Free Payslip Generator Australia

Eleven things, and Fair Work prescribes all of them under the Fair Work Act 2009 and the Fair Work Regulations 2009. Not the ATO. That surprises people who assume anything to do with tax withheld is an ATO document, and it is the reason this page cites fairwork.gov.au before it cites ato.gov.au.

None of the pay slip content rules carry a financial year. They are not indexed and they did not change on 1 July 2026. The two things on this page that genuinely do carry 2026-27 are the 12% super guarantee rate and Payday Super, which started on 1 July 2026.

The one exception on the super fund

An employer giving a new employee a pay slip within 14 days of their first pay day does not have to include the super fund name or number if two things are both true: the employee has not notified a choice of fund, and the employer has not been able to obtain the stapled super fund details from the ATO. The generator has a toggle for it, and prints a line explaining why the field is blank rather than leaving a hole.

What must never appear

Paid family and domestic violence leave cannot be identified on a pay slip. Not the leave taken, not the balance. Fair Work is explicit that this is about reducing the risk to an employee's safety when they access that leave. The amount paid still has to appear, recorded as ordinary hours of work or as another kind of payment for performing work such as an allowance, bonus or overtime payment. At the employee's request the employer may instead record the time as another type of leave, for example annual leave. The employer keeps the real balance in the employee record.

Leave balances are optional

Showing annual leave, sick and carer's leave, or long service leave on the slip is best practice, not a requirement. Employers do have to tell employees their balances if asked.

Eight steps, and the generator above walks the same order. Work top to bottom and the compliance checklist under the preview turns green.

1. Name both parties. Employer name, employer ABN, employee name. The ABN is required wherever the employer has one.
2. Date it twice. The pay period it covers, and the date the money was paid. They are separate fields and both are mandatory.
3. Set out ordinary pay. Hourly employees get the rate, the hours at that rate and the dollars. Salaried employees get the annual pay rate and the rate as at the last day of the period.
4. Itemise everything on top. Casual loading, allowances, bonuses, incentive payments, penalty rates, overtime. Anything that can be separated out from the ordinary rate gets a line. Where a casual hourly rate has the loading baked in, Fair Work suggests a note on the slip saying so.
5. Total the gross. Ordinary pay plus every line above it.
6. List the deductions. PAYG tax withheld first, then each other deduction with the fund or account name. The generator will not let you forget the account field, because Fair Work requires it and most templates drop it.
7. Show net pay. Gross minus total deductions, and it has to match what actually hit the bank account.
8. Add super. The amount for that pay period and the fund name, or name and number.

Then get it to the employee within one working day of pay day. A pay slip sitting unsent in a payroll system is not a pay slip.

One electrician on $38.50 an hour, 76 ordinary hours over the fortnight, four Saturday hours at 1.5 times, and a $32.00 tool allowance. These are the figures the generator loads by default, so you can see the arithmetic before you replace it with your own.

Super sits outside that column, because it is not paid to the employee and never touches net pay. At the 12% super guarantee rate, 12% of $3,189.00 is $382.68, and that figure plus the fund name goes in its own block on the slip.

The $612.00 tax line is an input, not a calculation. This generator never works out PAYG withholding, and that is deliberate rather than a gap. Take the figure from the payroll system that actually paid the money, and type it in. There is more on why the tax comes out at the figure it does in the guide to how PAYG withholding works.

Flick on blank template mode above the preview and every value turns into a ruled line. Print it, or hit download and you get a single self-contained HTML file with the styling baked in, which any browser will open and print. Nothing is fetched when you open it.

Two reasons to keep a blank one around. Casual and one-off pays are faster on paper than in a payroll run. And a printed template is a checklist: if a field on it is empty when you hand the slip over, the slip is not compliant, and you can see that at a glance instead of finding out from an inspector.

Fair Work publishes its own pay slip template as well, and it is worth having beside this one. Both formats sit on the pay slips page: a Word version and a PDF version. They are the authority. This generator exists because filling one in by hand for twenty-six fortnights is slower than typing four numbers.

The ATO does not prescribe pay slip contents. Search its guidance for a required layout and you will not find one, because the obligation lives in the Fair Work Regulations. What the ATO does is set the reporting that runs behind the slip, and the two places it mentions pay slips at all are telling: its description of how Single Touch Payroll works says you "run your payroll, pay your employees as normal, give them a payslip", and its STP reporting rules note that the year-to-date super figure it collects "would usually correspond to the YTD amount shown on the employee's payslip". The pay slip is assumed, never specified.

Tax withheld is the line that reconciles gross to net

Fair Work requires the gross amount, the net amount, and every deduction with its details. PAYG withholding is a deduction authorised by a law, so it sits inside that requirement rather than being called out by name. Leave it off and the gross and net figures on your own slip contradict each other, which is why the generator prints it as the first deduction line with the ATO as the payee.

What the employer reports at the same time

Each pay run, an STP report goes to the ATO on or before pay day. It carries the year-to-date gross, allowances, deductions and PAYG withholding for each employee, plus year-to-date employer super liability, and at the employer level the period gross wages at BAS label W1 and the PAYG withholding at label W2. Employees with a myGov account linked to ATO online services see the year-to-date tax and super in their income statement, updated every time the employer reports, which for most employers is each pay day. The mechanics are in our Single Touch Payroll guide, and what the employee ends up with at year end is covered in the PAYG payment summary and income statement guide.

Which means the pay slip and the income statement should agree. If an employee adds up twelve months of pay slips and the myGov income statement says something else, one of the two is wrong, and the pay slips are the paper trail that settles it.

Payday Super changed the super line in 2026-27

From 1 July 2026, employers must pay super contributions each payday rather than quarterly, and the contribution has to be received by the employee's fund within 7 business days of payday. That stretches to 20 business days in certain cases, such as an employer's first contribution to a fund or a new employee. The super guarantee rate is 12% of qualifying earnings for an employee over 18, or under 18 working more than 30 hours a week. Late payment attracts the super guarantee charge and can also breach the Fair Work Act or an applicable award or agreement.

The pay slip content rules did not change with it. What changed is that the amount printed in the super block is now money that has to move within days, not a figure accruing towards a quarterly deadline. Work the contribution out on the super guarantee calculator if you need to check it.

Within one working day of pay day, even if the employee is on leave. Electronic or hard copy, and an electronic pay slip must carry the same information as a paper one.

Fair Work's guidance on electronic slips is more specific than most employers realise. Send the pay slip to the worker, by email or into an electronic personal account, rather than simply storing it on a database where they could go and look. Issue it in an easily printable format. Its best practice notes go further: issue securely and confidentially, and make sure the employee can access and print the slip in private, giving the example that it would be inappropriate to issue an electronic pay slip to someone with no access to a terminal where they can read and print it privately.

The other Fair Work tip is the one people skip. Write it in plain English. A pay slip that needs decoding is a pay slip that generates questions, and eventually complaints.

A Fair Work Inspector can issue an infringement notice, which works like an on-the-spot fine, for not including the right information on a pay slip or not issuing pay slips within one working day of paying employees. It can be issued the first time it happens.

A serious contravention is where a court finds the person or business knew they were contravening or was reckless as to whether the contravention would occur. Pay slip requirements are named on Fair Work's list of breaches that can attract those higher penalties.

An infringement notice has to be paid within 28 days. An employer can apply in writing within those 28 days for an extension of up to another 28 days, or to have the notice withdrawn if they believe no breach occurred. Refusal of an extension leaves 7 days to pay. A notice must be issued within 12 months of the day the breach happened.

The quiet one: the reverse onus

This is the consequence that costs employers the most, and it is not a fine. If an employer does not meet their record-keeping or pay slip obligations, or does not make records available for inspection, and cannot show a reasonable excuse, then in a court case about wages the employer has to disprove the employee's allegation. The normal burden flips. An employee says they were underpaid, and without pay slips the employer has to prove they were not.

Giving a pay slip you know to be false or misleading is separately unlawful. Where the false or misleading nature is material, a court can impose penalties, and significantly higher ones where the conduct was knowing or reckless. Knowingly giving false or misleading information or documents to Fair Work officials may also be a criminal offence.