Salary Slip Format for Interns & Apprentices

A payroll payslip exists to show how wages were earned and how much tax was withheld. An intern slip exists for something narrower: to record that a stipend was paid for a training period, alongside a note on how the intern should treat it for tax.

The practical difference sits in the deduction block, which is nearly empty — no EPF line, usually no professional tax, and rarely any TDS at intern-level amounts.

A stipend is paid to support a person while they learn; wages are paid for work delivered. That divide runs through Indian law — most visibly the Apprenticeship Act, under which the prescribed stipend is not treated as wages for PF and ESI coverage in most cases.

It also dictates label discipline. Write 'Stipend' on the document rather than 'Salary' so the paper record matches the tax treatment the intern will actually apply at filing time.

The same four-zone skeleton holds — header, trainee identification, the stipend line and a closing note — but the middle zones shrink, so the whole document stays a single honest page that prints without ceremony.

For apprentices covered by the Act, the stipend rate follows a government-prescribed schedule tied to the trade and the training year, so the number on the slip comes straight from a published table rather than negotiation.

Because the stipend is not wages in that setting, the slip usually omits PF and ESI lines entirely. A quiet note stating the Act's coverage lets auditors trace why exemptions were applied, which keeps the record defensible.

File the month's apprentice slips together with the stipend payment records, because inspectors compare the two when verifying that the Act's prescribed rates were applied rather than discretionary amounts.

Interns rarely clock a clean month of work, so the slip must handle partial periods without drama. Divide the full stipend by the working days in the month, multiply by the days present, and put both figures on the document.

Meera Gupta's engineering internship pays ₹12,000 a month. Her workplace had 20 working days in July and Meera was present for 13, so the slip shows ₹12,000, 13 of the 20 days, and a net of ₹7,800 (12,000 × 13 ÷ 20). Displaying the calculation visibly stops a bank, a parent or an auditor from second-guessing the smaller figure.

Stipend income is taxable for the intern, normally under 'income from other sources' when no employer-employee relationship exists, though a structured internship contract can push it into the 'salaries' head, which the tax department treats differently.

Below the basic-exemption threshold there is usually no TDS, and the company needs only to issue the monthly slips and an annual certificate. Above it, the employer deducts tax and issues Form 16A for the quarter, keeping the intern's year-end record aligned with the slips.

A youth savings account, a first credit card, or a rental arrangement after moving to a city commonly asks for income proof, and the stipend slip is the one document an intern holds. Banks also accept the exit certificate as the fuller record.

Because internship income is small, proof requests stay light — but the papers still need the company header, the intern's name and the period legible and dated for the file to be accepted at all.

A parent's guarantee or a co-signer is common for intern-age applicants, yet the slip still has to stand alone as the record of income. Keep the designation line generic — 'Intern, Marketing' — so it stays valid across the whole internship without a reissue.

On completion, interns should receive a certificate stating the period, the role, the total stipend paid and the tax treatment, usually printed on letterhead. Monthly slips and this certificate together form the intern's two-piece income record.

Issue the certificate in the same run as the final slip so the totals reconcile; a certificate that quietly disagrees with the month-end set creates more questions at a bank counter than it answers.

Keep the intern slip deliberately boring: one page, the four zones, the pro-rata shown where relevant, and a single tax note rather than a wall of payroll codes.

Crafex's free generator handles stipend slips as easily as full payslips — set the stipend as the earnings line, keep deductions minimal, and label the document for interns so the finished PDF reads correctly from the first glance.

Keep a simple naming convention in the HR folder — stipend-july-2026-intern.pdf — so any auditor query or bank follow-up resolves in seconds rather than a folder-wide search.