You are thrilled. You have a new job and everything is going well until pay day. You see the money hit your bank account, but you have no idea how it was calculated. If you are an employee (more later), your employer has to give you a pay slip either on the day you are paid or before. It needs to be clear and tell you the gross and net pay, and it should say what HMRC income tax code has been applied to your pay. It is common today for employers to use an on line portal to communicate with employees. There has been no case law on these yet, and it is not clear if giving you access to the portal meets the requirement that the employer has to give employees a pay slip. What if you are off sick with no access to the portal? Or away on business? Or a remote worker with no access to the portal? In these cases it is reasonable to ask your employer to email you the pay slip. As of April 2019, there is good news for workers, zero hour workers and agency workers. The same obligations to employees will extend to you, and the employer must give you a pay slip. In addition, from April 2019 if you are paid hourly, your pay slip must state your hourly rate and the number of hours for which you are being paid and the pay period. Again, if you are unhappy with the method used by the employer to communicate the pay slip, remember that the obligation is on the employer to give it to you, and ask for it to be emailed and open an email folder to keep them safe. A more obvious point is also check that its right! We get a surprising number of clients who do not read their pay slips. Make sure you understand what all the deductions are for and what the abbreviations mean – they can be really confusing. It is so much easier to sort out mistakes early on and don’t be afraid to ask about anything you do not understand. It will usually be HR who deals with this and not your line manager, but he or she will be able to give you a contact if you don’t have one. If you keep asking your employer for a pay slip and it doesn’t make one available, you can refer it to ACAS for Early Conciliation. This is really easy and follow this link: https://ec.acas.org.uk/Submission/Create. In your employer still doesn’t give you a pay slip you can refer them to the Employment Tribunal, but make sure you do this within 3 months of when you were paid.