Pay Stub Checker: Find Errors in Your Paycheck

What a Pay Stub Checker Actually Looks For

Your pay stub is a receipt. Some employers call it an earnings statement, but the job is the same. It shows what you earned in the pay period and what came out before the money reached you. A pay stub checker tests whether that receipt actually adds up.

Almost nobody stops to check a pay stub for errors. That’s a problem, because payroll mistakes rarely happen just once. A wrong setting repeats every pay period until someone notices.

This pay stub checker takes the figures printed on your stub and rebuilds the period from scratch. It then compares its version with what you were paid and flags each line that disagrees. You get the dollar difference, the likely reason, and a plain question for payroll.

Think of it as a paycheck audit, not a paycheck calculator. A calculator estimates your take home pay before payday. This tool checks a paycheck that already happened, using federal and state overtime rules plus the 2026 Social Security and Medicare figures.

How to Read Your Pay Stub Before You Start

Every payroll company prints stubs a little differently, and most of them love shorthand. Use this table to match common pay stub abbreviations to the right box.

Columns marked ER or Employer show what your employer paid on top of your wages, such as its share of FICA. That money never came out of your check, so leave it out.

Two numbers anchor everything. Gross pay is what you earned before deductions. Net pay is your take home pay, the amount that hit your bank account. Short on time? Start with those two and your hours. No hourly rate printed? Leave it blank and the tool works it out from your gross.

The Paycheck Errors That Happen Most Often

Most paycheck mistakes aren’t dramatic. Usually one payroll setting is slightly off, so the same few dollars go missing every week. If you suspect your paycheck is wrong, start with these patterns. Each one is something this tool checks.

• Overtime paid on the base rate when a bonus or shift differential should have raised it.
• Daily overtime ignored in states that count overtime by the day.
• Double time missing in California for days over 12 hours, or for hours past 8 on a seventh straight day of work.
• Social Security taken past the yearly cap by the same employer.
• A health premium set up as after tax when it should come out before FICA.
• Charges for uniforms, tools or a short till that drag your pay below the minimum wage.
• A salary too low for the overtime exemption, which can mean you’re owed overtime after all.
• Gross, net or year to date totals that simply don’t add up.

Why Time and a Half Isn’t Always Your Hourly Rate Times 1.5

This is where a lot of unpaid overtime hides. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, hours over 40 in a workweek are paid at one and a half times your regular rate of pay. That isn’t always your hourly rate. The regular rate is the pay you earned for the work that week, minus a few excluded types, divided by your hours.

So a bonus earned in an overtime week pushes the regular rate up, and every overtime hour should rise with it. Plenty of payroll setups miss this. The bonus sits on its own line and never touches the overtime calculation. Shift differentials and commissions work the same way.

A worked example of the overtime calculation

Say you earn $20 an hour. You work 45 hours in one workweek and pick up a $200 attendance bonus.

• Straight time for 45 hours is $900. Add the bonus and the week comes to $1,100.
• Your regular rate is $1,100 divided by 45, or about $24.44.
• The overtime premium is half that rate for each of the 5 extra hours, about $61.11.
• Correct pay for the week is $1,161.11.

Now compare a typical stub. It pays 40 hours at $20, 5 hours at $30 and the $200 bonus, for $1,150. You’re $11.11 short. Doesn’t sound like much, does it? Repeat that every week and it’s more than $570 a year.

Pay that goes into the regular rate, and pay that doesn’t

Federal rules include most pay you earn for the work itself. That covers attendance and production bonuses, safety incentives, commissions and shift differentials. A bonus promised ahead of time counts too, even when it’s paid later.

Some pay stays out. A truly discretionary bonus, where the employer decides whether to pay and how much near the end of the period, is excluded. So is a holiday gift that isn’t tied to hours or output. Holiday, vacation and sick pay for time you didn’t work stay out too, along with expense reimbursements. That’s why the tool keeps a separate Other earnings box.

Biweekly pay and the 40 hour workweek

This one trips people up. Federal overtime is counted one workweek at a time, and averaging two weeks isn’t allowed. Work 50 hours one week and 30 the next, and you’re still owed 10 hours of overtime, even though the total is exactly 80.

The tool can’t split a two week stub into separate workweeks. If your hours swing a lot, check each week against your own time records.

California Overtime and Other State Daily Rules

Federal law only looks at the 40 hour week. A handful of states also count overtime by the day. Pick one and the tool shows a box for your hours on each day of one week. It runs the state rule next to the federal one and uses whichever pays you more.

California’s seventh day rule catches a lot of people off guard. Work all seven days of one workweek and the first 8 hours on day seven are paid at time and a half, with anything past 8 at double time. Weekly totals don’t matter here. When all seven daily boxes have hours, the tool flags it.

Colorado has its own wrinkle. A shift longer than 12 hours in a row earns overtime even if it straddles two workdays, so check long overnight shifts by hand.

One long day can earn overtime even in a short week. A stub with no overtime line isn’t proof none was owed. If you leave both the overtime and daily boxes empty in these states, the tool will nudge you to fill in your days.

Some workers follow different rules, such as those on an approved alternative workweek in California or an agreed four day, ten hour schedule in Nevada. If that’s you, treat the daily result as the start of a question.

How to Check Social Security and Medicare on Your Paycheck

These two lines are pure arithmetic, which makes them easy to test. Together they’re called FICA taxes. On the stub, Social Security often appears as OASDI.

• Social Security is 6.2 percent of your wages, up to the 2026 wage base of $184,500. The most you can pay through one employer this year is $11,439. After that, the line should drop to zero until January.
• Medicare tax is 1.45 percent of all wages, with no cap. Once your wages from one employer pass $200,000 in the year, your employer must also withhold the 0.9 percent Additional Medicare Tax on the amount above that.

Your employer uses that $200,000 trigger no matter how you file. If your real threshold differs, say because you’re married filing jointly, it gets settled on your tax return.

Fill in the year to date boxes and the tool can spot Social Security that kept coming out after you crossed the cap. It also catches a year to date total already above $11,439. If one employer did that, payroll should refund the excess. Two employers in one year is a different story, because each withholds up to the cap. In that case you claim the extra as a credit when you file.

Pre tax deductions and which ones lower FICA

Not all pre tax deductions work the same way, and this is where many stubs go wrong.

• Health, dental and vision premiums, plus HSA and FSA money taken through a Section 125 cafeteria plan come out before Social Security and Medicare. They lower both.
• A traditional 401(k) or 403(b) lowers the wages used for federal income tax, but FICA still applies to that money.

That’s why W-2 Box 1 is often lower than Box 3 and Box 5. Is your Social Security line exactly 6.2 percent of your full gross, even though you pay a health premium? Then the premium may be set up as after tax by mistake. The tool spots that pattern and suggests what to ask.

Deductions That Push You Under the Minimum Wage

Some employers charge workers for uniforms, tools, broken items or a short cash drawer. Under federal law, those deductions can’t take your pay below the minimum wage. They also can’t cut into overtime you’re owed.

Enter those amounts in the Charged back to you box. The tool subtracts them from your gross, divides by your hours, and compares the result with the higher of your state minimum wage and the federal $7.25. Still above the floor? You’ll get a softer note, because some states, California among them, restrict these charges anyway.

Many cities set a higher minimum wage than their state, and the tool doesn’t track those. Working somewhere like Denver or Chicago? Compare the hourly figure in your report with your city’s rate too.

Paid a Salary and Told You’re Exempt?

Being on salary doesn’t automatically mean no overtime. Under the main federal rules, exempt workers generally need at least $684 a week, or $35,568 a year. Their duties have to fit as well, such as managing people or certain professional work.

That $684 level is what the Department of Labor enforces today. A 2024 rule raised it for a few months, but a federal court struck that rule down in November 2024, so older articles may quote higher numbers.

California sets the bar much higher, at twice the state minimum wage for full time work. With the 2026 minimum wage at $16.90, that’s $1,352 a week, or $70,304 a year.

Choose Salary and the tool converts your stub to a weekly figure, then tests it against the federal or California level. Only the salary half can be checked this way. If it fails, you may be owed overtime, so it’s worth raising with HR or an employment lawyer. A few states, including New York and Washington, set their own higher levels, so look yours up if you work elsewhere.

The 2026 Figures Behind the Audit

What Your Year to Date Numbers Tell You

The YTD column is easy to skip, but it holds a useful clue. This stub’s year to date gross should equal last stub’s year to date gross plus this period’s gross. Nothing more, nothing less.

When they don’t match, an adjustment was posted without a line to explain it. Sometimes it’s a correction in your favor. Other times money was quietly taken back. Enter this stub’s YTD gross along with the one from your last stub, and the pay stub checker shows how much moved.

What This Pay Stub Checker Won’t Do

With money involved, it’s better to know the limits up front.

• Federal income tax withholding. It depends on your Form W-4, so the tool uses it only to confirm your net pay.
• State and local income tax. These are also used only for the net pay check.
• Tips, tip credits, city minimum wages and union rates.
• Worker classification, meaning employee versus independent contractor.
• Whether a stub is real or fake. It checks the math on your own pay.
• Reading a photo of your stub. You type the figures in yourself.
• Other tax years. All rates and caps are for 2026.

Your figures stay in your browser. Nothing you type is sent to our server or saved, and it’s gone once you close the tab.

Getting a Paycheck Mistake Fixed

Most errors are honest, and most get fixed quickly once someone points to the exact line. A calm, specific message works far better than an angry one.

1. Copy the report. The Copy the report button gives you a plain text summary with every finding and dollar amount.
2. Gather your records. Keep your stubs, your own log of hours and any written bonus or commission plan.
3. Ask payroll in writing. Email leaves a record. Borrow the What to ask line from your paycheck audit.
4. Give it one pay period. If the next stub is corrected and includes back pay, you’re done.
5. Escalate if nothing changes. You can file a wage claim with your state labor department, or a complaint with the Wage and Hour Division of the US Department of Labor.

Unpaid wages are sometimes called wage theft, though most cases are plain payroll slips. Federal law bars employers from retaliating against workers who make a wage complaint. Worried about how your boss might react? Talk to an employment lawyer or your state labor office first.

More Questions About Pay Stub Errors

Do I need a pay stub to use this?

It helps a lot. Federal law doesn’t require employers to hand out pay stubs, but many states do. If you only get a deposit notice, ask payroll for an itemized statement or check your company’s payroll portal.

How often should I check my pay stub?

Every payday is ideal. At the very least, look closely after a raise, a new benefits election or a schedule change. Those are the moments payroll settings change, and new paycheck mistakes creep in.

Why is my Social Security deduction suddenly zero?

Good news, most likely. You’ve probably earned more than $184,500 from this employer this year, so Social Security stops until January. Medicare keeps coming out, because it has no cap.

My stub doesn’t list my hours. Can I still check it?

Partly, yes. Salaried workers can still test Social Security, Medicare, net pay and salary level. Hourly workers need their hours from a timesheet or their own notes, since overtime and minimum wage depend on them.

Is a few cents of difference a problem?

No. Payroll systems round each line, so the tool ignores gaps under about a dollar. A small gap that repeats every period is still worth a question.

What if the mistake was in my favor?

Flag it anyway. Payroll may catch an overpayment later and take it back from a future check. Raising it early lets you agree on repayment in writing.

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