The system of record for how work actually happens.
The payroll register is the artifact auditors, donors, board reviewers, and tax officers reach for first. Every employee on rows; every earning, deduction, contribution, and total on columns. Five column groups for the structure, totals at the bottom, signature line on the PDF. The XLSX has live formulas; the PDF is sealed.
The five column groups
A payroll register isn't an arbitrary table. It's a structured artifact with five column groups in a fixed order: Identity → Earnings → Deductions → Contributions → Totals. Auditors and HR teams expect this sequence; the studio respects it. Within each group the columns are configurable, but the five-group spine doesn't move.
Employee code, name, designation, joining date, regime election. Five columns that anchor every row to a specific person. The auditor checks this first to confirm the roster matches the period's actual headcount.
Basic + DA, HRA, special allowance, reimbursements, plus any custom rows the structure carries. Each as a separate column showing the monthly value. Gross is the rightmost column of this group — sum of the earnings.
EPF employee share, ESI employee share, professional tax, TDS, plus VPF / loan EMIs when applicable. Negative signs make the column reduce-from-gross relationship visible at a glance. Sum at the end of the group.
Employer EPF (3.67% + 8.33% EPS routing), employer ESI (3.25% when applicable), gratuity accrual, employer NPS under 80CCD(2). The cost-to-company components the employee doesn't see but the audit must.
Net pay (gross − deductions), bank transfer amount (after rounding), and true CTC for the month (gross + employer contributions + gratuity accrual). The three numbers different stakeholders pull from the same row.
Stacked alongside this-month columns when the YTD view is enabled. Running totals from April 1 to the current period, useful for mid-year audits and end-of-year Form 16 prep. Toggleable per export.
Export formats
The same register, two file formats — because different downstream readers need different things. XLSX with live formulas lets the auditor sort, filter, and re-aggregate. PDF as a sealed statement lets the board ingest it as a fixed record. The studio ships both with every export, sized and named consistently.
A multi-sheet Excel workbook. The master sheet has all five column groups across rows of every employee. Separate sheets for each group offer a focused view. Every cell traceable; every total a SUM() formula auditors can re-verify.
Multi-page paginated PDF with the register flowing across landscape A4 pages. Letterhead on page one, totals on the last page, authorised-signatory line with optional DSC. Distributable as-is; no spreadsheet edits possible after seal.
The auditor's read
An external auditor doesn't read a register front-to-back. They read it in a specific sequence that maps to common audit objectives: headcount integrity, gross-to-net reconciliation, statutory-deduction matching, employer-cost validation, exception detection. Knowing the sequence helps you anticipate questions before they're asked.
First read: does the count of rows match the period's actual employee count? Cross-check against the HRIS or last cycle's leavers / joiners. Sets the scope for everything that follows.
Columns · EMP · NAME · DOJ
For each employee: do the basic / HRA / special / reimb sum to gross? Random-sample 5–10 rows against their underlying salary structures. Re-derives the SUM() formula manually.
Columns · BASIC + HRA + SPL + REIMB
EPF should be 12% of basic (capped at ₹15k if elected). ESI should apply only when gross ≤ ₹21k. Professional tax should match the state's slab. TDS should match the cumulative-method projection. Random-sample to verify each.
Columns · EPF · ESI · P-TAX · TDS
Employer EPF should equal employee EPF. Employer ESI should be 3.25% of the same wage base. Gratuity accrual = 15/26 of basic / yr / 12. If the cost-to-company line is in the register, this is where it's checked.
Columns · ER-EPF · ER-ESI · GRAT.
Every row: gross − total deductions = net pay. If the net doesn't match the bank file, that's a flag. The XLSX's SUM() formulas should reconcile to the totals row at the bottom; the PDF's footer total should match.
Columns · GROSS − DEDUCT = NET
Last pass: which rows don't fit the pattern? Net that's negative, gross above the entity's ceiling, missing PAN, unusual variable components. The studio's alert tier from the batch cycle surfaces here; the auditor's exceptions log starts here.
Columns · FLAGS · ALERTS
Downstream uses
The payroll register isn't just a destination — it's the source for the next layer of payroll artifacts. The bank-salary upload file, the ECR + ESIC compliance files, the GL postings, the year-end Form 16 — every one of them derives from the register's numbers. Keep the register clean; everything downstream stays clean.
The register XLSX carries BANK / IFSC / NET columns ready for an NEFT/RTGS upload your accounts team can format for the bank's portal. Bank-specific upload formats (HDFC / ICICI / SBI Corporate / Axis Connect) ship with FyBoard People.
Source columns · BANK · IFSC · NET
The Electronic Challan-cum-Return file uploaded to EPFO derives from the register's EPF column + employee identity (UAN). The studio outputs the tab-delimited TXT in EPFO's exact format.
Source columns · UAN · EPF · ER-EPF
The ESIC Excel upload comes from the ESI column (employee + employer). Rows above the ₹21k threshold drop out automatically — the register's ESI columns reflect the eligibility filter the studio applies.
Source columns · ESI IP · ESI · ER-ESI
The XLSX totals row gives your accountant the salary expense, employer-contribution expense, and gratuity-accrual liability ready to post as a journal voucher in Tally / Zoho / QuickBooks. Direct-write GL integrations are an FyBoard People feature.
Source columns · GROSS · ER-* · GRATUITY
The year's twelve registers aggregate into Form 16's Part B. The studio's annual rollup pulls Gross → Exemptions → Chapter VI-A → Taxable → Tax + Cess from the cumulative-month columns of each register.
Source columns · GROSS · EXEMPT · TDS
Department / cost-center / location tags on each employee row let you slice the register's totals by allocation dimension. Useful for finance teams that need monthly payroll attributed back to product / project / region budgets.
Source columns · DEPT · CC · LOCATION
Filter + slice
The full register sees all of an entity's payroll. But finance often wants just one department. HR wants just one office. Cost-allocation wants just one project. The studio's filter bar lets you slice the register along these dimensions before export — same numbers, smaller scope. Filters compose: department × regime × cost-center is a valid query.
Engineering / Product / Sales / Operations / Finance / HR. Each employee row carries a department tag; filter on one or more to scope the register to that team's payroll.
Project-level or product-level cost-allocation buckets. Finance teams use this to attribute payroll back to specific revenue lines or budget heads. Common when a company runs multiple products or services.
Geographic slice — Bangalore / Mumbai / Delhi / remote. Useful for state-wise compliance (professional tax varies per state) and for board reports that show regional headcount cost.
Multi-entity employers (parent + subsidiaries; multiple LLPs) keep separate registers per entity to maintain TAN-level audit isolation. The studio supports multi-entity setups; each gets its own filter scope.
Slice by new-regime vs old-regime employees. Useful for end-of-FY analysis showing which regime drove which tax outcomes. Most companies have a mix; visibility on the split helps offer-letter strategy.
Below-₹5L / ₹5L–₹15L / ₹15L–₹50L / above-₹50L. Used by HR for compensation-banding analysis and by finance for headcount-cost projections at different growth scenarios.
The Q&A column
Audit-trail integrity, format expectations, multi-entity setups, version history. The register-specific questions; the calculation-level ones live on the salary / TDS / PF-ESI calculator pages.
A deterministic fingerprint of the cycle's inputs — roster + structures + bank-config + period. Two registers with the same hash are guaranteed identical. The hash is shown in the PDF footer and the XLSX metadata so auditors can verify they're looking at the version-at-time-of-issue, not a re-export with different inputs.
Continue with
The batch cycle writes the register; the register feeds the annual Form 16; the payslip generator surfaces single rows; the PF/ESI calculator validates the statutory columns. Every cell of the register traces back to one of these tools, and vice versa.
Five column groups. XLSX with live formulas; PDF with the DSC seal. Every row traceable, every total reconciled, every export hashed for audit-trail integrity. The artifact every downstream reader expects, generated from the same engine that wrote the stubs.