Company

The Company tab holds the company's details: the name, address and state; the phone, email and website; the CIN or LLPIN, GSTIN, PAN and TAN; the PF code and the ESI code; who signs the payslips and their title. Only filled details appear on the payslip. A PAN, TAN or GSTIN that cannot be right is pointed out in the notes.

Add the logo, the signature and the company stamp as pictures. A PNG with a see-through background looks best for the logo. For the signature and the stamp, a photo on white paper is enough: white is made see-through. Only the picture itself is kept, without the camera's hidden details.

3. Payroll Rules

• Pay for a day: the month's pay divided by the calendar days in the month, by 30, or by 26 (Sundays off). It sets how loss of pay is cut.
• PF is worked out on: wages up to the ceiling (15,000, and 25,000 from 17 September 2026) or the full PF wages.
• Round each amount to the rupee or the paisa, and round net pay to the rupee or to 10 rupees.
• Half-yearly professional tax (Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Puducherry): spread over six months, or taken in September and March.
• Labour Codes wages: allowances above half of pay count as PF wages. On by default; turn it off only if your adviser says so.
• Registered with EPFO and registered with ESIC: when a company is not, the notes do not ask for PF or ESI.
• Gratuity (4.81% of basic and DA) can be counted in the employer's cost to company.

Under Professional tax rules you can see each state's built-in slabs and change them: the pay up to which each tax applies, the basis (monthly, half-yearly or yearly pay) and the February amount of the top slab. Back to the built-in rule undoes your changes.

4. Employees

Add an employee from the employee button or under Company, Employees. Fill in the name, employee ID, designation, department, date of joining, work state, location, gender (Maharashtra taxes women's pay differently), PAN, date of birth, UAN, PF number, ESI number, how they are paid (bank transfer, cash, cheque or UPI), the bank, the account number and the IFSC. The date of leaving is only for someone who leaves.

Import from Excel or CSV adds many employees at once from a spreadsheet with a Name column; Import template downloads one with every column. Export to Excel saves the list. Each employee's menu opens the payslip, makes a copy with the same salary structure (the PAN, UAN and account number left empty), or deletes the employee with all their payslips.

5. The Salary Structure

Type the gross pay a month. Each earning is worked out as an amount, a share of gross pay, a share of basic, or the rest of gross pay. A new employee starts with basic at 50% of gross pay, HRA at 40% of basic and a special allowance that takes the rest. Add an earning adds DA, conveyance, medical, LTA, children's education, food, phone and internet, fuel, retaining allowance or one of your own.

The This month box beside a line changes that line for the month you are on only. A change to the structure itself applies from the month you are on to every later month; earlier months keep their own figures. Each line's menu says whether it is taxed, counts as PF wages or ESI wages, and is cut for loss of pay; it can make the line paid only in some months, move it, or remove it from the month on.

The annual cost to company beside the gross pay is twelve months of gross pay plus the employer's PF and ESI. From CTC works the other way: type the annual cost to company and the gross pay is set to match.

6. The Month: Days, Overtime and One-off Pay

• Loss of pay days: the unpaid days; halves are fine. Pay is cut in proportion, and the paid days are shown.
• Days in the month: worked out from the payroll rule; type a number to change it for one month.
• Overtime hours and the rate an hour: twice the ordinary rate, basic plus DA divided by 26 days of 8 hours, unless you type a rate.
• Pay date: shown on the payslip.
• One-off pay and deductions: a bonus, incentive, arrears, commission, leave encashment, a reimbursement that is not taxed or other pay; or an advance recovery, a fine, canteen charges or another deduction. They are for this month only.

A date of joining or leaving within the month leaves the days before joining or after leaving unpaid.

7. Leave and Loans

Under the month, Add leave adds casual, sick or earned leave, or a type of your own, with the opening balance, the leave credited and the leave taken. The balance shows on the payslip, and next month starts from it.

Under Deductions, Add a loan adds a loan or salary advance with the amount lent, the EMI a month and the first month. The EMI is taken every month until the loan is repaid, the balance is shown on the payslip, and Skip this month leaves one month out. Other deductions every month adds lines such as health insurance or a welfare fund, as an amount or a share of gross pay or basic, and can be limited to some months (a labour welfare fund in June and December, for example).

8. PF, ESI and Professional Tax

Each is worked out for you, with a line underneath that says how.

• PF: 12% of PF wages (basic, DA and retaining allowance, plus the part of other allowances above half of pay under the Labour Codes), on wages up to the ceiling of the month: 15,000 until 16 September 2026, 25,000 from 17 September, both for part of September 2026. The employer adds 12%, of which 8.33% of wages up to the ceiling goes to the pension scheme until the employee turns 58. Voluntary PF is a share of PF wages on top. Not a PF member turns it off; Not in the pension scheme sends the employer's whole share to PF.
• ESI: 0.75% from the employee and 3.25% from the employer, rounded up to the rupee, when the month's pay is up to 21,000 (25,000 for a person with a disability). With average daily wages of 176 or less only the employer pays. An employee covered at the start of April or October stays covered to the end of September or March.
• Professional tax: by the work state, or the company's state when the employee has none, including the February amount in Maharashtra and Karnataka and Maharashtra's slabs for women. It can be set to none or to a fixed amount for an employee.

9. Income Tax (TDS)

Choose the employee's tax regime. The tool works out the tax for the whole tax year 2026-27 under the Income-tax Act, 2025, takes off the tax deducted in earlier months and spreads the rest over the months left; a bonus is taxed in the month it is paid. The table under Income tax shows every step: the projected salary, each deduction, the taxable income, the tax, rebate or marginal relief, surcharge and cess, the tax for the year, what was deducted before and this month's TDS.

• New regime (the default): a 75,000 standard deduction; no tax up to 12 lakh of taxable income, with marginal relief just above it.
• Old regime: a 50,000 standard deduction, the professional tax, the HRA exemption from the rent paid a month, 80C investments besides PF (1.5 lakh with PF), 80D health insurance, home loan interest up to 2 lakh, the employee's own NPS up to 50,000 and other deductions. The HRA exemption is up to half of basic and DA in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune and Ahmedabad, worked out from the location unless you choose the city, and 40% elsewhere.
• For someone who joined during the year, enter the pay from the earlier employer and the tax it deducted.
• TDS can be set to none, to a fixed amount, or changed for one month with This month only.

The figures are for reference. For anything unusual, check them with your accountant.

10. Checks Before You Send

The number on the Payslip tab counts things to look at, listed at the top of the card with a link to each field: a PAN, UAN, IFSC or GSTIN that cannot be right, a missing company or employee name, PF or ESI turned off for wages that need them, deductions above half of pay, income tax due with no valid PAN, letters the payslip's font cannot print, and net pay below zero. Notes and tips explain the rest: wages raised to half of pay, ESI continuing to the end of a period, a regime that would save tax, or more tax deducted than the year's tax.

11. Designs

The Design tab has six designs: Classic, Modern, Minimal, Statement, Letterhead and Compact (half an A4 sheet). Choose a colour or your own, A4 or US Letter paper, the text size, the title (Payslip, Salary Slip or your own words) and the money sign (the rupee sign, Rs., INR or none), and whether paise are shown. Under On the payslip, choose what it shows: year-to-date totals, the full-month amounts beside this month's, the employer's contributions and cost to company, the income tax summary, leave balances, net pay in words, bank details (with all but the last four digits of the account hidden), the PAN, the logo, the signature block and the note at the bottom.

When there are too many lines for a design, the text is made a little smaller to fit; if it still does not fit, the page says so and suggests A4 or another design.

12. Downloading a Payslip

• PDF: real, searchable text in the payslip's own font, sharp when printed, usually about 40 KB.
• PDF with a password: locked with AES-256, with the employee's PAN, the date of birth as DDMMYYYY, the first four letters of the name with the day and month of birth, or your own password of at least six characters. Printing and copying text stay allowed. Send the password separately, or tell the employee the rule.
• JPG picture for WhatsApp and PNG picture for the best quality.
• Print: only the payslip is printed, on its own paper size.
• Copy as text: the payslip as a short message for WhatsApp or email.
• Share (on phones): sends the PDF straight to another app.

None of the files carries an author name, a program name or a date of its own. A downloaded payslip is marked Sent in the Month view.

13. Everyone This Month

The Month tab lists everyone on the payroll in the month with the paid days, gross pay, PF, ESI, professional tax, TDS, deductions and net pay, and totals: gross pay, deductions, net pay to transfer, the employer's PF and ESI, and the PF, ESI, professional tax and TDS to deposit. Type the days of loss of pay for each person in the table; open a name for anything else.

• All payslips (zip): one PDF for each employee. Lock each PDF with locks each one with that employee's PAN or date of birth.
• One PDF: every payslip in one file.
• Salary register (Excel): every employee with the days, each earning and deduction, gross and net pay and the employer's contributions, with totals.
• Bank sheet (Excel): name, account number, IFSC, bank, net pay and narration for everyone paid by bank transfer.
• PF ECR file: the ECR 2.0 text file for the EPFO portal, one line per member. Add the UAN of every member before uploading it.

14. Backups, Undo and Several Companies

Undo and Redo go back and forward through your changes. Under Company, Add a company keeps another company with its own employees, rules, design and payslips; Switch company moves between them. Download a backup saves everything, pictures included, in one file; Open a backup on another computer or browser brings it back and replaces what is there.

15. Keyboard Shortcuts

• Ctrl+Z undo and Ctrl+Y redo (outside a text box)
• [ and ] the month before or after (outside a text box)
• Ctrl+P print the payslip
• ? the help window; Esc closes a window or a menu
• ← and → move between the tabs

16. What Is Remembered

Your companies, employees, salary structures, saved payslips, pictures and the zoom of the preview are kept in this browser's storage on this device, so they are there next month. That storage is not encrypted, and anyone who uses this browser can open them; nothing is kept on a server. Which sections of the form are open is remembered in this tab only. Under Company, Backup and your data, Delete everything removes all of it and leaves the rest of the site alone.

17. Troubleshooting

• Nothing is remembered. The browser blocks site data (some private windows do); the pill says Not saved. Use a normal window, or download a backup.
• A name shows as boxes in the PDF. The payslip's font has Latin letters only. Type names in English letters.
• Too many lines for the design. Choose A4 instead of the Compact half sheet, or another design, or show fewer details.
• The TDS looks too high or too low. Open Income tax and read the table; check the regime, the earlier months and, in the old regime, the declarations. The figures are for reference.
• Professional tax is wrong for my state. Correct the slabs under Company, Professional tax rules.
• Download does nothing. Some browsers block downloads they did not expect; allow downloads for the site.

18. Support

For questions the FAQ does not answer, use the contact form and say which browser and device you use.