Paycom's model is employee self-service: workers at client companies manage their own payroll information and retrieve their own pay stubs through Paycom's application. For reviewers, that model has a practical upside—asking an applicant to download a fresh stub from their own Paycom access is usually a reasonable, low-friction request, and the resulting file tends to preserve the text layer and structure that verification depends on. Genuine Paycom-generated stubs typically present the client employer's identity up top, itemized earnings and withholdings, and paired current and year-to-date columns, though the exact appearance varies with each employer's configuration and Paycom's own evolution over time.
Before applying any check, internalize the two standing cautions. A stub that sails through every test is not thereby authentic: single-document consistency is achievable by a careful fabricator, which is precisely why leases, loans, and offers should escalate to independent employment verification. Conversely, a stub that trips a check is not thereby fraudulent: employers configure Paycom output differently, corrections and retroactive adjustments produce genuine irregularities, and rescanned or photographed copies shed structure through no fault of the applicant. Use every anomaly below to sharpen a follow-up request, never to close the file with an accusation.
A polished pay stub is not proof of authenticity. Unusual metadata is not proof of fraud. Every signal here is a reason to ask a better question—never a verdict.
What a genuine Paycom pay stub typically contains
Paycom stub formats vary by client configuration and change over time, so the traits below are commonly observed patterns, not a checklist a genuine stub must satisfy. The dependable core is numeric: real payroll's interlocking totals, rates, and accumulations behave the same way whatever the layout happens to look like:
- The client employer's name and address typically head the stub, with Paycom identified as the system in some configurations and absent from others; the employee's name and masked identifiers appear close by.
- An explicit pay-period range and a distinct pay date are printed, recurring on a stable cadence—biweekly and semimonthly being common among Paycom's mid-sized client base.
- Earnings rows are typed and tabulated; hourly lines expose rate and hours whose product equals the line amount, with overtime and supplemental pay broken out separately.
- Withholding lines are itemized—federal income tax, Social Security, Medicare, plus state and local lines where they apply—distinct from benefit deductions and retirement contributions.
- Current-period and year-to-date columns travel in pairs across earnings, taxes, and deductions, with YTD values accumulating in step with the calendar.
- Net pay is explicit and equals gross minus all itemized taxes and deductions, often near a payment reference or masked direct-deposit account indication.
- A stub downloaded from Paycom self-service is typically a text-layer PDF with selectable numbers; an image-only submission signals a capture or reconstruction and weakens the checks that follow.
Field-level checks anyone can run
1. Have the employee pull the stub themselves
Self-service is Paycom's design, so the strongest submission is the PDF the applicant downloads from their own access and forwards untouched. Prefer it over screenshots, printouts, and photos, and never request the applicant's credentials or offer to log in for them.
2. Take a SHA-256 fingerprint first
Hash the file before analysis so the reviewed document is cryptographically pinned. If anyone later supplies a “same” stub with different numbers, the digests settle the question. Ocolta's free scanner computes this locally during its scan.
3. Recompute net from the itemized lines
Total the earnings into gross, subtract each tax and each deduction, and require equality with the printed net to the cent. Editing one number on a stub while keeping every dependent total consistent is harder than it looks, and this equation is where slips surface.
4. Check every hourly multiplication
Rate times hours must equal each hourly row's amount, and overtime rates should bear a coherent premium relationship to base pay. Where a Paycom configuration shows units for other pay types, apply the same test. One broken product localizes the problem figure exactly.
5. Verify YTD arithmetic and direction
With consecutive stubs, current-period amounts added to the prior stub's YTD must reproduce this stub's YTD line by line, and no YTD figure may ever shrink within a year. Alone, a stub's YTD totals should be proportionate to how many pay periods the year has seen.
6. Assess withholding rates for plausibility
Social Security withholding commonly runs at 6.2% of Social Security taxable wages up to the annual wage base, and Medicare at 1.45%. Pre-tax benefits legitimately lower taxable wages beneath gross, so base the computation on the stub's own taxable figures where the configuration prints them.
7. Confirm the cadence holds up
Pay dates should repeat on the claimed schedule, and period boundaries should tile the calendar without gaps or overlaps. Where the file includes bank statements, payroll deposits should match the stubs' net amounts and arrive on or near the printed pay dates.
8. Watch payment reference progression
Check numbers, voucher IDs, or payment references on sequential Paycom stubs from one employer should advance consistently. Duplicates across different pay dates, or references formatted inconsistently between adjacent periods, are concrete items to raise when requesting source verification.
9. Inspect key figures at high zoom
At 400%, machine-set numerals are uniform; edits show as baseline drift, weight mismatch, or broken right-alignment. Concentrate on net pay, gross, and YTD totals—the figures a fabricator has the most incentive to touch—and compare against identical digits elsewhere on the page.
10. Reconcile employer identity across documents
The employer's name and address should agree with the application and any offer letter, and a printed EIN should match the standard nine-digit XX-XXXXXXX format. Discrepancies here are questions about the whole file, not just the stub, and strengthen the case for independent verification.
11. Audit PDF metadata and revision history
A stub presented as a fresh Paycom download should not ordinarily carry a design tool in its producer field or incremental revisions stacked after creation. Such findings are also produced innocently by printing and merging—so treat them as grounds to request the original, not as findings of fraud.
12. Flag improbable roundness
Automated payroll yields odd cents on most stubs because percentage taxes rarely divide evenly. A Paycom-attributed stub whose every figure is a whole dollar is consistent with generic template output and warrants corroborating documents, even though occasional round lines occur genuinely.
What Ocolta’s free scan checks automatically
Several of the checks above are mechanical, and mechanical work belongs to software. Ocolta’s free Integrity Scan runs entirely in your browser—the file never leaves your device—and reports the supported signals it can actually observe: whether the declared file type matches its binary signature, which software the PDF says created and produced it, creation and modification timestamps, incremental revision pointers, embedded scripts or attachments, and a SHA-256 fingerprint of the exact file you reviewed. For paystubs it also recomputes the core arithmetic—gross pay minus deductions against net pay—and explains benign causes to consider for each observation. The PDF tamper checker runs the structural subset on any PDF. Every result keeps “unable to determine” on the table; the scan never claims a pay stub is authentic or fraudulent.
When to escalate beyond file review
When stakes are material and file review leaves residual doubt, verify employment through an authorized verification service or a documented call to the employer's payroll or HR contact found independently—company website, directory, or registry, never a number printed on the stub. Record who you spoke with, when, and what was confirmed. Keep the process governed by a written policy applied with identical criteria to every applicant, and route findings through legal review before they inform an adverse decision on a lease, loan, or job.
When the file itself deserves a deeper look before you escalate externally, Ocolta’s AI Deep Review ($5 per document, no subscription) asks a model to organize fraud-risk and AI-generation indicators—evidence locations, confidence, benign explanations, limitations, and next checks. It reports observations, not verdicts, and it can return “unable to determine.” See pricing for 5-review and 25-review packs.
Frequently asked questions
Can Ocolta tell me whether a Paycom stub is fake?
No tool can make that call. Ocolta's free scan checks structure, metadata, revision history, and payroll math—net reconciliation, hourly multiplication, YTD continuity—locally in your browser, and reports supported observations including an explicit unable-to-determine outcome. It neither certifies nor condemns a document, and it does not contact Paycom or the employer.
What is the fastest first check on a Paycom stub?
Recompute the two headline sums: gross minus every itemized tax and deduction must equal net pay, and each year-to-date figure should exceed its current-period partner by an amount that fits the pay date's month. This arithmetic is objective, takes minutes, and exposes careless fabrications faster than layout study.
Does polished formatting or clean metadata prove a Paycom stub is real?
No. Polish is inexpensive to imitate and metadata can be curated, while genuine stubs acquire messy metadata through printing and merging. Neither surface trait settles anything. Provenance—a fresh self-service download—plus reconciling arithmetic and independent employment verification are what actually carry weight.
The applicant says they can re-download the stub from Paycom. Should I ask them to?
Yes, if your policy permits document requests. Employee self-service is central to how Paycom works, so a fresh download is typically quick for a current employee and produces the most checkable file. If the applicant no longer has access—common after a job change—note that and lean on employer verification instead.
Do not tell an applicant that a document is “fake” based on file review alone. State the observation, request the same follow-up your written policy requires in comparable cases, apply consistent criteria to every applicant, and preserve an unable-to-determine outcome. Obtain legal review before using document findings in an adverse decision.