Free payslip template for small businesses

A payslip is a document that records an employee’s income earned over the pay period. Broken down into 3 key areas a payslip will include gross pay, tax & deductions and net pay which is the amount the employee actually receives. Payslips help employees keep track of payments and deductions and ensure they are being paid correctly. As an employer, you need to provide your employees with a payslip at every pay run via email or a physical paper copy.

A payslip must include the following information:

• the amount of pay, both gross (before tax) and net (after tax);
• the date of receiving the pay;
• the pay period;
• any loadings, bonuses or penalty rate entitlements;
• deductions;
• superannuation contributions including the name of the super fund;
• the employer’s name and ABN if they have one; and
• the employee’s name.

If employees are paid at an hourly rate, the payslip should also contain the employee’s ordinary hourly rate and how many hours they worked at that rate. If an employee is paid an annual salary, the rate should be as on the last day of the pay period. While this is not a legal requirement, it is best practice to include the balance on each payslip.

As an employer you must provide payslips within one business day after your employee receives their pay.

As an employer you must keep your employee information, timesheets and payroll information for 7 years. See Fair Work Ombundsmen website for more information.

There is no specific format that your payslip should follow as long as it contains all the legal requirements. However, there is a level of commonality between most payslips that most people recognise and are familiar with. It makes sense to keep your chosen format similar to these known conventions e.g employer name at the top, gross pay before net pay etc as will help your employees understand their payslips easily.

A payslip is generated from your payroll & employee information.

You can use our free payslip template to create a payslip manually, however, one of the easiest ways is to generate your payslips automatically is via your payroll solution.

Need payroll software? Check out Reckon’s affordable range here.

Yes, you still must provide your employees’ payslips even if you are reporting via STP.

However, the STP Finalisation Declaration has replaced the need to produce Payment Summaries for employees. The information that was provided on the Payment Summaries is available in the employees’ MyGov account and is known as an Income Statement. If an employee doesn’t have a MyGov account, their accountant will be able to access this information via the Tax Agent portal.

Sending your employees payslips is only a small part of your payroll compliance obligations as an employer. You are also required to comply with specific rules from the ATO & Fair Work Australia etc. One of these obligations relates to Single Touch Payroll. Once you’ve processed your pay run you still need to submit the payroll information to the ATO via an STP-enabled software solution. For more information on STP-compliant products visit our range of payroll solutions here.