Pay Stub Generator

What a compliant pay stub typically shows

Whatever your state requires, a well-formed U.S. pay stub is built from the same core blocks. Most states that regulate stubs expect the following, and the strictest states expect all of it:

• Employee name — and in stricter states such as California, the last four digits of the Social Security number or an employee ID number.
• Employer legal name and address — the entity actually paying the wages, not a trade name alone.
• Pay period start and end dates, plus the pay date the wages were issued.
• Total hours worked for non-exempt (hourly) employees, and the hourly or piece rate(s) that apply.
• Gross wages — total earnings for the period before any withholding.
• All deductions, itemized by purpose and amount: federal income tax, Social Security (FICA/OASDI), Medicare, state income tax, state disability, garnishments, benefits and any others.
• Net wages — the actual take-home pay after every deduction.
• Year-to-date (YTD) running totals for earnings, taxes and deductions, so the employee can track cumulative figures across the year.

State awareness: access states, printed-stub states, and the states that require nothing

This is where most generic pay stub tools fall short, and where a state-aware approach matters. Because there is no national rule, the obligation to provide a stub — and the format it must take — is set state by state. Payroll professionals usually sort the states into a few buckets:

• Access states — the employer must make wage information available to the employee, but it can be electronic; a paper copy is not strictly required.
• Access/print (opt-out) states — statements can be electronic by default, but the employer must let the employee opt into a printed stub or provide a way to print one.
• Printed-stub states — the employee must receive an actual written or printed statement each pay period.
• No-requirement states — roughly nine states impose no pay-stub obligation at all: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, South Dakota and Tennessee. (Illinois moved the other way and began requiring pay stubs on 1 January 2025.)
• Because the map keeps changing, always confirm your own state — select your work state on the generator and use the state field, then verify against your state labor department before relying on the stub for compliance.

How to create and read a pay stub, step by step

1. Enter the employer details — legal company name, address and, for U.S. payroll records, the Employer Identification Number (EIN) issued by the IRS.
2. Enter the employee details — full name, and where your state requires it (e.g., California), the last four of the SSN or an employee ID; set the work state so the right fields surface.
3. Set the pay period — the start and end dates, the pay date, and the check number if you issue physical checks.
4. Add the earnings — regular pay with hours and rate, plus overtime, bonuses or other pay; the gross wage total builds automatically.
5. Add the deductions — federal income tax, Social Security, Medicare, state income tax and any benefits or garnishments; net pay is gross minus total deductions.
6. Review the YTD column, confirm every line, then download the stub as a PDF or PNG. To sanity-check the withholding, run the numbers through our take-home pay calculator.

Every line explained

Reading a stub is easier once you know what each line means and where the number comes from:

• Gross pay — everything you earned in the period before withholding: regular hours × rate, plus overtime, bonuses and commissions.
• Federal income tax — withheld based on your Form W-4 and the IRS withholding tables in IRS Publication 15-T; it is a prepayment toward your annual federal tax bill, not a flat rate.
• Social Security (FICA/OASDI) — a flat 6.2% of wages up to the annual Social Security wage base; the employer matches another 6.2%. See IRS Topic No. 751 on Social Security and Medicare rates.
• Medicare — a flat 1.45% of all wages with no wage cap; the employer matches 1.45%, and an Additional Medicare Tax of 0.9% applies to high earners above a threshold.
• State income tax — withheld according to your state; some states have no income tax at all, so this line may be zero.
• Year-to-date (YTD) — the cumulative total of each earning, tax and deduction from the first pay period of the year through this one; it is what lenders and tax filers rely on.
• Net pay — your take-home: gross pay minus every tax and deduction. This is the amount deposited or paid by check.

Mandatory-by-state versus optional fields

Some items are legally required in stricter states, while others are simply good practice. Knowing the difference keeps a stub compliant without cluttering it.

• Mandatory in stricter states — employee name, employer legal name and address, pay-period dates, itemized deductions, gross and net wages, and hours and rates for hourly workers.
• Mandatory only in specific states — the last four of the SSN or an employee ID (California and others), an all-rates-and-hours breakdown when multiple pay rates apply, accrued paid sick leave balances, and state-specific items such as California SDI (State Disability Insurance).
• Optional but recommended — YTD accumulators, the check number, and the employer EIN; these are not universally required but make a stub far more useful for records and proof of income.
• Not required anywhere federally — because the FLSA sets no stub format, any "federal template" is a convention, not a legal standard.

The local specifics most generators leave out

One-size-fits-all pay stub makers tend to produce a generic national template and skip the details that actually matter for U.S. compliance. The specifics worth getting right include:

• YTD accumulators — running year-to-date totals for earnings, each tax and each deduction, which many bare templates omit but lenders and the IRS expect.
• Employer EIN — the IRS-issued Employer Identification Number that ties the stub to a real payroll entity.
• Check number — the identifier for the physical check or direct-deposit advice, useful for reconciliation.
• State-specific §226 fields — for California, the last four of the SSN or employee ID, the full legal name and address of the employer, all applicable hourly rates with the corresponding hours, and accrued sick leave — the exact categories in California Labor Code §226.

Legitimate uses — and why fake pay stubs are illegal

A pay stub generator has plenty of honest, everyday uses. Small employers and household employers use one to issue proper itemized statements when they do not run full payroll software. Self-employed people and independent contractors use one to document their own earnings in a clean, standard format. Individuals use stubs as proof of income for a rental application, a loan or a mortgage.

What is never acceptable is fabricating figures. Creating a pay stub that shows income you did not earn — to qualify for a loan, an apartment or a benefit — is fraud. Falsifying financial documents can carry serious civil and criminal consequences, and lenders routinely verify stubs against tax records. Use this tool to record real wages accurately, not to invent them.