How to Get Free Pay Stubs Online

Pay stubs are a critical document in the business world. Those employed usually get theirs when they receive their salary. But for independent professionals, there’s no one to issue them a check stub, and so, they should create their own as proof of income.

If you’re such a worker, this guide will fill you in on how to get free pay stubs online.

1. Choose a pay stub generator

There are hundreds of free online pay stub generators. If you don’t know what you’re after, you may end up spending a lot of time selecting one that suits you best. 

Here are some of the factors you ought to consider when choosing a cloud-based paycheck stub maker:

• Design: Check stubs come in numerous designs. You’ll surely be spoilt for choice when you embark on a search for the best. You’d want to choose a professional and straightforward look, bearing in mind that you’ll use it for official purposes. Avoid any with fancy font styles, which isn’t characteristic of formal records. In the same sense, ensure the layout is easy to interpret so that anyone looking at it doesn’t get confused.

• User Interface: An online pay stub maker should be easy to use. You should be able to generate the final copy within a few minutes. If you realize you’re taking more than five minutes to fill it, you might be dealing with complex software. Save yourself such trouble by going for the straightforward ones.

• Archiving capability: As this is something you’ll be doing every other week or month, it’s best to choose an app that automatically archives any check stub you create. This way, you can download and print a copy whenever you need to. Such backups are also helpful when you lose originally printed copies.

• Built-in calculator: As much as you may know simple computations, like subtractions, summations, multiplications, and percentages, you’d want a pay stub app that does that for you. After all, that’s the essence of a generator; less work on your end. So, go for those that only require you to fill in the essential details and then automatically handle the several calculations. By using such, you’ll significantly reduce the likelihood of making errors.

• Instant download: Make sure you choose a paycheck stub app that immediately emails you the final copy once you’re done. With the current technological advancements, it isn’t logical to wait for several hours for something as straightforward as this file.

• Terms and conditions: Some pay stub makers are 100% free, and you can use them unlimited times without any strings attached. However, some offer the free version for only a limited period, after which you must purchase the full version to continue using the app. Also, others include a conspicuous brand watermark on the documents you create for free. So, select the tool that best suits your budget.

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2. Fill in the details

Once you settle on a particular online pay stub maker, it’s now time to fill in the required details. Here are some of the information you’ll have to provide:

• Company information: If you work for a specific company, this is where you fill in the company name, physical address, postal address, and employer identification number. But if it’s your business, you fill in your business name, location, and address.

• Logo: Next to the section with company information, you’d want to include your logo. You understand that ‘a logo says everything without saying a word.’ It expresses a series of virtues, portrays a set of values, triggers a connection between a brand and clients, and builds a relationship between a business and its friends, fans, allies, partners, champions, and critics. In other words, a logo is a critical element of professionality, and you shouldn’t leave it out when creating your pay stub. 

• Employee information: The employee herein refers to the recipient of the funds. It’s quite straightforward to grasp it when you’re employed by someone else or an organization. If you’re self-employed, you’re the employee and not the workers you might have contracted to help you run the business. So, fill in your first, middle, and last name, ID number, and residential address.

• Pay schedule: Indicate whether you’re paid weekly, biweekly, monthly, and so on.

• Pay period: Specify the extent of time you worked so as to receive the payment in question. And that’s as simple as quoting the start date to end date, for instance, August 1, 2020, to August 15, 2020.

• Gross Earnings: This refers to the total amount of money you get from clients before subjecting it to any deduction or withholding. If you get a fixed-rate pay, you can type the whole amount as it is. But if you’re paid on an hourly basis, you want to further break it down further by specifying the total number of hours worked, the hourly rate, and finally, the product of the two.

• Net Pay: You get this figure by subtracting all the deductions from the gross pay, and that’s the amount of money you take home. 

• Year-to-date (YTD): For each of the above monetary entries, you can include the cumulative amounts you’ve paid from the beginning of the year to the current date. If you’ve been using the same pay stub generator since the year started, the YTD fields should automatically get filled once you fill in the current fields.

• Deductions: If wishes were horses, you’d be taking home the gross pay as intact as it is. But the law demands that you pay a small percentage of your income to the government to help them run projects that eventually benefit you, such as building roads, disaster management, and running homes for the aged. 

Here are some of the most common deductions:

• Federal income tax: First and foremost is the tax to the federal government. It depends on your level of income. For instance, if you’re self-employed, the current tax rate is 15.3%. This comprises 12.4% social security tax and 2.9% Medicare tax. As mentioned earlier, a good pay stub generator should have pre-fed formulae that automatically compute the tax amounts based on the updated rates. If you’re employed, you fall under any of the following tax brackets: 10%, 12%, 22%, 24%, 32%, 35%, and 37%. These are the rates for 2021. Do note that they change from year to year. The rates depend on your annual income range. Generally, the more you earn, the higher the taxes you pay, and vice versa is true. 

• State income tax: If your state levies additional tax on top of the federal income tax, indicate the percentage accordingly. For example, if you live in California and you earn USD$50,000 in 2021, you’ll have to pay 6% of your earnings as state income tax. 

• Social security tax: This is also known as the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) tax. The 2021 rate is 6.2% for employees, with the employer topping up with another 6.2%, to make a total of 12.4%. If you’re self-employed, you’ll first pay the 12.4% and then file for a refund of half the amount.

• Individual Retirement Account (IRA): If you’ve started saving for retirement through an IRA, including the premium you pay under the deductions section.

• Others: Aside from the above deductions, you can have others, such as state unemployment tax (SUTA), federal unemployment tax (FUTA), mortgage premiums, student loan interest, health insurance, and union dues, among several others. If the pay stub generator you use doesn’t have a specific field for any of these deductions, you can include them under the ‘additional deductions’ tab.

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3. Review and print or download

Having filled in all the details, the next step is to preview your pay stub. Closely scrutinize the entries and sample random entries to confirm their accuracy by using a calculator. Make sure that every detail is captured correctly. If anything is missing, return to the editor and correct it immediately.

Also read: Ways in Which You Can Tell If Your Pay Stub Is Fake

Once everything looks good, you can directly print the pay stub, send it to your email inbox, or download it to your PC. Different check stub makers have different export options, so check what the app offers. You’d want to download your paycheck stubs as PDF files because of the versatility of this storage format. You can view it on virtually every device and also send it to others using various file-sharing apps. 

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Get free pay stubs online

As you can see from the comprehensive guide above, getting free pay stubs online is quite easy. First and foremost, choose a check stub generator that fits your needs and preferences. Next, fill in all the essential details. After that, review the final document and amend where necessary. Finally, print the copy, send it to your email, or download it to your PC. 

It will help if you have an online backup of every pay stub you create so that you can quickly retrieve a copy when you need one. This way, you’ll be able to confidently present your proof of income wherever it’s required, be it to a bank, insurance firm, credit card company, or landlord.