How to Email Pay Stubs in QuickBooks Online

Sending pay stubs to your team is a fundamental part of running payroll, but printing and hand-delivering them each pay period is time-consuming and inefficient. Fortunately, QuickBooks Online provides a straightforward way to deliver pay stubs electronically. This guide details the complete process, from setting up employees for online access to sending pay stubs and troubleshooting common hiccups.

Why Go Digital with Pay Stubs?

Switching from paper to electronic pay stubs offers significant advantages beyond just saving paper. It modernizes a critical part of your interaction with employees and improves your record-keeping at the same time.

• Efficiency and Time Savings: The most immediate benefit is eliminating the tedious cycle of printing, folding, stuffing envelopes, and distributing pay stubs. Running payroll takes time, and automating documentation delivery gives you some of that time back. For businesses with remote or field employees, it completely removes the logistical burden of mailing or coordinating pickup.
• Enhanced Security: A paper pay stub left on a desk or lost in transit can easily expose sensitive personal information, including an employee's Social Security number, address, and earnings. QuickBooks uses a secure employee portal, which means pay stubs are protected behind a password-protected account, minimizing the risk of unauthorized viewing.
• 24/7 Employee Access: When an employee needs a pay stub for a loan application, rental agreement, or proof of income, they no longer have to request it from you. By giving them online access, they can view, download, and print any of their current or historical pay stubs whenever they need them. This self-service model empowers your team and reduces administrative requests.
• Simplified Record-Keeping: Digital delivery creates an automatic, clean digital archive of every pay stub issued. Both you and your employee have access to the same organized records within your respective QuickBooks accounts. This makes it incredibly easy to find a specific pay stub from a past period without digging through filing cabinets.
• Eco-Friendly Operations: Reducing paper consumption is a simple way for any business to lessen its environmental footprint. While it may seem small, eliminating dozens or hundreds of paper stubs every year contributes to more sustainable business practices.

The Foundation: Inviting Employees to QuickBooks Workforce

Before you can "email" pay stubs, you need to provide your employees with secure access to view them online. In QuickBooks Online, this is accomplished through a tool called QuickBooks Workforce. Think of it as a private online portal for each employee where they can see their paychecks, deductions, and tax forms like W-2s. Once an employee is set up, they will automatically be notified when a new pay stub is available. This initial setup is the most important step for a smooth, automated process.

Here’s how to get your team set up:

1. Navigate to the Employees Section: Log in to your QuickBooks Online account. From the left-hand navigation menu, select Payroll, and then click on the Employees tab. This brings up your master list of all current team members.
2. Select an Employee: Find and click on the name of the employee you want to invite. This will open their individual profile page containing their pay details, tax information, and other personal settings.
3. Send the Invitation: Within the employee’s profile, look for a section related to “Personal info” or a prompt that says "Invite to Workforce." Click the link or button to invite the employee. You’ll need to confirm their email address is correct, as this is where the invitation will be sent.
   If the employee is already invited, you'll see a status like "Invited" or "Active" instead of a button. If needed, you can resend the invitation from here.
4. The Employee Accepts the Invite: Your employee will receive an email from Intuit with a link to set up their QuickBooks Workforce account. They will be guided to create a unique password and may have to verify their identity. It’s a good practice to notify your team to be on the lookout for this email so it doesn’t get lost in their spam folder.

Once an employee has accepted the invitation and created their account, they are officially connected. Every time you run payroll, QuickBooks Online will automatically publish their new pay stub to their Workforce portal and send them an email notification that it's ready for viewing.

Running Payroll and Delivering New Pay Stubs

With your employees connected via Workforce, the process of "emailing" pay stubs becomes largely automatic. The 'email' is the notification that tells them their pay information has been updated and is available in their secure portal. The primary task is to run your payroll as you normally would.

Here’s the standard workflow:

1. From the Payroll menu, select Run payroll.
2. Enter hours, salaries, bonuses, and any other relevant pay information for each employee for the current pay period.
3. Click Preview payroll to review all the numbers one last time. Check to ensure gross pay, deductions, taxes, and net pay are all correct.
4. Once you are confident everything is accurate, click Submit payroll.
5. After submission, QuickBooks Online processes the payments and tax calculations. At the same time, it generates the corresponding pay stub for each employee and makes it available in their Workforce account.
6. An automated email is then sent to each employee enabled with a workforce account informing them that their new pay stub is ready to be viewed. The email itself does not contain the pay stub as an attachment for security reasons; it simply serves as a notification with a link to log in.

Manually Sending or Resending a Pay Stub

What if you need to email a pay stub directly as a PDF? This might be necessary for a terminated employee who no longer needs portal access or for a specific one-off request, like for a mortgage application. While Workforce is the preferred method, you can still download a PDF and email it yourself.

1. Locate the Paycheck History: Go to Payroll > Employees. Click the name of the employee whose pay stub you need.
2. Find the "Paycheck list": Inside the employee’s profile, find and click on the Paycheck list link. This displays a comprehensive history of every paycheck issued to that employee.
3. Select a Paycheck: Find the specific paycheck you need in the list and click on it to see the detailed view.
4. View and Download the Pay Stub: At the top or bottom of the paycheck details screen, you should see an option to View Pay Stub or a printer icon. Clicking this will generate a printable PDF version of the pay stub in a new browser tab.
5. Save the PDF: Use your browser's function to save or download the PDF file to your computer. Be sure to name it something clear, like "Jane Doe Pay Stub 2023-11-15.pdf".
6. Email Securely: Open your email client, compose a new message, and attach the downloaded PDF. Before you send it, consider the security implications. An unencrypted email with a pay stub attachment is not secure. A best practice is to password-protect the PDF before attaching it. Most PDF software (like Adobe Acrobat) has this feature, or you can use reputable online tools. Important: Communicate the password to the employee through a separate channel, like a text message or phone call—never in the same email.

Troubleshooting Common Pay Stub Email Issues

Even with a streamlined process, problems can sometimes arise. Here are solutions to the most frequent issues users encounter when sending pay stubs from QuickBooks Online.

Issue: The employee says they didn't receive the pay stub notification.

• Has the invitation been accepted? This is the most common reason. Check the employee’s status in the Employees tab. If it still says "Invited," it means they have not yet set up their Workforce account. You can click on their profile and select Resend invitation.
• Is the email address correct? A simple typo can derail the whole process. Double-check the employee’s email address in their profile and correct it if needed.
• Did they check their Spam/Junk folder? Advise the employee to check these folders in their email client and mark any messages from Intuit or QuickBooks as "Not Spam" to ensure future notifications are delivered to their primary inbox.

Issue: You get a request for a physical copy or a direct PDF email.

• Re-explain the benefits of Workforce: The employee may not understand that the portal gives them instant access to all their records. A quick walkthrough of the benefits — full history availability, W-2 access at year-end—can often win them over.
• Follow the manual download process: If they still need a PDF for a lender or other reason, follow the steps outlined in the "Manually Sending or Resending a Pay Stub" section above. Remember to emphasize security when sending documents.

Issue: An ex-employee needs access to their final pay stub.

• Their Workforce account remains active: When you terminate an employee in QuickBooks Payroll, their Workforce account remains accessible to them for at least one year. They can still log in and retrieve their pay stubs and W-2s using their existing credentials. You can reassure them of this.
• Manually send the stub if needed: If the employee has trouble accessing their account or just needs the final stub quickly, it’s often easiest to download the PDF for their final paycheck and email it to them directly (with password protection) as a courtesy.

Final Thoughts

Distributing pay stubs through QuickBooks Online by inviting employees to QuickBooks Workforce is a secure, efficient process that automates a routine administrative chore. Setting everyone up in the Workforce portal not only streamlines payday but also empowers your team by giving them self-service access to their complete pay history and tax forms.

Executing workflows like payroll correctly is crucial, but it's only half the battle. When complex tax questions come up over withholdings, deductions, or compliance rules, you need answers you can trust. Instead of spending hours hunting through IRS documents, we developed Feather AI to give tax and accounting professionals instant, citation-backed answers from authoritative regulations so you can focus on expert guidance, not just clerical tasks.