An hourly pay stub has one job that a salaried one does not: it has to show its work. Someone reading it should be able to take your timesheet and the rate, and land on the same gross pay without asking you anything.
The three numbers that make an hourly stub auditable
- Hours worked in the period. Not average hours, not scheduled hours — hours in this pay period, matching the period start and end dates printed above them.
- The hourly rate. Stated per hour, to the cent, for this period. If the rate changed mid-period, one blended number is the thing that will not reconcile later.
- The basis. How the amount was formed: 38 hours × $27.50. A stub that prints only $1,045.00 next to “Regular” forces the reader to divide to check you.
The generator prints the basis column for exactly this reason: the first earnings line shows hours × rate rather than a bare total, and any additional line shows the amount you entered.
Overtime, when your tool has no overtime multiplier
Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, non-exempt employees in the United States are owed at least 1.5× their regular rate for hours worked beyond 40 in a workweek. State rules can be stricter — some also set a daily threshold — so treat the federal figure as a floor and confirm your own jurisdiction with the Department of Labor’s overtime guidance or your state labour agency.
Paystubs does not apply that multiplier. It is a document generator, and the hours and rate fields are a single straight-time line. What it gives you instead is a separate other earnings field, which is the right place for an overtime amount you have already computed — the arithmetic, on a 50-hour week at $27.50:
| Component | How it is formed | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Straight time | 40 hours × $27.50 | $1,100.00 |
| Overtime | 10 hours × ($27.50 × 1.5 = $41.25) | $412.50 |
| Gross pay | sum of the two | $1,512.50 |
So on the stub you enter 40 hours at $27.50 (that produces the $1,100.00 line with its basis) and enter $412.50 as other earnings labelled Overtime. Two visible lines, each of which the reader can check against the timesheet. The same pattern handles shift differentials, commissions and bonuses.
Hours across pay periods
Weekly and bi-weekly stubs divide the year into 52 and 26 periods; semi-monthly and monthly divide it into 24 and 12. For an hourly worker the period count matters less than the date window, because hours are counted, not divided — but the window still has to be right, and a bi-weekly cycle drifts across month boundaries. Two practical consequences:
- A month with three pay Fridays genuinely contains three cheques on a bi-weekly cycle. That is not a bonus and not an error; it is 26 periods living inside 12 months.
- Hours worked in the gap between two calendar months belong on whichever stub’s window covers them, and the period start/end dates on the document are how you prove that later.
What the deduction lines should look like on an hourly stub
Nothing differs from a salaried stub here, but hourly pay makes one mistake common: a fixed deduction (insurance premium, garnishment) taken in a short week can eat an outsized share of that week’s net. If total deductions exceed gross pay the stub stops being a meaningful document — the generator will refuse to present it as a usable one, and the net pay guide explains which lines are usually the culprit.
Ready to write one? Fill in the hours, rate and deduction lines and the preview updates as you type; the PDF is exported without a watermark once the $4.99 document fee is paid. For what belongs in the header and totals, see the pay stub template walkthrough.