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Check a Paycheck That Looks Wrong

The inputs on every stub, defined

• Hours, split regular and overtime. The count everything else is built on. For most hourly (nonexempt) workers, the Fair Labor Standards Act prices hours past 40 in a single workweek at one and a half times the regular rate. Overtime is figured week by week, not averaged across a two-week pay period, so a 47-hour week hiding inside an 80-hour stub is exactly where money goes quiet.
• Regular rate. The hourly rate the math starts from. Check it against your offer letter, your last raise notice, and the previous stub: a rate that quietly drops is a one-line error with a long tail.
• Gross pay. Hours times rate, with the overtime premium added. If the inputs are right, the gross is forced: it either foots or it does not.
• Deductions. Taxes, benefit premiums, retirement contributions, garnishments, and anything else that left before the net. Every line should have a name and a reason you recognize.
• Net pay. Gross minus deductions. The number that lands in your account, and the last place to look, not the first.

Where the stub lives, and how to get the records behind it

Most stubs never arrive on paper anymore. Yours is probably in your employer's payroll portal, the same system that shows your hours, or it came from the HR or payroll office. Download the portal copies now, while you still have access, and store them somewhere that is not a company system: access disappears the week a job ends, usually right when the final check needs checking.

The stub is a summary. The records behind it are the employer's time system (clock-ins, edits, approvals), your schedules, and your own notes. If you keep any record of your hours, even phone notes written the same day, it counts as evidence; the kit example below runs on exactly that. To get the employer's side, ask payroll or HR in writing for the itemized statements and time records for the periods in question, and keep the request and the reply. Many states require employers to provide an itemized wage statement each pay period, and some give employees a right to inspect their payroll records; your state labor department publishes the rule that applies to you.

If the employer will not provide them, the records still exist. The Wage and Hour Division's Fact Sheet #21 lists what a covered employer must keep for every nonexempt worker: hours worked each day, total hours each workweek, the regular rate, overtime earnings, every addition to or deduction from wages, and total wages per pay period, with payroll records kept three years and the supporting records, like time cards and schedules, kept two. Questions or a complaint: the Wage and Hour Division takes both at 1-866-487-9243, free and confidential. Your state labor department is the other door.

Walkthrough: Maria's missing overtime

Maria is invented, adapted from the worked example in our paycheck kit. She is an hourly warehouse associate at $17.00 an hour, paid every two weeks. For months her checks have looked light. The time system's portal shows 40.0 hours for her, every week, no variance. Her own phone log, written down the day she worked them, shows 45 to 47 hours a week. So she checks one pay period the way you will check yours: their hours against hers.

Notice what was not wrong. The overtime premium on her stub, $25.50 an hour, is exactly 1.5 times $17.00: the rate math was fine. The disputed input was the hours. Across her eight most recent pay periods, Maria's log runs about 96 hours past the employer's records, an apparent difference of roughly $1,830. Her letter to payroll did not demand that figure. It laid out one discrepancy row per period and asked for a review, a correction of the recorded hours, and a payroll re-run, with a response date 14 days out. Facts, exhibits, one firm deadline: that is the shape that gets a stub fixed.

The mismatches that matter

• Hours rounded down, edited, or suspiciously flat. A portal that shows exactly 40.0 every week while the work visibly runs long is a pattern worth a written question, especially with off-the-clock time in it: finishing a task after clocking out is still hours worked.
• Overtime averaged across the pay period. A 47-hour week and a 33-hour week do not cancel out for most hourly workers. The premium belongs to the week it was worked in.
• The premium paid at the wrong rate, or on the wrong hours. Time and a half of the regular rate, on the hours past 40. If the stub shows overtime hours paid at straight time, the line names itself.
• A deduction with no name, or one you never agreed to. Taxes and court-ordered garnishments explain themselves. Uniforms, shortages, equipment, and damage deductions vary sharply by state, and many states require your written authorization first. A line you cannot trace is a line to question in writing.
• The rate changed without a paper trail. Stub rate against offer letter and the last stub at the old rate. A quiet rate cut reprices every hour after it.
• The final check is short, late, or missing pieces. Federal law sets no final-pay deadline at all: the Department of Labor's guidance is that employers are not required by federal law to pay a final check immediately, though some states require it. Accrued vacation and PTO payout is likewise a state-law and policy question. Check your state's rule before you assume the last stub is the last word.

What to do next

• Download every stub and time record you can reach today, and keep copies off company systems.
• Rebuild your hours for the periods in question from whatever you have: schedules, messages, your own same-day notes.
• Put their hours and your hours side by side, one row per pay period, and price each gap at your rate. Call it what it is: an apparent difference, ready to be explained or corrected.
• Trace every deduction line to a name and a reason. Untraceable lines become written questions, one per line.
• Write to payroll or HR with the rows, the evidence, and the correction you are asking for: review the periods, correct the records, re-run the pay. Keep everything, including the reply.
• No answer, or an answer that does not address the rows? The Wage and Hour Division takes questions and complaints at 1-866-487-9243, and your state labor department runs the state side of the same fight.

The full kit

The Unpaid Wages and Paycheck Error Kit ($19) carries the full method: a document acquisition checklist for stubs and time records, the time reconstruction and pay stub audit worksheets, final paycheck accounting, a state-law lookup, and letter templates for the correction request, the records request, and the Wage and Hour Division complaint.

New to PocketBack? Start with The Everyday Money Checkup, our free checklist. It uses the same method on six everyday documents.

Sources

• U.S. Department of Labor, Last Paycheck: federal law does not require an employer to give a final paycheck immediately; some states require immediate payment; if the regular payday for the last period worked has passed without pay, contact the Wage and Hour Division or the state labor department.
• U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division, Fact Sheet #21: Recordkeeping Requirements under the Fair Labor Standards Act (dol.gov): the records a covered employer must keep for each nonexempt worker, including hours worked each day, total hours each workweek, the regular hourly rate, total overtime earnings, all additions to or deductions from wages, and total wages paid each pay period; payroll records are kept three years, and records wage computations are based on, such as time cards and schedules, two years. The FLSA requires these records to be kept; it does not itself require an employer to furnish a pay stub, which is why itemized statement rules are found in state law.