You will check three months of pay records for errors and gaps.
Three months into the job, Hui Min notices that May's net pay was lower than she expected. She took one day of unpaid leave that month for a family matter, so a deduction made sense. But was S$200 the right amount? She had no idea, and asking HR felt awkward when she could not say what the figure should have been.
Payroll mistakes are not common, but they happen: a missed allowance, a leave deduction worked out the wrong way, a CPF payment that is late or short. Most go unnoticed because nobody checks. This exercise sets up a check you can run on three months of pay in about 20 minutes, and then once a month in five. The figures are made-up examples.
You need three things. Your employment contract, or the offer letter if that is where your pay terms are written. Your payslips for the last three months. And your CPF transaction history, which you can open on cpf.gov.sg or in the CPF app with Singpass.
If you have been working for less than three months, use what you have and add a column each month.
Make a sheet with one column per month and these rows:
Basic pay, per contract and per payslip Allowances, per contract and per payslip Leave deductions, with the days and the method used Employee CPF, per payslip and per the CPF calculator Employer CPF, per payslip and per the CPF calculator CPF received, from your CPF history, and the date it arrived Match, marked yes or no, with a note on anything that does not
Each pair puts what should have happened next to what did. A gap between them is what you are looking for.
Fill in basic pay and allowances from your contract first, then from each payslip. Most months these simply match. If your contract lists a fixed allowance and a payslip leaves it out, mark it.
Leave deductions need more care. Your contract or HR handbook should say how unpaid leave is worked out. For employees covered by the Employment Act, MOM's website sets out how to calculate pay for an incomplete month: monthly pay times the days actually worked, divided by the number of working days in that month. Check which method your employer uses and apply it yourself.
In Hui Min's case, May had 21 working days in her work schedule. One day of unpaid leave should cost S$4,000 divided by 21, which is about S$190.48. Her payslip deducted S$200, which is S$4,000 divided by 20. The difference is about S$9.52. It is small, but it would repeat every time she takes unpaid leave, and the CPF on that month's pay depends on the gross figure too.
Open the CPF Board's contribution calculator on cpf.gov.sg. Enter your age, citizenship status and the month's wages, and note the employee and employer amounts it gives. Compare them with your payslip. A difference of a dollar can come from rounding. A bigger gap is worth a question.
Then open your CPF transaction history. For each month, find the contribution and check that it matches the total on your payslip. Contributions usually arrive the following month, so April's CPF shows up in May. If a month is missing or short once the following month has passed, mark it. That is a different problem from a calculation error, because the money was deducted from you and has not reached your account.
Hui Min's CPF matched in all three months. Only the leave deduction was off.
When something does not match, email HR or payroll. Keep it short, factual and specific, and name the payslip, the line, the figure you expected and how you got it. Here is Hui Min's draft:
"Hi Mei Ling, I took one day of unpaid leave on 14 May, and my May payslip shows a deduction of S$200. Based on 21 working days in May, I expected S$190.48, which is S$4,000 divided by 21. Could you check which method was used and let me know? Thanks, Hui Min."
Writing it down gives payroll something to work from and gives you a record if the same thing happens again. Most mismatches turn out to be a simple error or a method you did not know about, and either answer is worth having.
A finished check has every row filled for three months, every mismatch marked with a note, and an email drafted for each one. Your own payslips are the next thing to open.
Fill in a three-month payslip check table and draft a short HR email for any mismatch you find.
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