Whether you’re an independent contractor or someone who runs a business with many employees, it’s common to experience financial issues.
Often, when a contractor or business experiences financial problems, they result from poor accounting and record-keeping practices.
If you want to keep track of your income and the money you’re paying your employees, you need to make sure you’re generating pay stubs.
If you’re not sure how to make pay stubs, keep reading. Listed below are some tips that will help you through the process.
Why Pay Stubs Matter
The process of generating pay stubs is essential for all business owners. It doesn’t matter if you’re a business of one or a business of hundreds. You need to be generating pay stubs for yourself and your employees.
There are lots of benefits that come with creating pay stubs.
First, they provide employees and employers with important information regarding their pay, the taxes withheld from their paychecks, and how much money is deducted for things like insurance and retirement contributions.
You may need to present pay stubs when you’re looking to rent an apartment or take out a loan to buy a car. They make the tax filing process a lot easier, too.
Pay stubs can also be a useful communication tool. For example, they let employees know how much vacation time or paid time off they’ve accrued during a particular pay period.
How to Make Pay Stubs
Okay, you can see that pay stubs are important. How do you make them for yourself and your employees, though?
The process is actually quite simple.
Start by calculating gross pay for yourself or an employee. Then, calculate deductions. The specific deductions you might need to calculate include the following.
- Federal, state, and local deductions.
- Social security and Medicare.
- Retirement contributions.
- Wage garnishments.
Once you’ve taken out all the deductions, you’ll have your net pay left over. The specific percentage of the salary that goes to each deduction will vary depending on your state. Be sure to look up how much you need to deduct before you get started.
You can also use a pay stub generating software to simplify the process and ensure your calculations are correct. This is a good idea for those who have to generate pay stubs for lots of employees and aren’t great with numbers, as well as those who don’t want to do tons of calculations by hand.
You can click here to learn more about pay stub generation and pay stub creation tools.
Make Pay Stubs Today
Now that you know why pay stubs matter and how to make pay stubs, it’s time to get to work.
Keep these guidelines in mind and you’ll have no trouble keeping track of your finances and generating pay stubs for yourself and your employees.
Do you want more financial advice?
Whether you have pay stub questions, tax questions, budgeting questions, or questions about anything else, we’ve got resources that can help.
Check out the business section of our site to learn more.