How to check your payslip when your hours change every week

Start with the hours. A payslip for hourly or shift work has to say how many hours it pays, and that's the number to put next to your own record for the same dates. In the UK threads I read, the hourly rate was almost never the problem. The hours were.

What your payslip has to show

Every employee and worker has the right to a written payslip on or before payday. It must show your gross pay, your deductions and your net pay. If your pay varies with the time you work, it must also show the number of hours you're being paid for, either as one total or split by type of work or rate. Two of those rules are newer, from 6 April 2019. The right in section 8 of the Employment Rights Act was extended from employees to workers, which takes in most people on zero-hours and agency contracts, and the hours line was added.

1. 1Pay period. The dates this payslip covers. Check your own record for exactly these dates, because hours after the cut-off go on the next one.
2. 2Hours and rate. If your pay depends on the hours you work, the payslip has to show the hours you're paid for. It's the first number to check.
3. 3Enhancements. Night, weekend or bank holiday extras. Check the hours and the rate against your contract. Some employers pay them a month late.
4. 4Holiday pay at 12.07%. If your holiday pay is rolled up, it has to sit on its own line like this. That applies to irregular-hours and part-year workers in Great Britain.
5. 5Gross pay. Everything before deductions. This is the figure to compare with your own record or with ShiftWallet.
6. 6Deductions. Income tax under your tax code, National Insurance and pension. They depend on your situation, so they won't tell you if hours are missing.
7. 7Net pay. What reaches your bank. Comparing it with your hours almost always misleads, because the deductions are already gone.

The trouble is having something to hold that line up against. In a thread about an agency that started charging to see past shifts, the person who posted it added:

"I have no way to compare what is on the wage slips to my clock in and out times, or to see what times they have amended."

r/UKJobs, July 2026

The rest of this guide assumes you keep your own record of each shift, written down when it happens.

Minutes are where it leaks

Payroll works in decimal hours. Your clock works in hours and minutes. Somewhere between the two, minutes go missing:

"Monday I worked 7 hours and 59 minutes based on the clock in at work, and my agency calculates it as 7.59 out of 8.00 hours, basically missing 0.49."

r/UKJobs, June 2025

To turn minutes into decimals you divide by 60. 59 minutes is 0.98 of an hour, so 7 hours 59 minutes is 7.98 hours. Typed as 7.59, the shift loses 0.39 of an hour, about 24 minutes. The poster's 0.49 overstates it a little, but at £12.71 an hour the real 0.39 is still £5.00 a shift, and if payroll keys in minutes that way it can happen on every shift that doesn't end on the hour.

Doing this every month takes less time than it sounds. Someone on r/AskUK who does:

"Takes maybe 10 minutes out of each month and has saved me a few hundred in the past 18 months"

r/AskUK, January 2026

Pay periods and enhancements that turn up late

Before you decide hours are missing, check the dates printed on the payslip. Some monthly payrolls close part way through the month, so whatever you worked after the cut-off lands on next month's slip. A retail temp in r/UKJobs who thought 22 hours had gone missing came back with this:

"i'm an idiot it turns out it was two pay periods"

r/UKJobs, December 2024

NHS staff and doctors run into the same thing with enhancements for unsocial hours, which often land a month after the shift. If your payslip jumps around, compare this month's enhancements with last month's rota. One doctor on r/doctorsUK:

"I find it impossible to properly work out if I'm being paid correctly as my payslip changes every month, by up to £600!!"

r/doctorsUK, April 2026

Rolled-up holiday pay

If you're on irregular hours and holiday is paid as you go, it has to be a separate line on every payslip, worth at least 12.07% of your pay for the period, and it's meant to sit on top of a basic rate that already reaches the minimum wage. A basic rate that only clears £12.71 with the holiday line added is worth raising with payroll. The 12.07% holiday pay calculator works out what the line should be and goes through the minimum wage rule in full.

On a salary? Divide by the hours you really work

Salaried staff tend to stop checking, and in hospitality that's a mistake. A restaurant manager on £28,000 asked about it in r/UKJobs and got a one-line answer:

"Once you hit 43 hours in a week you are below minimum wage."

r/UKJobs, July 2026

Here's the sum. £28,000 divided by 52 is £538.46 a week. Divide that by 43 hours and you get £12.52 an hour, under £12.71, the National Living Wage rate for anyone 21 or over from April 2026. At 48 hours it's £11.22. On that salary you drop below the minimum at about 42 hours 20 minutes a week.

Treat it as a rough check. HMRC works out the minimum wage for salaried workers with its own rules over each pay reference period, so for the exact answer use the GOV.UK minimum wage calculator. If the rough version comes out under the line, do the exact one. The other rates from April 2026 are £10.85 at 18 to 20 and £8.00 under 18, and £8.00 for apprentices under 19 or in the first year of their apprenticeship.

Overtime, nights and bank holidays

UK law doesn't give you a right to extra pay for overtime, for night work or for working a bank holiday. Any higher rate comes from your contract. What the law does say is that your average pay across all the hours you work can't fall below the minimum wage. So check your contract for the rates you were promised and hold the payslip up against those. What a friend in another job gets doesn't come into it.

Who to go to

1. Payroll, in writing. Send your own record and ask for the hours they have for each shift in that period. An email gives you a date and a copy.
2. Ask to see your payment records. You can ask your employer in writing to see your payment records, take someone with you and make copies. Employers have to keep minimum wage records for at least six years.
3. Acas. The Acas helpline is on 0300 123 1100, Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
4. HMRC, for the minimum wage. HMRC enforces the minimum wage on behalf of the Fair Work Agency, and you can complain through the pay and work rights form. You can ask them not to tell your employer who complained, and someone else can complain for you with your permission.

You can also take a claim to an employment tribunal yourself. Before you do, you have to notify Acas, which offers early conciliation first.

Doing the same check in ShiftWallet

ShiftWallet logs each shift to the minute, so the 7.59 problem doesn't come up on your side. With the UK settings it starts with no overtime and no night premium, because the law doesn't require either, and a 20 minute unpaid break. A 25% night premium between 11pm and 6am is a free switch, and your own contract's rules need Pro. The bank holiday list for England and Wales is built in. Scottish and Northern Irish ones you add by hand.

If your holiday is rolled up, type 12.07 as the holiday pay percentage and it's added to every hour. On payday, enter the gross from the payslip and ShiftWallet checks it against the shifts you logged for that period. Within 1%, or within £1, it counts as a match. Your first full check costs nothing.

Since version 2.4 the check also knows your pay calendar (the cut-off date, and enhancements paid a month late) and tells you what could explain a gap before you raise it. It still has blind spots. The Pro estimate of Income Tax and NI works from the standard tax code and 2024/25 tables and doesn't know Scottish rates. And it can't see your employer's clock-in system. What you logged is all it knows.