Reading Your Pay Stub as a Technician

Why this matters

A pay stub is the only document that shows the math behind your check, and most techs read one number on it: the net. That works until the week the overtime was figured on the wrong rate, a spiff landed but never made it into the overtime calculation, or a deduction you cancelled is still coming out. Payroll errors in a field shop are common because tech pay has more moving parts than an office salary: base hours, overtime, flag hours or commission, spiffs, tool and uniform deductions, sometimes two states. Small errors repeat every pay period until somebody catches them, and the person best placed to catch them is you.

This is not personal financial or legal advice. It is a method for reading the document, so you know when to ask a question and what to ask.

What the law does and does not require on the stub

Federal law requires records, not a stub. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), enforced by the U.S. Department of Labor, makes the employer keep payroll records for each nonexempt employee, hours and pay included (29 CFR Part 516), but it does not require handing you an itemized statement. The stub requirement is a state layer, and most states have one. California's is among the most detailed (Labor Code 226 lists the items an itemized wage statement must show, including total hours, every rate in effect and the hours worked at each, and for piece-rate pay the units and rate). A handful of states require little or nothing. Read your own state's labor department page for the list of required items; that list is your checklist for whether the stub is even complete.

Step 1: Pin down the pay period and the pay date

Find the period start, period end and check date at the top. Why first: every other check depends on knowing which hours this stub covers. A shop that pays biweekly on a Friday for a period ending the previous Saturday will always look "behind" if you compare it to last week's memory instead of the right dates.

What breaks if you skip it: you flag hours as missing that are actually on the next stub, or you miss hours that fell into a period you never checked. Overtime is figured per workweek under the FLSA (29 CFR 778.103), so on a biweekly stub you should be able to see the two weeks separately. If the stub only shows 86 total hours for two weeks, you cannot tell whether that was 43 and 43 (6 overtime hours owed) or 46 and 40 (also 6) or 50 and 36 (10 owed). Ask for the weekly split.

Step 2: Check hours against your own record

Compare regular and overtime hours to the log you keep yourself. Why: the stub is built from whatever the time system captured, and the commonest leaks are a missed clock-out corrected to the wrong time, drive time between calls left off, and a meeting or shop day nobody entered. Keeping that log is its own discipline; see related: Tracking Your Own Hours and Pay.

What breaks if you skip it: every downstream line is computed correctly on the wrong hours, so the stub looks internally perfect and is still short.

Step 3: Check every earnings line and its rate

Each earnings line should show hours or units, a rate, and an amount. Typical tech lines:

• Regular: hours at your base rate.
• Overtime: hours over 40 in the workweek at one and a half times your regular rate (not necessarily your base rate; see Step 4). Some states add daily overtime: California pays time and a half after 8 hours in a workday and double time after 12, which the federal rule does not.
• Flag or flat-rate hours: billed hours at your flag rate, if you are paid that way. The math is its own subject; see related: How Flat-Rate Pay Works From the Tech's Side.
• Commission and spiffs: often a single amount with no hours. Ask for the statement behind it.
• Paid time off, holiday, on-call: each at whatever rate the policy says.

Why: a rate typed wrong once in payroll setup repeats forever. A raise that took effect mid-period should show two lines at two rates.

Step 4: Check what the overtime was figured on

This is the error most worth knowing, because it hides in plain sight. The FLSA overtime premium is based on the regular rate, which includes nondiscretionary bonuses, commissions and spiffs earned in that workweek (29 CFR 778.208 through 778.211). A spiff is nondiscretionary when it was promised in advance for hitting a defined target, which is how almost every spiff in this trade works. So in a week with overtime and a spiff, the overtime line should be worth slightly more than 1.5 times your base rate.

The method the regulations use: add all straight-time pay for the week (every hour at its rate, plus spiffs and commission), divide by total hours worked to get the regular rate, then pay an extra half of that rate for each overtime hour (29 CFR 778.110 and 778.111). Payroll systems handle this automatically only when the spiff is coded as an earning that feeds the regular rate. Coded as a "bonus" with the wrong setting, it gets skipped.

Flagged in the same clause as the rule: a narrow exemption for commissioned employees of retail or service establishments (FLSA section 7(i)) can remove overtime altogether for some commission-paid techs, and an employer may pay a spiff later and recompute the overtime then (29 CFR 778.209). Neither removes the obligation silently; if your employer relies on either, they should be able to say so.

Step 5: Separate pre-tax deductions from after-tax ones

Deductions come in two kinds, and which kind changes what your taxes are figured on.

• Pre-tax deductions come out before some or all taxes. A traditional 401(k) deferral reduces your federal income tax wages but not your Social Security and Medicare wages. A health, dental or vision premium paid through a Section 125 cafeteria plan usually reduces both.
• After-tax deductions come out of pay that was already taxed: a Roth 401(k) deferral, a uniform rental, a tool purchase payroll is collecting for, a garnishment.

Why it matters: if a cafeteria-plan premium shows up as after-tax, you are paying tax on money that should never have been taxed. And any deduction for something that benefits the employer (tools the employer requires, uniforms, a damaged-equipment charge) cannot bring your pay for the week below minimum wage or cut into overtime owed under the FLSA (29 CFR 531.35). Many states go further and restrict which deductions are allowed at all, often requiring your written authorization.

Step 6: Check each tax against its own base

• Social Security: 6.2 percent of Social Security wages, until your year-to-date wages reach the annual wage base, which is indexed every year. After that the line goes to zero for the rest of the calendar year.
• Medicare: 1.45 percent of Medicare wages with no cap, plus an Additional Medicare Tax of 0.9 percent that the employer must withhold on wages above a threshold the law fixes and does not index (IRS Form 8959 instructions).
• Federal income tax: set by your Form W-4, not by a flat percentage, so you cannot check it to the cent from the stub. You can check that it is consistent from period to period and that it moved when you filed a new W-4.
• State and local: by your state's withholding tables, and for a tech working across a state line, possibly two states.

A 2026 note: federal tax law signed in July 2025 added a temporary deduction for qualified overtime pay, generally the FLSA-required premium half of overtime, for tax years 2025 through 2028, with an annual cap and income limits. Payroll does not apply it for you: it is claimed on your return, though from 2026 you can account for it on a new Form W-4 to lower your withholding, and a state's daily-overtime premium that the FLSA does not require may not count. Check the current IRS page on the overtime deduction before you file; this is the kind of rule that gets clarified year to year.

Step 7: Use year-to-date as a running audit

The year-to-date (YTD) column is cumulative. Last stub's YTD plus this stub's current amount should equal this stub's YTD, line by line. Why: a mismatch means a correction was posted, a prior check was voided, or something was double-counted. YTD hours are also how you will check your vesting and eligibility hour counts for a retirement plan, and how you will check your W-2 in January.

Worked example: one week, one spiff, one wrong line

Here is a weekly stub for a tech paid hourly, with every amount expressed as a multiple of the tech's base hourly rate, written R, so the arithmetic works the same at any pay level. The week: 46.5 hours worked, one spiff for selling an air-quality add-on worth 4 hours of base pay.

PERIOD 10/05 - 10/11      CHECK DATE 10/16
EARNINGS        HOURS   RATE      CURRENT
Regular         40.00   1.00 R    40.00 R
Overtime         6.50   1.50 R     9.75 R
Spiff IAQ                          4.00 R
GROSS                             53.75 R
PRE-TAX
Health (S125)                      3.00 R
401(k) 5%                          2.69 R
TAXES
Social Sec 6.2%                    3.15 R
Medicare 1.45%                     0.74 R
Federal (W-4)                      varies
AFTER-TAX
Uniform rental                     0.50 R

Hours: 40.00 plus 6.50 is 46.50, matching the tech's own log. Pass.

The overtime line: it was paid at 1.50 R, which ignores the spiff. Redo it the regulation's way. Straight-time pay is 46.5 hours at 1.00 R, which is 46.50 R, plus the spiff of 4.00 R, for 50.50 R. Divide by 46.5 hours: the regular rate is 1.086 R. The overtime premium is half of that, 0.543 R, times 6.5 hours, which is 3.53 R. Correct gross is 50.50 R plus 3.53 R, which is 54.03 R. The stub shows 53.75 R. The shortfall is 54.03 R minus 53.75 R, or 0.28 R, a little over a quarter of an hour's base pay. Small, but it repeats every week with overtime and a spiff, and it is owed.

The deductions, checked on the stub's own gross: the 401(k) at 5 percent of 53.75 R is 2.69 R, which matches. Social Security and Medicare should be figured on gross minus the Section 125 premium only, because the 401(k) does not reduce those wages: 53.75 R minus 3.00 R is 50.75 R. At 6.2 percent that is 3.15 R, and at 1.45 percent it is 0.74 R. Both match. So the tax lines were built correctly on the wrong gross; once the overtime is fixed, every percentage line will move with it.

One more question: whether the 401(k) percentage should apply to the spiff depends on how your plan document defines compensation. Some plans exclude bonuses. That is a plan question, not a payroll error, and the summary plan description answers it.

What changes the reading

• You are paid flat rate or commission. The stub may show no clock hours at all, which on a state list like California's is itself a defect for a nonexempt tech. The FLSA minimum-wage and overtime floor still runs on hours worked, so the stub should let you find them.
• You work in two states in one period. Expect state withholding for each, or one state plus a reciprocity agreement. Withholding only for your home state while you worked weeks in another is worth a question.
• A correction stub appears. A negative line with a reference to a prior period is normal when payroll fixes an error. Check that the YTD absorbed it once, not twice.

When you find something, raise it in writing with the period, the line and your numbers, the way the worked example lays them out. See related: Raising a Paycheck Error.

References

• U.S. Department of Labor, FLSA recordkeeping (29 CFR Part 516) and regular rate rules (29 CFR Part 778)
• 29 CFR 531.35, wages paid "free and clear"
• California Labor Code 226, itemized wage statements; your own state labor department's wage statement page
• IRS Publication 15 (Circular E) and Form 8959 instructions; IRS guidance on the qualified overtime deduction
• See related: Tracking Your Own Hours and Pay, How Flat-Rate Pay Works From the Tech's Side, Raising a Paycheck Error, Commission and Spiff Math a Tech Should Check