In the old days, employees received an actual check on payday that they would deposit at the bank. As electronic banking and direct deposit became mainstream, the venerable paycheck fell by the wayside. Businesses embraced paperless payroll as a cost-cutting measure because printing is expensive.
When you got your check, though, you also got a pay stub filled with important information. Businesses must still provide you with that information, so they turned to electronic pay stubs. So, what is an electronic pay stub?
Keep reading and we’ll cover the things you should know about them.
What Goes On It?
A typical pay stub — electronic or paper — provides you with salary and tax information. For example, you’ll see how much you made for the pay period and how much for the year-to-date.
The stub will detail the state and federal taxes you paid for both the current pay period and year-to-date.
Some pay stubs provide other information.
Let’s say you get your health insurance through your employer. Some employers will include the premium deducted from your pay on the stub.
If your employer offers a retirement plan, your pay stub might list several things, including:
- Your contribution for the pay period
- Your employer’s contribution for the pay period
- Your cumulative contribution
- Your employer’s cumulative contribution
- The current value of your retirement account
The level of detail depends entirely on your employer and the benefits they offer.
How Is It Delivered?
Many companies will store your pay stub documents on their servers. You can access them by logging into your employee account. Storing the documents on their servers lets them maintain security around sensitive personal and financial information.
For companies that use an in-house email client, they will sometimes deliver your pay stub through internal emails. This approach proves less popular among employers because people often prove lax about keeping email credentials secure.
How Is It Made?
Businesses can take advantage of a few different options for creating digital pay stubs. The company can develop its own form and manually enter data. They can also build a form that connects with their bookkeeping program and auto-fills the form.
Companies can simply outsource the entire payroll process to a payroll processing service. The service then uses its own process for paystub creation.
Your employer can also use a standalone or online program for creating pay stubs, such as PayStubCreator.
Parting Thoughts on Electronic Pay Stubs
Electronic pay stubs serve precisely the same functions as the old paper pay stubs.
They give you a snapshot of your earning for the pay period and the year. They let you know what you pay in taxes. Some even keep you up to date on your insurance premiums and retirement accounts, if you get those through your employer.
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