How to read a pay stub, field by field

Start at the top of the Earnings Statement. Business name identifies the company or client connected to the payment. Paid to names the person who received it. QuickStub calls the editable fields Business name and Name, with an Address field available for each party under More details. Those labels should match the invoice, contract, bank transfer, or bookkeeping entry behind the record.

Classification sits beside the Pay period in the preview. It tells you whether the payment was entered as 1099 Self-employed, W-2 employee, or Owner's draw. Read that line before interpreting any money row. Contract income does not have the same treatment as employee wages, and a draw from your own business is not salary.

If you prepared the document yourself, its appearance does not change its source. It is a self-prepared payment record, never an employer-issued statement. That point matters when another person is reviewing it. The names and classification help them compare the record with documents created outside the generator.

Pay period answers when the work or earnings belong. Pay date answers when the money changed hands. QuickStub keeps these as separate fields because a job completed on June 15 might be paid on June 20. Swapping the two dates can put income into the wrong period and make the running totals harder to reconcile.

Under More details, How often this is paid sets the cadence: Weekly, Every two weeks, Twice a month, or Monthly. Period start and Period end define the window shown on the finished record. Pay date appears in the statement header. Read all three dates, even if the period label looks familiar.

Every two weeks and Twice a month are easy to confuse. A biweekly schedule normally produces 26 periods in a full year, while a semimonthly schedule normally produces 24. The period dates on the record settle which one you are looking at. Do not infer the schedule from the payment amount alone.

Gross pay is the amount before the lines shown beneath it are subtracted. On a 1099 record, the input is Gross amount and the preview row says Contract earnings (gross). Compare it with the amount billed or paid for that period. Business expenses do not belong in that field unless the source record itself reports a net earnings amount and you can explain the choice.

A W-2 record uses Hourly rate and Hours. The preview turns those inputs into Regular pay. Check the multiplication yourself, especially if the source payroll record includes overtime, bonuses, reimbursements, or pretax benefits that a simple rate-times-hours record does not model.

For an owner's draw, the entry field is Draw amount and the preview row is Owner's draw. The figure records money moved from the business to the owner. It should not be read as employee wages. Classification and the gross row need to agree before the rest of the statement can make sense.

A deduction row explains an amount removed from the gross figure or set aside in the calculation. The label matters as much as the amount. A line can describe payroll withholding, a voluntary set-aside, or an estimated tax reference. Those are different events, even when they all reduce the displayed remainder.

On a QuickStub 1099 record, Est. self-employment tax (15.3%) is an estimated federal reference. Nothing is withheld from the contractor's payment. The IRS calculation belongs on Schedule SE and uses annual net earnings, so the figure on one payment record is not a filed amount and should not be copied to a return. Other wages, the Social Security limit, and additional Medicare rules can change the final result.

A W-2 preview labels its line Federal & state withholding (est.). That amount is illustrative because payroll withholding depends on payroll inputs, the worker's Form W-4, and the rules in effect for the payment. An Owner's draw record has no payroll withholding line. If a row does not fit the classification or the money that moved, stop and correct the record.

Net pay is the displayed remainder after the deductions and estimated tax lines on the record. Check the arithmetic from gross to net one row at a time. A missing minus sign or a duplicated line can make a tidy statement wrong by more than a spelling error ever could.

For employee wages, net pay can be compared with the payroll deposit when the record reproduces the same withholding and deductions. For a 1099 payment, the client may have deposited the full gross amount because the estimated self-employment tax was not withheld. QuickStub's Net pay then works as a planning remainder, not a claim about what the client sent to the government.

For an owner's draw, gross and net normally match in this payment record because the draw has no payroll tax withheld. Income tax obligations are handled separately. A net figure can only be understood after you read the classification and each line above it.

Current is the amount attached to this one payment. YTD means year to date, the running total from the start of the calendar year through the current pay date. A reader uses the two columns together: Current explains this period, while YTD shows how the year has accumulated so far.

Prior YTD is the QuickStub input for gross from earlier periods in the same calendar year. The generator adds the current gross amount to that input and displays YTD gross. If Prior YTD is $6,200 and Current contract earnings are $1,550, the new YTD gross is $7,750. These are earnings figures, not tax estimates.

Compare Prior YTD with the previous record before accepting the new total. If one payment was skipped or entered twice, every later statement can inherit the error. The separate YTD guide covers the carry-forward method and a longer worked example.

Match Business name, Name, Period start, Period end, Pay date, and Gross amount to the records you already keep. Then confirm Classification, each deduction or estimate label, Net pay, Prior YTD, and the final YTD column. Open the PDF and make sure long names or addresses have not been clipped.

When the record supports an income application, send it with stronger evidence such as a tax return and bank statements. A 1099 contractor may also have invoices, Forms 1099, contracts, or a profit and loss statement. The recipient decides which documents it accepts, and QuickStub does not guarantee acceptance.

Share only truthful figures for income already earned. A self-prepared record is useful when another person can trace it back to deposits and tax or business records. If their checklist calls for an employer-produced paystub, ask what self-employment documents they accept instead.