Guide

How to check your paycheck against your hours

Updated October 23, 2026

Checking a paycheck comes down to rebuilding its gross pay from your own record of hours, then comparing it line by line. Here’s how to do it by hand, with a worked example you can follow.

This guide uses United States federal overtime rules as its example. Your state, your employment agreement or your employer’s policy may add rules, so treat this as a way to understand the numbers, not as legal advice.

What you need

• Your own record of hours: clock-in and clock-out times for each shift, and your breaks.
• Your pay rate, and the date any rate change took effect.
• Your pay schedule: the pay period dates and the day your workweek starts.
• The overtime rule for your job, for example time and a half after 40 hours in a workweek.
• Your pay stub for the period you’re checking.

Step 1: Compare gross pay, not take-home pay

The amount deposited in your account is net pay: what’s left after taxes, benefits and other deductions. Those depend on things your hours don’t tell you, so start with gross pay, usually shown as “Gross” or “Total earnings” on the pay stub. The earnings section above it typically lists hours and amounts for regular pay, overtime and anything else you were paid.

Step 2: Line up the pay period

Your pay stub covers a pay period, such as two weeks ending on a Sunday, and it’s often paid several days after the period ends. Use the period dates printed on the stub, not the payday. Check shifts near the start and end of the period carefully: a shift worked on the last day may appear on the next paycheck, depending on how your employer assigns shifts that cross a cutoff or run past midnight.

Step 3: Work out the paid hours for each shift

For each shift, take the time from clock-in to clock-out and subtract any unpaid breaks. If your employer rounds punches, apply the same rule; see timecard rounding explained for how that works. Work in hours and minutes, and convert to decimal hours only at the end of the period:

For example, a shift from 08:02 to 16:17 with a 30-minute unpaid break is 8h 15m elapsed and 7h 45m paid. As a decimal, 45 minutes is 0.75 hours, so that’s 7.75 hours.

Step 4: Split regular and overtime hours by workweek

Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), covered non-exempt employees must get overtime pay of at least one and a half times their regular rate for hours over 40 in a workweek. A workweek is a fixed, recurring period of 168 hours, seven consecutive 24-hour periods, and it doesn’t have to start on Monday or match the calendar week.

Hours can’t be averaged over two or more weeks. So if you’re paid every two weeks, split the period into its two workweeks and work out overtime for each one separately. Then add the weeks together.

Step 5: Multiply and add

The overtime pay calculator does steps 4 and 5 for one workweek.

Add any pay that applies to you, such as a night or weekend differential, or tips and bonuses that your employer pays through payroll. Tips can appear on a pay stub in different ways, so compare them as their own line.

Worked example

Sam earns $18.00 an hour, with overtime at time and a half after 40 hours in a workweek that starts on Monday. Sam is paid every two weeks, and this pay period runs from Monday, September 28 to Sunday, October 11.

Notice that averaging the two weeks would give 38 hours a week and no overtime at all. Splitting by workweek is what finds the 6 overtime hours.

The pay stub is $54.00 lower. The regular line matches, so the difference is in overtime: 2 hours × $27.00 = $54.00, which accounts for all of it. That tells Sam exactly what to ask about: which 2 overtime hours in the week of September 28 aren’t on the paycheck.

Step 6: Compare line by line

Start with the gross amount. If it differs, compare each line on the stub, hours first and then amounts, to find where the difference comes from. Common, often ordinary, explanations include:

• A missing or partial shift, such as a missed punch or a forgotten clock-out.
• A different cutoff: a shift counted in the next pay period.
• An unpaid break deducted automatically, even on a day you didn’t take one.
• Rounding of clock-in and clock-out times.
• Overtime counted with a different workweek start or rule.
• A rate change that took effect on a different date than you expected.
• Premiums, differentials, tips or bonuses that were included differently, or will be paid later.

If the numbers still don’t match

Ask your manager or payroll team, and bring the dates, your times and the line that differs. Many differences have simple explanations, such as a correction on the next paycheck. If you still have questions about the rules that apply to you, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division or your state’s labor department can explain them.

Employers covered by the FLSA must keep accurate records of hours worked and wages paid. Keeping your own record as well, with your exact times, makes it much easier to check each paycheck and to explain a question clearly.