Are employers required to provide you with a lost pay stub?

If you have lost one do they have to provide you with SOMETHING that shows your deductions?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me!

No to both. You were provided with it once. That's all the law requires. If the employer offers online pay stub viewing, you can go in and print off as many as you like.

Nothing in NC General Statutes §95-25.13 suggests one time and one time only.

Where does it say that the employer is required by law to produce replacements, then?

Certainly the employer MAY provide replacements. The question is whether or not they MUST.

Agreed with CBG but as a long time payroll person, this is IMO a stupid fight for the employer to pick. Paychecks and stubs are a one part, one time stub. If they get lost, they are gone forever. But they will get lost, and employees will ask for replacements. And if they do not get replacements, they will whine to everyone else in the company, and payroll will be wasting time defending their actions, and the big boss will be asking why payroll is dragging him/her into this nonsense. And big companies are in many states and trying to figure out which states allow one to cheese pare this sort of thing and which do not is a waste of time. Why bother? Any payroll program worth using has a report writer. Every time payroll gets a repetive request (like this), just write a report, and use the report as needed. To any modestly competent payroll department, this is (at most) a 60 second request.

And payroll is suposed to be a service organization. They might be able to get away with doing a bad job (for a while), but they will not be supported when they need to be.

This action may be legal, but IMO, it is unprofessional.

I know of at least one major payroll service, used by many, many employers, where if a paystub is lost that's it; no replacement is possible. Or so they claim. No matter how hard Payroll may pressure them.

Granted, I don't know about the report writer features; in my one and only venture into Payroll that was still fairly new. But I've tried to get copies of paystubs for employees from this service and been told, flatly, No.

Where does it say that the employer is required by law to produce replacements, then?


It's in the same place where it says that "furnish" means originals only.

And in any event, the stub is still discoverable, and it would need to be produced to the labor commissioner on demand.

I know of at least one major payroll service, used by many, many employers, where if a paystub is lost that's it; no replacement is possible. Or so they claim. No matter how hard Payroll may pressure them.

Granted, I don't know about the report writer features; in my one and only venture into Payroll that was still fairly new. But I've tried to get copies of paystubs for employees from this service and been told, flatly, No.

That is true pretty much everywhere. I can remember taking photocopies of check registers, cutting away the other employees from the copy with scissors, and giving what is left to the employee instead of the stub. It is easier to just learn how to use the report writer, write the report once, and then run the report as needed. The more employees the company has, then more requests to do this you get. Besides, any time one has to reissue the check, it is a very useful document to be able to generate to support the re-issued payment.

The payroll service is just the employer's agent. The employer cannot allow the agent to dictate what the employer does or does not do. And the report writer is your best friend if you give it a chance to be.

As I said, at the time I am talking about the report writer was quite new and was not always an available option. We resolved the problem with the payroll register most of the time. The employees generally did not find that an acceptable answer.

We fired the payroll service at at least one company but we can't force them to produce what they refuse to produce.

I do not do payroll any more. I guarantee you that I will never do payroll again. That's what I keep you and Patty around for.