What is a payslip?

What has to be on a payslip?

The law requires an itemised pay statement for every employee and worker, given on or before the day they are paid. It must show gross pay, each deduction and what it is for, and net pay. Where pay varies with hours worked, the number of hours must be shown too.

In practice a payslip also carries the tax code, the National Insurance number, the pay period, the year-to-date totals, and the employer's pension contribution, which is not a deduction from pay but appears for completeness.

It can be paper or electronic, and most now are. What matters is that the employee can get at it — a payslip that lives only in a portal they lose access to when they leave is a common source of P60 disputes.

What does it look like in practice?

A café pays a supervisor a monthly salary of £2,000, and this month she worked an extra shift worth £150. Gross pay is £2,150. Deductions come to £430 — income tax under her tax code, employee National Insurance, and her pension contribution; the split between them depends on her code and the current rates. Net pay, the figure that lands in her bank account, is £1,720.

Her employer also pays employer's National Insurance and a pension contribution on top of the £2,150. Neither reduces her pay, but both are the employer's real cost, and the pension one is shown on the slip.

What is the difference between a payslip and a P60?

A payslip covers one pay period. The P60 is the year-end summary of all of them, issued once a year after 5 April, and it is the document a mortgage lender or HMRC asks for. If the payslips and the P60 do not agree, the payroll records, not the documents, are what get checked.