Construction industry pay stubs

A pay stub is a kind of document that is usually attached to your employee’s paycheck. It provides employees with the details of their current pay or salary as well as the YTD amount. Some basic information that is typically found on the top of a pay stub would be the employee’s name, employer, date of issue of the document, employee’s address, and Social Security number. 

If you’re in charge of doing construction payroll at your company, you already know that there are a lot of factors such as union benefits, multiple taxes, and the current wage rates that go into calculating the amount of money an employee receives. 

Looking at a typical pay stub, the first thing you notice is that it’s divided into sections containing various abbreviations. Each one of these sections deals with a particular area of employee pay.  

What you need to know

The section labeled “Accruals” summarizes the current and YTD regular and overtime hours as well as vacation and “paid time off” accruals. If an employee is salaried, it will show those earnings vs hours.

“Earning Types” is the section of the pay stub that lists the various earning types such as regular and overtime hours if the employee has multiple pay rates depending on their trade, shift, or jobsite. The Wage Summary section goes into more detail about the regular vs overtime hours, showing the total earning for each pay rate. 

“Deductions” are the amounts that are withdrawn from an employee’s gross pay. These could include federal, state, and local taxes, FICA, annuity/pension contributions/401k programs, insurance premiums, flexible healthcare spending accounts. Both current and YTD deduction amounts are listed.

The last two sections on a construction pay stub contain current and YTD gross earnings and the net pay after deductions.

The most important part

Of course, for employees, the most important section of construction industry payroll pay stubs is the net pay or an employee’s take home pay. But, with multiple profit centers and decentralized production, the person doing the construction accounting has to deal with complex and unique payrolls in situations where there are:

  • Prevailing wage requirements and certified payroll reporting
  • Multiple pay rate, multiple states, and multiple localities
  • Rigorous compliance reporting

Entering into a partnership with a construction-specific CPA firm can be a great help with construction accounting tasks, in general, and specifically, with construction payroll. At GYL CPAs and Advisors, we offer a wide range of financial services for construction companies including, but not limited to:

  • Accounting department services
  • Tax services
  • Assurance services
  • Financial analysis
  • Employment search
  • Financial planning…and more