You’re thrilled. You’ve got a new job and everything’s going well until pay day. You see your paycheck hit your bank account, but you have no idea how it was calculated.

If you’re an employee, your employer has to give you a pay slip, either on pay day or the day before. It needs to be clear; telling you the gross pay, net pay, and the HMRC income tax code applied.

It’s common today for employers to use an online portal to communicate with employees. There hasn’t been case law on these yet, so it’s not clear if access to the portal meets the requirement for a pay slip. What if you’re off sick without access to the portal, or away on business, or working remotely? In these cases it’s reasonable to ask your employer to email you the pay slip.

Pay day at last !

As of April 2019, there’s good news for workers, zero-hour workers, and agency workers. The same obligations to employees now extend to you; your employer must give you a pay slip. Additionally, from April 2019, if you’re paid hourly, your pay slip has to state your hourly rate and the number of hours you’ve accumulated over the pay period. Again, if you’re unhappy with your employer’s method, remember that they have an obligation and ask for it to be emailed. Open an email folder to keep them secure and organized.

The biggest thing to look out for on your pay checks is making sure the amount is right! You’d be surprised how many Nucleus clients don’t read their pay slips. Make sure you understand what all the deductions are for and what the abbreviations mean. It’s so much easier to sort out mistakes early on. Don’t be afraid to ask about anything you don’t understand. It’ll usually be HR dealing with this, not your line manager, but he or she can give you a contact if you don’t have one.

If you keep asking your employer for a pay slip and it doesn’t make one available, you can refer it to ACAS for Early Conciliation. This is really easy and can be done by following this link: https://ec.acas.org.uk/Submission/Create.

If your employer still doesn’t give you a pay slip, you can refer them to the Employment Tribunal. Just make sure to do that within 3 months of when you were paid.

‍