Pay Stub — Payroll Definition
The itemized statement issued with a paycheck showing gross pay, every deduction, and net pay for one pay period.
The itemized statement issued with a paycheck showing gross pay, every deduction, and net pay for one pay period.
A pay stub is the document that explains a paycheck. It itemizes what you earned for the pay period, every tax and deduction taken out of it, and the net amount paid, almost always alongside year-to-date totals for the same lines. When wages arrive by direct deposit the stub is the record of the payment rather than the payment itself. It goes by several names — check stub, paycheck stub, payslip, earnings statement, wage statement, or pay advice — and it may be paper or electronic. Federal law requires employers to keep accurate payroll records but does not itself require handing an employee a stub; the requirement to furnish or provide access to one comes from state pay-statement laws, which vary.
Example: Pay period 03/01–03/14, gross $2,000.00, deductions $600.00, net pay $1,400.00
What a Pay Stub Contains
A complete stub carries five blocks. Identification: employer name and address, often the EIN, plus the employee name and an employee ID or masked Social Security number. Period: pay period start and end dates and the pay date. Earnings: hours and rate for hourly workers, then each earnings type — regular, overtime, holiday, PTO, bonus, commission, shift differential — totaling to gross pay. Withholdings and deductions: federal income tax, state and local income tax, Social Security and Medicare, then pre-tax items such as 401(k), medical, dental, HSA, and FSA, and after-tax items such as Roth contributions, union dues, and garnishments. Totals: net pay, plus a year-to-date column beside nearly every line and sometimes a PTO balance.
Other Names for a Pay Stub
The same document is called a check stub or paycheck stub when it is physically attached to a printed check, a payslip or pay slip in British and international usage, an earnings statement or statement of earnings by many payroll providers, and a wage statement in the state laws that regulate it — California's Labor Code section 226 is the best-known example. Accounting systems may label it a pay advice or remittance advice. All refer to the itemized breakdown accompanying a payment of wages, not to the payment itself.
Pay Stub Rules Vary by State
The Fair Labor Standards Act requires employers to keep accurate records of hours and wages but does not require giving the employee a statement, so the rules come from the states. Broadly there are four groups: states with no pay-statement requirement; "access" states, where a stub must be made available in some form; "access/print" states, where an electronic stub is fine only if the employee can print it; and opt-out or opt-in states, where an employer must have employee consent before going paperless. Several states also spell out the specific data points a statement must list. Because both the requirement and its contents differ, check your own state's labor department rather than assuming a national standard.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What does a pay stub show?
- The pay period and pay date, gross pay broken into earnings types such as regular, overtime, and bonus, each tax withheld (federal, state, local, Social Security, Medicare), each pre-tax and after-tax deduction, the resulting net pay, and year-to-date totals for those same lines.
- Is a pay stub the same as a paycheck?
- No. The paycheck or direct deposit is the payment; the pay stub is the itemized record explaining how that amount was calculated. With direct deposit there is no check at all, only a stub, delivered on paper or through a payroll portal.
- What is another name for a pay stub?
- Check stub, paycheck stub, payslip, earnings statement, statement of earnings, wage statement, and pay advice all refer to the same document. State labor laws usually call it a wage statement or an itemized pay statement.
- Are employers required to provide pay stubs?
- Federal law requires employers to keep accurate wage records but does not by itself require issuing a stub to the employee. Most states do require one — some only that it be made accessible, some that it be printable, some that specific fields appear — and a few have no requirement, so the answer depends on your state.
- How long should I keep my pay stubs?
- A common practice is to keep them until you have reconciled the final stub of the year against your W-2, then keep the year-end stub with your tax records. Employers have their own separate retention obligations under federal and state recordkeeping rules.