The system of record for how work actually happens.
Upload a CSV roster. The parser runs the IN compliance validators row-by-row (missing PAN, ESI threshold, PF wage-cap, over-cap reimbursements) and surfaces flags inline. Download every employee's payslip as an individual PDF in a single ZIP, or import all rows into the library to edit, generate Form 16 for, or build the monthly Payroll Register from. Bank-specific salary-upload files live in FyBoard People.
The roster
The fastest path depends on where the employee data lives today. If it's already in a Google Sheet or your HRIS, the CSV upload takes ten seconds. If it's a small team and you'd rather type it, the inline builder accepts rows one at a time. If you've run before, the studio remembers — last cycle's roster is sitting waiting, fresh joiners and leavers ready to be added.
Drop a CSV — name, code, PAN, UAN, ESI IP, bank A/c, IFSC, basic, HRA, special, reimbursements, regime, wage-cap election. The studio's template is downloadable; column-headers are validated before any rows commit; mismatches surface row-by-row.
10–30 seconds for 50 employees
Add rows one at a time inside the studio. Useful for first-time setup of a small team, or for adding mid-cycle joiners to an existing roster. Same field structure as the CSV; tab-key moves between cells; auto-save persists between sessions.
20–40 seconds per employee
Last cycle's roster lives in your browser. Open the console next month, the same employees are sitting in place with their structures intact. Update what changed — joiners added, leavers archived, increments applied — and run.
Under a minute, every cycle after the first
The run pipeline
The cycle is a pipeline. Each row enters at the left, passes through structure resolution → slab + cess → PF + ESI → bank-line generation in parallel with every other row, and emerges on the right as a complete employee output bundle. The studio runs everything in the browser — your laptop is the payroll server.
Each row's basic / HRA / special / reimbursement components resolve into annual + monthly figures. Custom rows from the structure (overtime allowance, region adjustment) are merged in. The result is the gross figure per employee, per cycle.
~5 ms per employee
Projected annual income runs through the regime's slabs, surcharge stacks (with marginal relief), 4% cess applies. The annual TDS liability divides across remaining months — the per-month TDS for that employee for this cycle.
~8 ms per employee
EPF computes on basic + DA (12% / 12% with wage-cap election applied); ESI on gross (only if ≤ ₹21k); professional tax by employee's state. The studio reads each input correctly without conflating them.
~4 ms per employee
Net pay = gross − deductions. The Payroll Register XLSX surfaces the BANK / IFSC / NET columns ready for an NEFT/RTGS upload your accounts team can pivot into a bank-specific format. Bank-specific upload files (HDFC, ICICI, SBI Corporate, Axis Connect) ship with FyBoard People.
~2 ms per employee
Alert triage
A 50-row run produces a small handful of alerts every cycle — that's normal. What matters is whether they're flagged clearly enough that the person reviewing the muster knows what to do. The studio classifies every flag as Info, Warning, or Error — and only Errors block the export.
Configuration states worth knowing about but that don't need fixing. Sub-threshold TDS for an intern (their projected income is below ₹3L so no tax). ESI cleanly not applicable (gross above ₹21k). These show up in the muster summary but don't slow the run.
Configurations that work but warrant a second look. PF wage-cap election applied inconsistently across the roster (some employees capped, some not). An employee straddling ₹21k gross within ₹500 of the ESI cliff. Marginal-relief surcharge in play.
Configurations that would produce an invalid output. Missing PAN for an employee with taxable income; missing UAN for an EPF-eligible employee; bank account in the wrong format for the chosen payroll account. The error chip carries a one-line description of what to fix.
The output stack
A pay cycle isn't done when the calculations finish — it's done when every artifact downstream stakeholders need is in their hands. The studio bundles all five outputs into a single zip, with consistent file naming (employee code + period for stubs; entity + period for everything else) so the archive system knows what to do with each piece.
One A4 PDF per employee, paginated, branded with the employer's letterhead. Same format the payslip generator produces, multiplied across the roster.
PS_<EMP-CODE>_<YYYY-MM>.pdf
The cycle's full register — every employee, every component, every deduction, every contribution, totals at the bottom. The auditor-facing workbook.
REGISTER_<ENTITY>_<YYYY-MM>.xlsx
One vector PDF per employee in a single ZIP, named by employee + period. Generated from the same data as the Register and ECR — the per-row math reconciles across artifacts.
Payslips-<period>.zip
Electronic Challan-cum-Return file for the EPFO unified portal. Tab-delimited, member-level, in the column order the parser expects. Drops in directly.
ECR_<TAN>_<YYYY-MM>.txt
ESIC's portal-uploadable Excel. IP number, wages, contribution per row. Rows above the ₹21k threshold automatically excluded so the upload doesn't bounce.
ESIC_<EMP-CODE>_<YYYY-MM>.xlsx
Machine-readable cycle summary — total headcount, totals, alert counts, file inventory. Useful for downstream HRIS integration or audit-log archival.
META_<ENTITY>_<YYYY-MM>.json
The monthly cadence
The compounding gain of doing payroll inside the studio comes from the cycle-to-cycle persistence. The roster is remembered. The structures are remembered. The bank-config is remembered. Each month is a review pass on top of the prior month, not a fresh data-entry exercise. Joiners, leavers, and increments are the only moving pieces.
Open the console. Joiners get added, leavers archived, increments applied to existing rows. Five minutes of muster-keeping before the run.
Press run. The pipeline processes every row in parallel; the muster surfaces alerts; the export queues every artifact. Three to five minutes including review.
Upload the bank file to your payroll account. Stubs email out to employees. Compliance files (ECR, ESIC) hold for the 7th / 15th deposit deadlines.
EPFO ECR by the 15th. ESIC contribution sheet by the 15th. TDS challan by the 7th. The studio's outputs drop directly into each portal.
The Q&A column
CSV gotchas, bank format support, scale limits, joiners and leavers mid-cycle. The operational questions; the math-level ones live on the salary / TDS / PF-ESI calculator pages.
The studio's import step is a column-mapping screen. Drop the CSV, drag each detected column to the studio's standard field; save the mapping and the next import auto-matches. Mismatched data types (text where numbers expected) flag with a row-level note before the import commits.
Continue with
The batch is the multi-employee shell that everything else nests inside. Each row is a payslip-generator output. The aggregate is the payroll register. The compliance row-totals roll up into the PF/ESI files. Year-end aggregation produces Form 16 for every employee. Same engine, different views.
Roster, run, review, export — done. Stubs in the employee's inbox, bank file in the payroll account, ECR + ESIC queued for the 15th. The afternoon of spreadsheet wrangling becomes the fifteen-minute review pass it should always have been.