Statutory bonus for 2025-26, worked out month by month in formulas you can see, then printed as a slip for each employee. Built on the Code on Wages and the August 2026 limits.
Six sheets. Send each slip with the statutory bonus letter.
₹21,000, ₹7,000, your minimum wage, your rate and the one-half rule in blue cells. The rate cell refuses anything outside 8.33% to 20%.
Turns pay components into wages as the Code defines them, the same base as the per-day salary sheet, so you test ₹21,000 on the right figure.
One row per employee and one column per month, with each month's base worked out beside it. A month above the line turns red and drops out.
Enter an employee code and print the slip: days worked, months that count, the base, the rate, deductions and the amount credited.
The sphere question in one line, the two readings the workbook uses, and every figure against its provision.
Bonus runs on twelve months of wages. Attendo (formerly Petpooja Payroll) keeps each month's salary and attendance on record.
Because the slip is where an employee checks you. If the figure on it cannot be traced back to wages, months and a rate, it invites the question, and from 2026 the arithmetic behind it has moved.
Bonus is now paid under Chapter IV of the Code on Wages, 2019, and the limits notified on 25-Aug-2026 kept the old numbers: ₹21,000 to qualify, and ₹7,000 or the minimum wage as the base. What changed is the wage those limits are tested on, the one a Code-ready salary sheet already builds.
That wage is basic, dearness allowance and retaining allowance, plus any excluded pay above half of total pay. So ₹21,000 is not a gross figure. A supervisor at a retail chain on ₹22,000 gross with a low basic can be owed bonus, and the wage builder shows why.
Above ₹7,000, the base is the higher of ₹7,000 and the minimum wage for the role. In a factory, a hospital or a store the minimum wage is often the higher figure, and a sheet that stops at ₹7,000 underpays.
Most private employers are in the State sphere, where on our reading the same figures apply with the State's minimum wage. The register follows the payout checklist step for step, so the slip, the letter and the bank credit all show one number.
Each one is where a hand-built sheet usually goes wrong.
| Employee (an example) | Bonus | Months | Base for year | Deducted | Credit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ravi, operator | ₹12,500 | 12 | ₹1,50,000 | ₹0 | ₹12,500 |
| Meena, supervisor | ₹6,250 | 6 | ₹75,000 | ₹2,000 | ₹4,250 |
| Arif, part-time | ₹6,000 | 12 | ₹72,000 | ₹0 | ₹6,000 |
| Lakshmi, joined Feb | ₹2,167 | 2 | ₹26,000 | ₹0 | ₹2,167 |
| Total to credit | ₹26,917 | 32 | ₹3,23,000 | ₹2,000 | ₹24,917 |
Every employee drawing wages not exceeding twenty-one thousand rupees a month is paid bonus. Notified for the Central sphere on 25-Aug-2026, deemed in force from 21-Nov-2025.
Source: S.O. 4711(E), Gazette of India, 25-Aug-2026, under s.26(1)Where wages exceed seven thousand rupees, bonus is calculated as if they were ₹7,000 or the minimum wage, whichever is higher; on our reading, a State-sphere employer uses its own State's.
Source: S.O. 4710(E), Gazette of India, 25-Aug-2026, under s.26(2)The minimum is eight and one-third per cent of wages earned, or one hundred rupees if higher, owed even without allocable surplus; up to twenty per cent where the surplus requires it.
Source: Code on Wages, 2019, s.26(1) and (3)The line is on Code wages. On a low basic, gross can be well above ₹21,000 while Code wages are under it, and that employee is owed bonus.
Above ₹7,000 the base is the higher of ₹7,000 and the minimum wage. Where the minimum wage is higher, it is the base.
On the month-by-month reading, a month above ₹21,000 drops out and the rest still count.
Bonus is a percentage of wages actually earned, so a part year already gives less. Section 27 reduces only the ₹100 floor.
Section 37 deducts only an advance or customary bonus paid in the same year. A Diwali payment this November belongs to 2026-27.
Where the allocable surplus exceeds the total minimum bonus, section 26(3) binds you to pay more. Ask your CA before you set the rate.
A box for the amount
Six sheets, every step a formula
Fill the register, check it against the labour codes, print each slip. Attendo keeps the monthly wages it runs on.
Attendo (formerly Petpooja Payroll) is payroll and attendance software used by 40,000+ businesses across manufacturing, corporate offices, retail, hospitals and education. General guidance, not legal advice. This workbook is one of our free payroll templates, each built from the gazette rather than from other templates.
Six sheets, from wage builder to printable slip, every step a formula, in Excel. Free, and no card.
