The payroll sheet: the core document every Bulgarian company with staff needs to understand

What a payroll sheet is, and why it is a core accounting document

A payroll sheet (in Bulgarian, ведомост за заплати) is a monthly document that summarizes every employee's pay for a given month. Just as an invoice is the core document for a sale, the payroll sheet is the core document for labor cost: your accountant books it every month, and it is the first thing the NRA (Bulgaria's National Revenue Agency, the body that administers taxes and social contributions) asks for when reviewing an employer's payroll.

• For every employee, the sheet shows the gross salary, the amount set out in the employment contract, before any deductions.
• It shows the employee's own share of the mandatory social and health contributions, withheld from that gross figure.
• It shows the income tax withheld, informally called ДОД (an older term still used in payroll practice for the personal income tax under Bulgaria's Personal Income Tax Act, withheld at a flat rate from every salary).
• It shows net pay, the amount that actually lands in the employee's bank account.

For a small company with two, three, or five employees, the payroll sheet matters just as much as it does for a large one. It is the document the monthly bookkeeping and the annual financial statement both build on.

Payslip vs. payroll sheet: one employee's record vs. the company's full record

The two documents are often confused, but they serve different purposes. The payroll sheet is an internal, aggregated document: one row per employee, for the whole team, for a given month. The payslip is the individual document each employee receives personally.

• The payslip contains the same figures as that employee's row on the payroll sheet: gross pay, contributions, income tax, net pay, but shown for one person only.
• Employees are entitled to a payslip every month, usually issued alongside payment, whether salaries are paid by bank transfer or in cash.
• The payroll sheet stays an internal company document that the accountant keeps and books. It is not handed out to individual employees, precisely because it holds everyone's data at once.
• In an NRA or labor inspection review, the payroll sheet is the document that proves what was booked matches the employment contracts and the filings made.

For a small-company owner, the practical rule is simple: the payslip is for the employee, the payroll sheet is for the books.

What comes out of gross pay: social contributions and income tax

The path from gross to net pay runs through two deductions, both borne by the employee.

• Social and health contributions: mandatory contributions to state pension insurance, health insurance, and supplementary pension insurance are split between employee and employer in proportions set by law, with the exact rates and the minimum and maximum insurable income set each year. The employee's share is withheld from their gross salary.
• Income tax, informally ДОД: after the employee's contributions are deducted, the remainder is taxed at a single flat rate of 10 percent. This is a payroll withholding tax that the employer calculates, withholds, and remits on the employee's behalf every month.
• Net pay is what remains after both deductions: gross salary, minus the employee's share of contributions, minus the withholding tax.

Those three figures, gross, deductions, and net, sit on every row of the payroll sheet and on every payslip. As an owner without an accounting background, it is enough to remember that sequence, and to check the current year's exact rates and insurable income thresholds with an accountant.

The employer's own contribution share: a cost that never shows up in net pay

Besides the share withheld from the employee, the employer pays its own share of the social contributions, entirely out of its own pocket. It does not reduce the employee's net pay, but it does increase the real cost of employing that person.

• The employer's share is calculated on the same gross salary and, by law, is the larger of the two shares, employee and employer do not split contributions evenly.
• This amount is not a deduction from the employee's pay, it is a separate company cost recorded on the payroll sheet alongside the gross salary.
• The true monthly cost of an employee to a small company is gross salary plus the employer's own contribution share, not just the gross figure written in the employment contract.

Owners budgeting for a new hire often miss exactly this step: the true cost to the company is always higher than the gross salary quoted in the job listing.

The monthly obligations around the payroll sheet: payments and NRA filings

Preparing the payroll sheet is only the first step. Every month it triggers a handful of concrete obligations for the company.

• Paying net salaries to employees, usually on a date set out in the company's internal pay rules or in the employment contracts.
• Remitting to the NRA the withheld social contributions, both the employee's and the employer's share, together with the withheld income tax.
• Filing Declaration form 1 (Декларация обр. 1), which reports individual data for each insured employee: income, insurable income, and days under insurance.
• Filing Declaration form 6 (Декларация обр. 6), which aggregates the contributions due and the withholding tax for the whole team.
• Both declarations, together with paying the contributions and the tax, are typically due around the 25th of the month following the one the salary relates to. Always confirm the exact deadlines for the current year with an accountant, since the NRA periodically fine-tunes them.

Because payments and filings are tied to the payroll sheet line by line, it is the first document the NRA reconciles in any payroll review, even for a company with just two employees.

The payroll sheet sits at the core of the books for any company with staff

For a small company with a handful of employees, the payroll sheet is not paperwork reserved for large enterprises, it needs to be accurate from the very first hire: a mistake in the deductions or a late filing costs a fine far faster than a mistake on an ordinary invoice.

Useful next reads:

How an accounting expert can run your team's payroll and contributions
How tax filing will work with FreeMe.bg
Setting up a company in Bulgaria: what to plan for from day one
The owner's own social contributions: what you owe separately from your team's payroll

FreeMe.bg keeps your small company's books in one place, including the documents tied to your team's payroll: with the Payroll module we calculate the payroll, issue the payslips and file declarations form 1 and 6. Log in with your Google account and leave the spreadsheets behind.