Fresh on the Job: What Is a Pay Stub (and Why You Need It)?

Are you a first-time employee? It can be so difficult to remember all of the information you are given.

You may be wondering… what is a pay stub? How does it work? Why do you need that?

Luckily, it isn’t all that complicated! Pay stubs are a great way to know how much you were paid, but also to get other information about your payments.

Keep reading to learn more about what pay stubs are and how they can be beneficial for you as an employee.

What Is a Pay Stub?

Jobs are difficult enough on their own without having to worry about other things, but payment is important for anyone. We need the money to live and survive in this world.

Whenever you get a job, you likely are going to hear the term pay stub because you will get one with your paycheck! 

Your pay stub is the place where you can get all of the information about your wages for a given period of time. It shows you how much you were paid, how much was deducted in taxes or otherwise, and the overall total of what you get to keep.

When someone cares about their finances, they should care about pay stubs as well.

Where to Get Pay Stubs

One of the easiest ways for an employer to provide pay stubs is by making them themselves. Finding a good quality paystub creator does not have to be difficult, but it is important to know what you need to add to a pay stub when creating one.

In short, the pay stub should include gross income, taxes or other deductions, and net pay. You also will obviously want to include employee name, pay period, employer contributions, and any information about direct deposit.

Getting pay stubs as an employee is simple because your employer will typically provide them with your paychecks.

This makes it easy to track earnings and know how much you make every pay period.

How Pay Stubs Can Be Helpful

Luckily, pay stubs are easy to understand once you can see one in person, so the next time you get paid you should take a look at your pay stub to see what it says. It likely is going to give you more information thank you think.

Pay stubs can be beneficial when it is time to do taxes, for example, because you can easily see how much money you made during each pay period. If you keep them all together, it makes the process so much easier.

Another way to use pay stubs to your advantage is if you notice that your bank statement is not matching up with your payment amount. Keeping pay stubs is a great way to prove you were supposed to get the amount you were owed! 

In the end, holding onto pay stubs is a smart move because it gives you the opportunity to be more in control of your finances for the future!

Using Your Pay Stubs

Now that you know more about pay stubs, you can answer your own questions! What is a pay stub? You tell us! 

Pay stubs are not difficult to understand once you know what they are for, what the information on them means, and how they can be useful.

If you’d like to get some more information on how a business managing payroll impacts your pay stubs, be sure to check out our blog post