Payslips

Employ­ers in the Lanark­shire area should be aware of the legal require­ments con­cern­ing payslips – here is the Rus­sell & Rus­sell guide to the essen­tials…

Most employ­ees receive payslips and take them for grant­ed, but what are the legal require­ments?

All work­ers, includ­ing those work­ing part-time and tem­porar­i­ly, are enti­tled to receive a writ­ten payslip on or before their pay day. A work­er is any­one who per­son­al­ly per­forms work or ser­vices to an organ­i­sa­tion, under an employ­ment con­tract or any oth­er type of con­tract. The Employ­ment Rights Act (ERA) sets out the required con­tents of a payslip:

• Gross pay
• Amounts and pur­pose of vari­able and fixed deduc­tions
• Net pay
• Method of pay­ment (where dif­fer­ent amounts are paid in dif­fer­ent ways)

In prac­tice, most employ­ers give much more infor­ma­tion than the basic statu­to­ry require­ments. For instance, it is obvi­ous­ly good prac­tice to analyse gross pay to show:

• Basic pay
• Num­ber of hours worked and rate paid (if work­er works vari­able hours or over­time)
• Bonus, com­mis­sion, etc.
• Spe­cial allowances
• Sick pay (includ­ing Statu­to­ry Sick Pay)
• Parental pay (includ­ing Statu­to­ry Mater­ni­ty Pay, Statu­to­ry Pater­ni­ty Pay and Statu­to­ry Adop­tion Pay)
• Hol­i­day pay
• Employ­er’s and employ­ee’s pen­sion con­tri­bu­tions

It is also usu­al to show the peri­od cov­ered by the pay­ment, and the date of pay­ment.

You can sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce queries from employ­ees by giv­ing basic details such as:

• Nation­al insur­ance num­ber
• PAYE tax code
• Tax Office name and ref­er­ence

If you are an employ­er in the Lanark­shire area we can pro­vide sup­port and advice – con­tact Rus­sell & Rus­sell.