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By Gary Bordeaux
Special to the Financial Independence Hub
Both employees and employers can benefit from keeping track of how much money goes into each paycheck. For employers, it’s important to know for business tax reasons. Employees, while also needing to know how much they make for tax reasons, may also need to provide their pay stubs when signing up for government benefits, when renting an apartment, or for a number of other reasons. However, sometimes it can be hard to keep track of paper pay stubs; that’s where mobile pay stubs come in.
What are Pay Stubs?
Before we get into the benefits of using mobile pay stubs, let’s first discuss what a pay stub actually is. When it comes to people who get paper paychecks, the pay stub will be attached to the paycheck.
For those who get direct deposit paychecks, paystubs can be a little harder to find. The employee may have a website they can check to see their pay stubs. If that is not possible, employees may need to contact the payroll department directly to get printouts or computer files of their paystubs.
What are Pay Stubs used for?
What makes paystubs so important? Why do they need to be kept track of? To put it simply, pay stubs are used as a record of how much an employee makes. As mentioned earlier, it’s important to keep track of pay stubs in order to keep track of income or expenses (based on whether it is the employee or employer looking at pay stubs). Since people usually cash their checks right away, keeping the pay stubs is a great way to keep a record of how much they make.
What information do paystubs have on them? A paycheck only shows the net pay (what a person makes after taxes, insurance, and other items are taken out). However, a pay stub will show an itemized list of earnings and deductions. This includes the gross pay, taxes, insurance, retirement savings, and the net (take-home) pay.
Why use Mobile Pay Stubs?
If paychecks come with a pay stub attached, why should people who get paper checks bother with mobile pay stubs? Unless you’re extremely careful with your pay stubs, they can be easy to lose.
If a person gets paid bi-weekly, then over the course of a year they will earn over twenty paychecks, which is a lot of paperwork to keep track of. Using mobile paystubs can keep track of things digitally, which helps.
For people who use direct deposit, using mobile pay stubs may be easier to keep track of than trying to get records from payroll or finding them online. By using a pay stub template online, employees can make copies of their own paystubs by knowing how much they make per hour and what their deductions are.
Employers can also use mobile pay stubs as a way to keep track of their employee’s earnings each pay period. It’s just another way to digitally keep track of finances.
How do I use them?
One of the easiest ways to use mobile pay stubs is to use an online pay stub template like this one. To make a pay stub, here’s what you need to know:
- The state you live in
- Your marital status
- How often you are paid
- How many hours you worked (per pay period)
- How much you are paid per hour
- Exemptions
Once you have all these things, plug in the numbers and a pay stub will be generated for you! This can be used to not only show the amount earned for one pay period, but the year to date earnings (if the amount earned each pay period is the same each time).
All in all, using mobile pay stubs are a great way of keeping track of earnings digitally. Whether you’re an employee or employer looking to have more digital files and less paper to keep track of, try out mobile pay stubs to see if they’re right for your personal finances or business.
Gary Bordeaux is a real estate professional and company owner based in Portland, Maine. As a retired real estate agent, he spends his time and energy investing, and writing about what he has learned. His goal is to help entrepreneurs and small business owners achieve their full potential.
