Paystub Generator for Small Business

If you have a handful of employees, full-service payroll can feel like a lot of software for a short list of names. But your staff still need stubs that add up, many states require them, and the stubs will be compared to W-2s in January. This page is for owners who want accurate stubs at small-business volume, and who want to be clear about what a stub does and doesn't cover.

Where pay stubs fit in your payroll duties

Duty	Who handles it	Where PayStubShop helps
Collect Form W-4 (and state forms like CA DE 4 or NY IT-2104)	You	Stubs apply the W-4 entries you enter
Calculate gross pay, withholding and net pay	You	Federal, Social Security, Medicare, plus TX, FL, CA and NY state lines
Give employees a pay statement	You; required in many states	Yes: stubs with a free direct deposit advice slip
Deposit withheld taxes (EFTPS)	You	No
File Form 941 quarterly, Form 940 annually	You	No
Furnish W-2s and file Copy A with the SSA	You	Employee and employer W-2 copies; you file Copy A
Report new hires to your state registry	You	No
State unemployment registration and returns	You	No

The honest pitch: we make the statements and year-end recipient copies right, quickly and cheaply. The deposits and filings are still yours, through the IRS, SSA and your state agencies.

Employer taxes that don't appear on the stub

A stub shows what's taken out of the employee's pay. Your own costs sit on top:

• Employer Social Security and Medicare match the employee's 6.2% and 1.45%, so a $2,000 paycheck costs you another $153.00.
• FUTA is 6.0% on the first $7,000 of each employee's wages, reduced to 0.6% when you qualify for the full 5.4% state credit. That's at most $42 per employee per year.
• State unemployment tax depends on your state's rate for your business.

Budget for these separately. They never show on the employee's stub.

Worked example: a three-person shop, paid biweekly

A bakery in Texas pays three employees every other Friday:

Employee	Pay	2026 W-4	Gross per period	Federal tax	Net pay
Lead baker	Salary, $52,000/yr	Single	$2,000.00	$156.15	$1,690.85
Counter staff	$16.00/hr, 60 hrs	Single	$960.00	$34.08	$852.48
Delivery driver	$17.50/hr, 70 hrs	Head of household	$1,225.00	$29.62	$1,101.67

Each net pay above is gross minus federal tax, Social Security at 6.2% and Medicare at 1.45%. Texas has no state income tax. The driver earns more than the counter staff but has less federal tax withheld, because the head of household table starts taxing at a higher income than the single table.

Three stubs per pay date cost $19.47 as one order. If you build two pay dates at once, six stubs cost $32.34. At year-end, three W-2 sets cost $14.99 each, in the same kind of batch order.

Paying yourself

How owners get paid depends on the business structure:

• Sole proprietors and single-member LLCs generally aren't employees of their own business. They take draws, not wages, so there's no stub to make for the owner.
• S corporation shareholders who work in the business are employees for payroll purposes. The IRS says the corporation must pay them reasonable compensation as wages, subject to employment taxes, before making non-wage distributions. A stub documents those wages and shows the withholding, and the wages still run through your payroll deposits and Form 941.

If you need stubs to show your own income to a lender, read our loan application guide first. Lenders usually treat owners of 25% or more as self-employed and rely on tax returns.

Keep the records

The FLSA requires payroll records to be kept for at least three years, and time cards and wage rate tables for two. States go further: New York requires six years of payroll records, and California requires a copy of each wage statement for at least three years. Download each pay date's stubs as a separate PDF and file them by date. Our downloads stay available for 90 days, so save your own copies.

Make recurring payroll easier

• Payday reminder: one email the day before each pay date with last period's details filled in. Update the hours, check the preview, pay once. Cancel or reschedule anytime. It's never a subscription.
• Free corrections for 30 days for typos in the same stubs and pay periods.
• Mixed baskets: put stubs, W-2s, 1099-NECs for contractors and free prepared W-9s in one checkout.

Check whether your state requires stubs, and what they must show, in pay stub laws by state.