Paystubs: A Guide

Whether you are creating, distributing, receiving, or storing a paystub, we can all agree that paystubs are an important aspect of working life. Paystubs will include a variety of important information regarding your salary, mandatory tax deductions, and other details, depending on where you live and work.

Payroll software will generally make the perfect paystub for each employee, providing the information has been entered correctly. A paystub generator can be used for any companies that still manually calculate payroll too.

Company Obligations

Payroll processing is an essential and mandatory part of each business’ weekly or monthly tasks. Receiving a paystub is a legal right for employees in most industries. However, you do not need to physically make paystubs with a paystub maker to satisfy the law. Companies can generate a pay stub which can be emailed to their staff or uploaded to an online system that employees have access to.

In order to create a paystub, the company will need to ensure that they collect the right data from new employees when they begin working for the company. Completing the basic checks before putting through the first payroll will avoid unnecessary amendments and stress for the employee if anything is incorrect.

If you are unsure of the law surrounding paystubs in the state you operate in, you should investigate this before you create a paystub for any of your employees. Using a paystub creator that allows you to include the state you operate in is one way to ensure you remain compliant with all state and federal laws.

It is also important that your company retains a copy of each paystub that you provide to employees for audit purposes. Your Human Resources department should retain pay details for each employee for a set period of time. If this period is not governed by state or federal law, then an agreed retention period should be written into your HR policies.

Paystubs also allow companies and employees to check employment history. Retaining information about pay for each of your staff will enable your company to provide employment history on request. This could be needed by your employee’s next employer or by the employee themselves after leaving, so it is important to retain for a period after the employee leaves your company.

Employee Obligations

As an employee, you are obliged to give your employer truthful information to enable them to generate an accurate paystub for you. You should ensure that you provide all of your information as quickly as possible in order to be paid on time.

How long to keep a pay stub is up to you. General advice is that you should keep them for one year and until all of your taxes have been filed and agreed upon. However, if you need them for another reason or for a longer period, there is nothing to say you have to destroy them after a set period.

You can use our website if you need more general advice. We have a range of data you can check out for more info.