Payroll Check Template

A payroll check template is a reusable layout for the check and the itemized statement attached to it. Federal law does not require an employer to hand an employee a pay stub at all — 29 CFR part 516 requires records to be kept, not furnished. Whether a statement must be issued, and what it must show, is set by state law. The template below carries every field in the federal recordkeeping list that belongs on a statement, and all nine items in California’s requirement, which is the strictest in the country.

> This is not legal or tax advice. Pay statement requirements differ by state, and some of the rules below apply in California only. Confirm what applies in each state where you have employees before issuing statements. Statutes were checked against primary sources on 22 October 2026.

What is a payroll check template?

A payroll check template is a two-part layout: the negotiable check itself and the itemized statement attached to it, usually as a detachable stub. The check carries the payee, the amount and the date. The pay stub carries the arithmetic behind that amount — hours, rates, gross pay, each deduction, net pay and year-to-date totals.

The stub is the part that matters legally, and it is the part most templates get wrong. A check that clears tells an employee what they were paid. A stub tells them how the figure was reached, which is what a wage statement requirement is for and what an employee needs in order to notice an error. If you are building the figures rather than the layout, how to calculate payroll covers the arithmetic that feeds this document.

Are employers required to give employees a pay stub?

Not under federal law. The Fair Labor Standards Act recordkeeping rules in 29 CFR part 516 require an employer to maintain and preserve payroll records — a duty to keep, not a duty to furnish. There is no general obligation in the part to provide an employee with a statement of wages.

Part 516 does contain three narrow duties to hand something to an employee, and they are worth knowing because the first two catch real employers:

The tip-credit one is the live risk for a restaurant: “The amount per hour which the employer takes as a tip credit shall be reported to the employee in writing each time it is changed from the amount per hour taken in the preceding week.” That is a written notice duty triggered by a rate change, not by a pay period, and it is easy to miss.

But none of those is a wage statement. So “is a pay stub required?” has no federal answer. It is a state question.

A frame, and a warning about where the state lists come from

State rules differ in kind rather than degree, and they sort roughly into five positions:

Two caveats on that table, both of which matter more than the table does.

The categories are ours, not an authority’s. A five-bucket classification circulates widely with this topic, usually with a list of states attached and no citation. We could not find any organisation that publishes it, and no government source uses it: the only federal state-by-state table, the Department of Labor’s State Payday Requirements, covers payday frequency and says nothing about statements at all. Every state named above was read from the statute rather than taken from a chart.

The positions overlap. Oregon requires both express consent and the ability to print or store. Washington requires access, copy capability and a paper fallback. Two independent questions are being flattened into one list — is a statement owed at all, and what must electronic delivery satisfy — so treat the five as a way of thinking rather than a partition.

Two states the circulating lists get wrong

Ohio is no longer a no-requirement state. The Pay Stub Protection Act took effect on 9 April 2025 and added ORC 4113.14, which requires each employer to give employees a “written or electronic statement or access to a statement of the employee’s earnings and deductions” for each pay period on the regular paydays, showing names, gross and net wages, the amount and purpose of each addition and deduction, the pay date and period, and — for hourly employees — total hours, the hourly rate and hours in excess of forty in a workweek. An employee who does not receive one may request it in writing, and the employer has ten days. Lists that still place Ohio in the no-requirement column are more than a year and a half out of date.

Oregon is opt-in, not opt-out. ORS 652.610(1)(c) permits an electronic statement only where “The employee expressly agrees to receive the statement in electronic form” and the employee can print or store it at the time of receipt. Paper is the default and there is no general right to demand it, because none is needed. The paper-request provision that gets cited for the opposite reading is ORS 652.610(2)(d), and it applies only to officers and employees paid through the Oregon state payroll system. A private Oregon employer who follows the usual chart and switches everyone to electronic statements without consent is not compliant.

Six large states, from the statute

Texas is worth a second look. Section 62.003(a) requires a “written” earnings statement and § 62.003(c) names only a check voucher or bank draft as an alternative format. Chapter 62 does not mention electronic delivery, and it requires the statement to be signed by the employer or its agent — a requirement that sits awkwardly with an emailed PDF and that almost every summary of Texas law omits.

Illinois shows why “is electronic allowed?” is the wrong question. It is allowed, and § 10 then attaches a three-year retention duty that survives the employment, production within 21 calendar days on request, a format choice for former employees, and an affirmative obligation to offer a year of stubs by the end of a leaver’s final pay period. None of the five positions above captures that.

> What we did not check. Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi and South Dakota appear in the circulating no-requirement list and we did not verify them, so they are not in the table above. Neither are the remaining states. Given that two of the entries we did check turned out to be wrong, treat any state not named here as needing its own check rather than as covered.

A template described as “compliant” without naming a state is promising compliance with a requirement that does not exist federally. The useful question is which state’s rules apply to each employee, and the practical answer for a multi-state employer is to build one statement to the strictest applicable standard rather than maintain several formats.

Which payroll records must an employer keep?

29 CFR § 516.2(a) sets out what must be maintained for each employee covered by the minimum wage and overtime provisions: “Every employer shall maintain and preserve payroll or other records containing the following information and data with respect to each employee to whom section 6 or both sections 6 and 7(a) of the Act apply:” The list is the natural skeleton for a pay stub, because 10 of the twelve items belong on one.

Two of these are records rather than stub fields. Date of birth under (3) and home address under (2) belong in the employee file; printing a date of birth on a statement collects nothing useful and puts personal data into circulation. Everything from (6) through (12) belongs on the stub, and a template that carries all of it satisfies most of the federal recordkeeping list as a by-product of issuing the statement.

Three details in the regulation that paraphrases usually drop, and that change what a template needs:

• Item (6)(i) requires the regular hourly rate only for any workweek in which overtime compensation is due, not every week.
• Item (6)(ii) is not satisfied by naming the basis of pay. The employer must “indicate the monetary amount paid on a per hour, per day, per week, per piece, commission on sales, or other basis”.
• Item (10) expressly includes “employee purchase orders or wage assignments” among the additions and deductions to be totalled, and requires individual records showing “the dates, amounts, and nature” of each.

Exempt white-collar employees are a different case. Under § 516.3, an employer keeps “all the information and data required by § 516.2(a) except paragraphs (a) (6) through (10)”, plus the basis on which wages are paid in enough detail to compute total remuneration for each pay period. So items (6) through (10) — rates, hours, straight-time and overtime earnings — drop out for genuinely exempt staff. Gross wages and the payment date do not.

Tipped employees need four more records under § 516.28(a): a notation identifying each tipped employee, the tips they report, the tip credit claimed per hour, and hours and straight-time earnings split between tipped and non-tipped occupations. The template below has a block for them.

How long must payroll records be kept?

Part 516 sets two periods, and the shorter one applies to the document most employers assume they must keep longest. Both are floors: the regulation says “Each employer shall preserve for at least 3 years:” and, for the two-year group, “Each employer required to maintain records under this part shall preserve for a period of at least 2 years”.

Note what this combination produces. The payroll record runs 3 years; the time card the payroll record was built from runs 2. An employer who destroys time cards at the federal minimum spends the 3rd year holding a payroll record with no underlying evidence of the hours behind it. Where the hours are ever disputed — a wage claim, an audit, a back-pay calculation — that 1-year gap falls on the employer, which is why aligning both to the longer period is the ordinary practice.

The regulation is also relaxed about the medium. Section 516.1(a) says “No particular order or form of records is prescribed by the regulations in this part.”, and permits records to be kept “on microfilm or other basic source document of an automatic word or data processing memory” — 1970s phrasing that carries modern electronic recordkeeping — on three conditions: viewing equipment is available, reproductions are clear and identifiable by date or pay period, and transcriptions are made available on request. California says the same thing more plainly: “For purposes of this subdivision, “copy” includes a duplicate of the itemized statement provided to an employee or a computer-generated record that accurately shows all of the information required by this subdivision.”

One deadline that catches employers who have moved records to a service provider. Under § 516.7, “Where the records are maintained at a central recordkeeping office, other than in the place or places of employment, such records shall be made available within 72 hours following notice from the Administrator or a duly authorized and designated representative.” Seventy-two hours is not long if nobody in the building knows who the payroll vendor’s support contact is.

What must a California wage statement show?

California Labor Code § 226(a) requires an employer, “semimonthly or at the time of each payment of wages”, to furnish “an accurate itemized statement in writing” — either as a detachable part of the check, draft or voucher, or separately where wages are paid by personal check or cash. Nine items are required.

Item (9) is the one that defeats most generic templates. A stub showing a single blended figure does not satisfy it: each rate in effect during the period must appear with the hours worked at that rate. An employee who worked part of a week at a shift differential, or who received a mid-period increase, needs both rates and both hour totals on the face of the statement.

Take a week of 24.00 hours at $22.00, 16.00 at $24.50 and 6.00 hours of overtime at $36.75. Gross pay is $1,140.50 either way. Shown as one line, the statement reports 46.00 hours at $24.79 — a rate at which no hour was actually paid, which appears nowhere in the payroll record, and which satisfies neither (a)(9) nor the standard in (e)(2) discussed below.

Subdivision (a) also requires that “The deductions made from payment of wages shall be recorded in ink or other indelible form, properly dated, showing the month, day, and year, and a copy of the statement and the record of the deductions shall be kept on file by the employer for at least three years at the place of employment or at a central location within the State of California.”

What subdivision (j) actually excuses

Item (2) carries a cross-reference that most summaries print and never explain. Subdivision (j) says an itemized statement “shall not be required to show total hours worked by the employee” in eight listed cases — and only the total hours line. Nothing else on the statement is excused, and the statement itself is still required.

The first case is the one that matters in practice: “The employee’s compensation is solely based on salary and the employee is exempt from payment of overtime under subdivision (a) of Section 515 or any applicable order of the Industrial Welfare Commission.” Both halves are needed. A salaried employee who is not exempt from overtime still needs total hours on the statement, and treating “salaried” as the test on its own is the most common way a template drops a required field.

Inspection: 21 calendar days

Under § 226(b) a current or former employee may inspect or receive a copy of records pertaining to their employment on reasonable request. The employer may take reasonable steps to verify identity and may charge the actual cost of reproduction. Subdivision (c) sets the clock: “An employer who receives a written or oral request to inspect or receive a copy of records pursuant to subdivision (b) pertaining to a current or former employee shall comply with the request as soon as practicable, but no later than 21 calendar days from the date of the request.”

Three points about that deadline. It is triggered by a “written or oral” request, so a conversation starts it. A violation is an infraction, and “Impossibility of performance, not caused by or a result of a violation of law, shall be an affirmative defense for an employer in any action alleging a violation of this subdivision.” And the subdivision ends with a sentence worth acting on before anyone asks: “An employer may designate the person to whom a request under this subdivision will be made.” Name that person in the statement footer and the 21 days start against someone who knows what to do.

Should the stub show a Social Security number?

No — only the last four digits. Section 226(a)(7) requires the employee’s name together with “only the last four digits of their social security number or an employee identification number other than a social security number”. A full number on the statement does not meet that requirement.

The data-protection argument points the same way, and it applies in every state. A wage statement is printed, handed over or mailed, and then retained for 3 years. A full Social Security number on that document multiplies the number of copies in circulation for no operational benefit — payroll systems identify employees by an internal number, and the last four digits are enough for an employee to confirm the statement is theirs.

The template below uses an employee ID field and a last-four field. If a template asks for a full Social Security number, change the field rather than filling it in.

What do pay stub errors cost?

In California the exposure is set out in § 226(e) and it compounds per pay period, which is what makes a defective template expensive rather than merely untidy.

> “An employee suffering injury as a result of a knowing and intentional failure by an employer to comply with subdivision (a) is entitled to recover the greater of all actual damages or fifty dollars ($50) for the initial pay period in which a violation occurs and one hundred dollars ($100) per employee for each violation in a subsequent pay period, not to exceed an aggregate penalty of four thousand dollars ($4,000), and is entitled to an award of costs and reasonable attorney’s fees.”

Read the “greater of” carefully, because it is widely mis-stated. The comparison is between all actual damages and the whole statutory schedule — not actual damages plus the schedule. The schedule itself runs $50 for the initial pay period and $100 per employee for each violation in a subsequent pay period, capped at $4,000 in aggregate for that employee, with costs and reasonable attorney’s fees on top of whichever figure wins.

The off-by-one is worth being careful about, because the schedule never lands exactly on the cap. Solving $50 + $100 × (k − 1) = $4,000 gives k = 40.5. At 40 pay periods the total is $3,950.00; at 41 it would be $4,050.00 and the cap binds.

How long 41 consecutive pay periods takes depends on the pay frequency:

And the cap is per employee, so it scales with headcount:

Two provisions decide which side of this an employer lands on.

Deemed injury, § 226(e)(2). An employee is deemed to suffer injury where no statement is provided at all, or where required information is missing or inaccurate and “the employee cannot promptly and easily determine from the wage statement alone” any of the following:

• The gross or net wages paid, and the information required by items (2) to (4), (6) and (9) of subdivision (a)
• Which deductions the employer made from gross wages to reach net wages
• The name and address of the employer
• The employee’s name and the last four digits of the Social Security number, or an employee identification number other than the SSN

The standard is defined in the statute: “For purposes of this paragraph, “promptly and easily determine” means a reasonable person would be able to readily ascertain the information without reference to other documents or information.” From the wage statement alone is the operative constraint, and it is the sentence that should govern every design decision in a template. An omission cannot be cured by pointing to a portal, a separate schedule or last period’s stub. A statement that requires the reader to divide gross pay by hours to work out a rate fails on its face, and the employee does not then have to prove any further harm.

Safe harbour, § 226(e)(3). A “knowing and intentional failure” “a “knowing and intentional failure” does not include an isolated and unintentional payroll error due to a clerical or inadvertent mistake”. And the factfinder “may consider as a relevant factor whether the employer, prior to an alleged violation, has adopted and is in compliance with a set of policies, procedures, and practices that fully comply with this section”. That second sentence is the practical case for a fixed template over ad-hoc statements: a consistent format turns a format problem into a one-off arithmetic problem, and a one-off arithmetic problem is what the safe harbour covers.

Two more exposures sit beside § 226(e). Section 226(f) adds a $750 penalty, recoverable by the employee or the Labor Commissioner, for missing the 21-day inspection deadline, and § 226(h) lets an employee seek an injunction with costs and attorney’s fees.

Three neighbouring sections are usually left out of the arithmetic entirely, and they are larger than § 226(e):

Can pay stubs be delivered electronically?

It depends on the state, and the five positions above are the right frame. In a consent state, electronic delivery requires the employee’s agreement and paper remains the default. In a paper-on-request state, electronic is the default and the employee can insist on paper. In an access state, the test is whether the employee can actually reach the information and, where required, copy or print it.

Three conditions make an electronic statement defensible wherever it is permitted, and each one traces to a provision rather than to custom.

Keeping the employer’s own copy electronically is a separate and easier question. California says so directly: “For purposes of this subdivision, “copy” includes a duplicate of the itemized statement provided to an employee or a computer-generated record that accurately shows all of the information required by this subdivision.” And federally, § 516.1(a) has permitted non-paper records since long before anyone called it electronic.

What fields does this template include?

The earnings block is built as repeating rows rather than a single line, because that is what a multiple-rate requirement needs. Deductions are itemised rather than totalled, with current and year-to-date columns side by side so an employee can check one against the other without arithmetic — which is the “promptly and easily determine” standard restated as a layout rule.

How do you fill in the template?

1. Download the format you will actually work in. Use the spreadsheet if you want the totals calculated — the shaded rows carry live SUM formulas — and the PDF or Word version if you are typing or handwriting a small number of checks.
2. Make your own copy before entering any employee data, so the file holding personal information is yours and not a shared document.
3. Fill the employer block once and save it as your starting file. Legal entity name, not trading name.
4. Enter the employee’s ID and the last four digits of the Social Security number. Leave the full number out.
5. Enter the pay period start and end dates and the pay date as three separate values.
6. Add one earnings row per rate in effect during the period. If a rate changed mid-period, that is two rows, each with its own hours.
7. Enter overtime hours and premium separately from straight time.
8. Name every deduction. A line labelled “other” is the line an employee will query — and under § 226(a)(4) only deductions made on the employee’s written order may be aggregated.
9. Enter year-to-date figures in the second column of every block, not only at the bottom.
10. Check that gross pay minus total deductions equals net pay, and that net pay equals the amount on the check face.
11. Save a copy and keep it for at least three years — in California, at the place of employment or a central location within the state.
12. Keep the underlying timesheets for the same period rather than the shorter two-year federal minimum. Timesheets for payroll covers what that record needs to show.

Monitask records hours as they are worked and exports approved timesheets by employee and project, so the hours and rates going onto a statement come from a reviewable record rather than from memory.
See how time tracking works in Monitask

Payroll check template

Copy the layout below, or download it in the format you need. Replace every bracketed field.

Check face

[LEGAL ENTITY NAME]                                 Check No. [000000]
[STREET ADDRESS]
[CITY, STATE  ZIP]                                  Date  [MM/DD/YYYY]
[PHONE]

Pay to the order of  [EMPLOYEE FULL NAME]           $ [0,000.00]

[AMOUNT IN WORDS] — Dollars

Memo  [PAY PERIOD MM/DD/YYYY – MM/DD/YYYY]          ______________________
                                                    Authorized signature

Employer

FED(1), CA(8). The legal entity name, not a trading name.

Employee

CA(7). Last four digits only — never the full Social Security number. FED(2) home address and FED(3) date of birth belong in the employee file, not on the statement.

Pay period

CA(6), FED(12). Three separate dates, not a range.

Earnings

CA(9), FED(6)(7)(8)(9). ONE ROW PER RATE IN EFFECT during the period. A single blended rate does not satisfy CA(9). If a rate changed mid-period, that is two rows, each with its own hours.

Taxes withheld

CA(4), FED(10). Each one named.

Other deductions

CA(4) allows deductions made on the employee’s written order to be aggregated into one item; everything else is named separately. A line labelled “other” is the line an employee will query.

Employer contributions

Not deducted from pay. Shown separately so they are never mistaken for a deduction.

Net pay

CA(1) gross and CA(5) net, FED(11). Net pay must equal the amount on the check face.

Tipped employees — only if a tip credit is taken

29 CFR 516.28(a) requires four records beyond 516.2(a) for tipped employees. The tip credit per hour must also be reported to the employee IN WRITING each time it changes from the preceding week, which is a furnishing duty Part 516 does impose.

Leave balances

Not federally required and not in CA 226(a), but required by some local paid-sick-leave ordinances and expected by employees.

Statement date [MM/DD/YYYY]. A copy of this statement is retained by the employer. Questions about this statement: [NAME, ROLE, EMAIL, PHONE].

Sources

1. 29 CFR Part 516 — Records to Be Kept by Employers; §§ 516.1, 516.2, 516.3, 516.4, 516.5, 516.6, 516.7, 516.28, 516.31. U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/subtitle-B/chapter-V/subchapter-A/part-516
2. California Labor Code § 226 — Itemized statements. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=LAB&sectionNum=226
3. Senate Bill 332 (2023–24), chaptered 13 October 2023 as Stats. 2023, Ch. 866, and the Senate Labor, Public Employment and Retirement Committee analysis. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB332
4. California Labor Code §§ 226.2, 226.3, 226.6. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codesTOCSelected.xhtml?tocCode=LAB
5. Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, as amended, 29 U.S.C. § 201 et seq.. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/flsa

All sources checked 22 October 2026.