Mandatory Pay Register: How Do You Prepare It?

Summary

All companies, regardless of their size and even if they have only one employee, are required to keep a pay register (registro retributivo, the “salary register” or registro salarial) containing the average values of the salaries, salary supplements, and non-salary payments of their workforce, broken down by sex and distributed by professional groups, professional categories, or jobs that are equal or of equal value.[1] The obligation arises from Article 28.2 of the Workers’ Statute (Estatuto de los Trabajadores), and its content is developed by Royal Decree 902/2020 on equal pay for women and men, applicable since April 14, 2021.[2] In this note we explain who must keep it, what it must contain, how to prepare it, and what the consequences of failing to do so are. At the end we add the status, as of November 2026, of Directive (EU) 2023/970 on pay transparency, whose transposition deadline expired on June 7, 2026, without Spain having yet incorporated it into its legal system.

1. What the pay register is and who is required to keep it

The pay register is an internal company document that records, separated by sex, the average values of what the people who make up the company actually receive. Its purpose is to make pay differences between women and men visible and to make it possible to detect those that are not based on objective grounds, in application of the principle of equal pay for work of equal value set out in Article 28.1 of the Workers’ Statute.

The obligation applies to all companies, whatever their number of employees, and the register must include the entire workforce, including managerial staff and senior executives.[3] Having an equality plan (plan de igualdad) is not enough: the register is a stand-alone obligation that also applies to small companies that are not required to negotiate a plan.

2. What it must contain

2.1. General content

The register must show, broken down by sex, the arithmetic mean and the median of what was actually received for each of the following items in each professional group, professional category, level, position, or any other applicable classification system:[4]

• base salary;
• each of the salary supplements, separately;
• each of the non-salary payments, also separately.

The reference period is, as a general rule, the calendar year, and the register must be amended whenever there is a substantial change in any of its elements. To standardize the data for those who work part-time or have not been with the company for the whole year, it is advisable to calculate the amounts on a full-time-equivalent and annualized basis, as the official tool does.

2.2. Companies required to carry out a pay audit

Companies required to have an equality plan, namely those with fifty or more employees, must include a pay audit (auditoría retributiva) in it.[5] Their register has two special features:[6]

• it must also show the arithmetic means and medians of the groupings of jobs of equal value resulting from the job evaluation, even if they belong to different sections of the professional classification;
• where the arithmetic mean or the median of the total pay of persons of one sex exceeds that of the other by twenty-five percent or more, it must include a justification that this difference is due to reasons unrelated to sex.[7]

Job evaluation may be carried out using the procedure and tool approved by Order PCM/1047/2022.[8]

3. How to prepare it step by step

1. Gather the calendar-year data for each employee: sex, professional group or category, position, working hours, days of employment, and all payments received, separating base salary, each supplement, and each non-salary payment.
2. Normalize the amounts: convert them to full-time and full-year equivalents so that the figures are comparable.
3. Calculate the arithmetic mean and the median of each item by sex and for each group, category, level, or position, as well as the percentage difference between women and men.
4. Consult the employees’ legal representatives, if any, at least ten days before preparing the register and each time it is amended.[9]
5. Justify the differences: in companies subject to a pay audit, document the justification when the difference reaches 25%; in all companies, it is advisable to explain the objective causes of any significant difference.
6. Keep it and update it every year and whenever the pay structure or the workforce changes substantially.

The Ministry of Labor and Social Economy and the Ministry of Equality provide on their websites a pay register tool in spreadsheet format; its use is voluntary, but it makes it easier to meet the formal requirements. On how to approach the register, see also our guide to complying with the mandatory salary register.

4. Access by employees and their representatives

Employees are entitled to access their company’s pay register through the workers’ legal representatives, who are entitled to know its full content.[10] Where the company has no legal representatives, an employee who requests access will receive only the percentage differences between the average pay of women and men, broken down by the nature of the pay and the applicable classification system.

5. Consequences of non-compliance

Failing to keep the register, or keeping it without the required content, may be classified as a serious infringement for breach of the obligations relating to equality plans and measures, punishable by a fine of €751 to €7,500.[11] If the pay differences stem from sex-based discrimination, the conduct constitutes a very serious infringement, punishable by a fine of €7,501 to €225,018, in addition to the ancillary consequences provided for by law.[12] The register is also relevant evidence in any equal pay claim: not having one makes it harder for the company to prove that the differences are based on objective grounds.

6. Update as of November 2026: Directive (EU) 2023/970 on pay transparency

Status as of November 9, 2026. Directive (EU) 2023/970, of May 10, 2023, to strengthen the application of the principle of equal pay between men and women through pay transparency measures, had to be transposed by June 7, 2026, at the latest.[13] As of the date of this update, no legislation transposing it has been published in the Official State Gazette (BOE): Article 28 of the Workers’ Statute retains the wording given by Royal Decree-Law 6/2019, and Royal Decree 902/2020 retains its original text. The obligations described in the preceding sections therefore remain fully in force on their current terms.

The Ministry of Labor and Social Economy held a prior public consultation on the transposition between April 24 and May 8, 2026, and has published a draft royal decree, dated August 3, 2026, that would amend Royal Decree 902/2020 and expressly states that it transposes the Directive only partially.[14] Its main new features include the following:

• the pay register of all companies would have to show the arithmetic mean and the median, both on an annual basis and per hour worked;
• companies would have to inform their workforce of the criteria they use to set pay and pay levels and, in the case of companies with fifty or more employees, of the criteria for pay progression;
• each employee could request and receive in writing, within a maximum of two months, information on their individual pay and on the average pay, broken down by sex, of those performing the same work or work of equal value;
• companies with fifty or more employees that are subject to a pay audit would have to report their gender pay gap indicators to a new Commission for Monitoring Pay Transparency (Comisión para el seguimiento de la transparencia retributiva): annually for those with 250 or more employees and every three years for those with 50 to 249, for the first time before June 7, 2027, in the case of those with 150 or more, and before June 7, 2031, in the case of those with 50 to 149.

The draft has not yet been approved by the Council of Ministers, and its content may change. Moreover, some aspects of the Directive are not included in it, such as information on starting pay or its range prior to hiring and the prohibition on asking candidates about their pay history, or the joint pay assessment where the gap in a category reaches 5% without objective justification. This is because, according to the draft’s impact report, it covers only those provisions of the Directive that can be transposed by means of a regulation; the remaining provisions will foreseeably require legislation with the rank of law. Until it is transposed, the Directive does not directly impose obligations on private companies, but the courts must interpret Spanish legislation in light of it.

We recommend that companies review their pay register now, incorporate the median and the hourly calculation, document their pay and progression criteria, and, in the case of companies with fifty or more employees, prepare the calculation of the pay gap indicators ahead of the first report scheduled for 2027.

This note is for information purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. If you would like us to review your company’s pay register, contact us.