Expert Writers Keep Pay Stubs, Too!

Anyone that earns an income should be using paystubs to keep track of their money.

Expert writers, whether self-employed or employed by someone else, have a hard time keeping track of their income because they’re often paid per project. If a writer does a plethora of pieces in a month, it’ll take them longer to calculate how much they’ve been paid.

To prevent miscounting your income, you can use the likes of a pay stub to keep track of everything. Paystubs provide all of the crucial information that you’ll need to file taxes, monitor your income, and get a loan.

Keep on reading to learn more about paystubs and how to make them!

What Are Pay Stubs?

When people think of ways to keep track of their income, they often overlook paystubs. However, a paystub is one of the best documents you can use because it shows a lot of useful information about your income that lets you know exactly where your money is going and coming from.

For example, those that are employed by someone else usually get money taken out of their checks for things like taxes. When you get a paycheck, you can’t see this information because the only thing on it is how much you’ve earned.

With a paystub, you can see exactly how much went into each deduction. Things like Social Security taxes, state taxes, and employee retirement programs are listed separately. This gives you more control over your finances because you can better figure out how much money you should be earning.

Referring to something like the IRS Employer’s Tax Guide lets you see how much of your money should be deducted for taxes. From there, you can compare the percentages to what’s being deducted from your paycheck.

Those that are self-employed will greatly benefit from having pay stubs because most of the work revolves around getting a paycheck. Having pay stubs will make bookkeeping easier for anyone that wants to have financial awareness.

Coming Up with the Numbers

Anyone that gets a paycheck from an employer most likely receives pay stubs because employers are required to provide a form of documentation. However, those that are self-employed or don’t get pay stubs from employers will need to produce them.

When it comes to creating a pay stub, you’ll just need to know what a deduction, gross pay, and net pay are. Most people have seen these numbers without knowing what the names are, so it shouldn’t be difficult to understand.

Gross Pay

If someone says they have a $60k salary, they’re talking about their gross pay. The thing about gross pay is that it isn’t the amount you take home. Your gross pay is the amount you make before deductions are made.

For example, a person that earns $18 an hour and works 40 hours will earn $1,440 every two weeks. Their bi-weekly gross pay is $1,440, but they’ll take home less after taxes and other deductions are taken out.

If you’re self-employed and will need to calculate deductions yourself, the entire amount that you receive from a client is your gross pay.

Deductions

As mentioned, anything taken out of your check is considered a deduction. If you’re enrolled in a retirement savings plan, you’ll also need to deduct that. Although taxes will be the main deductions, you’ll need to include everything if you want the pay stub to be accurate.

Net Pay

When you get a paycheck from an employer, the number that you see on it is your net pay (take-home pay). Net pay is the amount that you get to keep. To find out your net pay, apply all deductions to your gross pay.

Use a Generator or the Right Program

Now that you know how to come up with the numbers for your paystubs, you need to choose a program to design them. You can use either a pay stubs maker or a program like Microsoft Excel. No matter which one you choose, you can make paystubs that can be used for recordkeeping and as legal proof of income.

When it comes to using a program on your computer, using either Excel or Google Sheets will be enough to make a paystub. The main difference between them is that Google Sheets can be accessed via a web browser whereas Excel is a downloaded program. 

With Google Sheets, you can create a paystub and access it from any device. You won’t need to bring an external storage device or send the paystub to an email to access it elsewhere.

While using a program will give you more customization over how your paystub looks, your best bet will be to use a paystub generator. These come with templates that just need to be filled out, so you don’t need to worry about formatting.

You can find a paystub maker online and choose a template that will suit your needs. From there, you’ll fill in the information and you can print or save the paystub.

All Expert Writers Should Start Using Paystubs Today

If you’re serious about tracking income and would like to gain more loan opportunities, you’ll need to start using paystubs as soon as possible. Doing things like taxes will become a lot easier and you’ll have a way to prove your income when you want to finance a vehicle, get a mortgage, etc.

We encourage you to start writing down your gross pay so that you can make the necessary calculations for your pay stub. Expert writers should be keeping track of their income at all times, especially those that are self-employed.

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