New HR Executive Struggling with Salary Sheet Format and Calculation – Need Guidance!

I have recently joined an IT company as an HR executive. I am from a recruitment background, so I don't have deep knowledge of HR generalist profiles. The problem is that I have to prepare a salary sheet for the month of January 2014. Therefore, I need a salary sheet format that includes a working hour column, as our company calculates salary based on the working hours in a month.

Another issue is that it is a five-day working week, so I am confused about whether to calculate the salary based on a 30-day, 26-day, or 22-day month. Please help me as I am facing this problem.

Regards, Nish

Information Needed for Payroll Advice

Please try to update the following information so that somebody can give the best advice:

1. Total number of employees.
2. How do you get the number of worked days? Do you take calendar days worked or use some formula (e.g., Total hours worked / 9)?
3. Salary shall always be payable against the wage period—typically, this shall be calendar month-based (Jan, Feb, Mar... Dec).
4. If there are any loss of pay days, then you need to deduct the corresponding number of days' salary.
5. How do you currently process payroll—manually using Excel or using any software?