You will be able to check variable pay items on your payslip against your contract and the hours you worked.
Most months, Priya's payslip looks the same. Basic salary, a fixed allowance, CPF, a small CDAC line, net pay. Then May came, with two weekend events and a claim for taxi fares. In June she took two days of unpaid leave for a family trip. Both months the net pay was a different number, and both times she had no easy way to tell whether it was right.
Fixed lines are easy to check once. Variable lines change every time, and that's where errors slip in, because nobody notices that a different number is the wrong different number. This lesson covers the four variable items you're most likely to see: overtime, allowances, bonuses and unpaid leave.
Start with whether the Employment Act's overtime rules apply to you at all. They don't cover everyone. They apply to certain employees depending on the type of work and the salary level, and MOM's website sets out who's covered, the minimum overtime rate, the formula for your hourly rate and the limits on overtime hours. If you're covered, your overtime pay must meet those rules. If you aren't, overtime is whatever your contract or the company's policy says, and it might be paid, given as time off, or not given at all.
Priya checked MOM's guidance against her job and salary and found she sat outside the overtime rules, so her contract decided it. Her contract said weekend event work was paid at S$25 an hour. That's her employer's figure, used here as an example. She worked two eight-hour days, so 16 hours at S$25 should give S$400 of overtime pay.
Whichever applies, the payslip should show both the overtime hours and the overtime pay, as you saw in lesson 1.2. Check the hours against your own record, not just the amount. If you don't keep a record, start now: a note on your phone with the date and hours is enough.
An allowance and a reimbursement can look alike on a payslip, but they're treated differently.
A fixed allowance, such as a monthly transport or phone allowance, is part of your pay. It usually counts as ordinary wages for CPF, so CPF should be worked out on it. That's why lesson 1.3 had you include Priya's S$200 allowance when recalculating her CPF.
A reimbursement repays money you spent on the company's behalf, like Priya's taxi fares between event venues. It isn't pay for your work, so it generally doesn't attract CPF. It may appear on the payslip as an addition, or be paid separately through an expense claim.
So when you see a new line, ask which it is. The CPF Board's website explains how different payments are treated. If an allowance is being treated as a reimbursement, or the other way round, your CPF figure will be off.
A bonus appears in the month it's paid, not the month or year it was earned. A year-end bonus paid in March shows up on the March payslip. So does any thirteenth-month payment, sometimes called the annual wage supplement, if your contract has one.
For CPF, bonuses are additional wages, not ordinary wages. They attract CPF in the month paid, under the separate yearly limit you met in lesson 1.3. So the CPF line jumps in a bonus month. That's expected. What you're checking is that the bonus amount matches what you were told, and that CPF was worked out on it as an additional wage.
Keep the letter or email that told you the bonus amount. Without it you have nothing to check the payslip against.
When you take unpaid leave, your employer deducts the pay for those days. The question is how. There's no single method, and the difference can be real money.
Here's Priya's June, with example figures. Her monthly pay is S$3,400 basic plus the S$200 allowance. She took two days of unpaid leave in a month with 21 working days.
If her employer divides basic salary by working days, two days cost S$3,400 times 2, divided by 21, which is about S$323.81. If the allowance is also pro-rated, the deduction is S$3,600 times 2, divided by 21, about S$342.86. If the employer divides by calendar days instead, using a 30-day month, two days of basic salary cost about S$226.67.
None of those is automatically wrong. MOM's website gives a formula for salary in an incomplete month, and your contract or employee handbook may set out the employer's method. Find which one is used, then check that the payslip follows it. If the payslip doesn't say how the figure was reached, ask.
The habit that catches errors is simple. In a month with something unusual, don't just compare net pay with last month. Rebuild the payslip from your own records: the basic salary in your contract, each allowance, your hours, any bonus letter and your leave record. Work out gross pay, then CPF on the right wages, then the other deductions, then net pay.
For Priya's May, that meant S$3,400 basic, S$200 allowance and S$400 of overtime, with the taxi claim as a reimbursement and CPF on the wages only.
Your turn comes next. Scroll back through your own payslips and choose the month that looks least like the others, then find the timesheet, leave record or letter that explains it.
For one month with overtime, leave or a bonus, rebuild the payslip figures from your timesheet and contract and note any difference.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).