Automate Your Payroll: Generate Payslips with Mail Merge Easily

In today’s HR and accounting workflows, generating payslips efficiently and accurately for multiple employees is crucial. Manually creating payslips for every employee is time-consuming and prone to errors. That’s where Mail Merge in Microsoft Word and Excel becomes a powerful tool.

This blog will walk you through step-by-step how to create employee payslips using Mail Merge—helping you automate the process while keeping it professional and organized.

What is Mail Merge?

Mail Merge is a feature in Microsoft Word that allows you to automatically generate customized documents—like letters, payslips, or certificates—by linking Word with a data source (commonly Excel). Each row in Excel can produce a unique payslip for an individual employee.

Tools You Need

1. Microsoft Excel – for employee data
2. Microsoft Word – to design the payslip template
3. Mail Merge Wizard (Built into MS Word)

Step 1: Prepare Your Employee Data in Excel

The first step is to create a structured data file with all the relevant employee information.

Example Excel Sheet:

📌 Tip: Ensure there are no merged cells in your Excel sheet and that the first row contains the headers.

Save this file somewhere accessible.

Step 2: Create the Payslip Template in Word

Open Microsoft Word and create a new document. Design your payslip layout with placeholders.

Example Layout:

Pay Slip

ABC Industries Ltd

ABC Road Dhaka-1000

Amount in Word:

Leave spaces where data will be merged. These will be replaced with Mail Merge fields.

Step 3: Start the Mail Merge in Word

1. Open a Blank MS Word
2. Go to Insert Tab
3. Click Insert Table
4. A popup Window Appear
5. Select Number of Column 1 & Number of Row (As per your requirement) & Press Ok Button
6. Now Copy the Pay Slip Template & Paste here
7. Go to Mailings tab in Word.
8. Click Start Mail Merge
9. Click Labels…..
10. Update Labels
11. Select Recipients
12. Choose Use an existing list
13. Browse and select your Excel file
14. Select the appropriate worksheet
15. Click OK.

✅ Now Word will connect to employee data.

Step 4: Insert Merge Fields into the Payslip

Now replace the placeholders in your template with actual Merge Fields:

1. Click your cursor where you want to insert data (e.g., after “Employee Name:”).
2. Go to the Mailings tab > click Insert Merge Field.
3. Select the appropriate field (like Name, Basic_Salary, etc.)
4. Repeat this for all placeholders.
5. Update Labels

Step 5: Finish & Merge

• Click Finish & Merge
• Edit Individual Documents.
• Word will create a new document with all payslips.

Step 6: Save & Reuse Your Template

Save your Word document as a template for future months. You can simply update the Excel data next month and repeat the steps from Step 3.

Common Issues and Fixes

Conclusion

With just a few simple steps, you can automate the creation of employee payslips using Mail Merge—saving time, reducing errors, and maintaining professionalism. Whether you’re part of a small business or a growing HR team, this method will streamline your payroll communication.

✅ Summary Checklist

• Prepare structured Excel sheet
• Design Word payslip layout
• Link Excel via Mail Merge
• Insert merge fields
• Preview, print or email
• Save template for future use