What's covered in this guide?
Where employees go in the mobile app
Most US payroll information an employee needs to view or update lives behind the My Profile tab in the Workforce mobile app (the bottom-bar tab with the person icon). My Profile is the same screen during onboarding and afterward — what changes is which tabs are reachable. The payroll-related tabs surfaced there are Personal Details, Address Details, Bank Details, Tax Forms, Payslips, and — for contractors — 1099 Worker Info. I-9 Form appears during onboarding (or when an admin requests a resubmission).
Self-service for active employees is gated by Employee Self-Service permissions. If an employee can't see one of these tabs in their app, the most likely cause is that the team or organization hasn't enabled Employee Self-Service for them — not a bug in the app.
Pay stubs
Pay stubs live under My Profile > Payslips. The screen shows a single list, with each row labeled with the payment date, the pay period, and the net pay amount. Tapping a row opens the pay stub PDF, which the employee can save or share using their phone's standard PDF share sheet.
The list includes every posted pay stub for the employee, ordered by payment date with the newest at the top. If a pay run has been posted but its payment date is still in the future, the upcoming pay stub appears in a separate section at the top of the screen — but only if the employer has chosen to release the preview to employees by email. Otherwise the employee sees only past pay stubs.
Pay stubs are PDFs, not editable records. If the numbers on a pay stub look wrong, the employee should raise it with their manager or payroll admin rather than waiting for the next pay run — corrections are made on the pay run itself, not on the pay stub.
Tax documents (W-2 and 1099)
Year-end tax documents are surfaced in the same place the employee fills out their tax forms: My Profile > Tax Forms.
For W-2 employees, after the employer has finalized W-2s for the year, a W-2 row appears at the bottom of the Tax Forms list. Tapping it opens the official W-2 PDF. The same W-2 row stays available to former employees through the Tax Forms screen, so an employee who has left can still retrieve their W-2 from the app.
For employees set up as 1099 contractors, the equivalent surface is My Profile > 1099 Worker Info. From that screen the contractor can opt in to electronic 1099 delivery, enter their entity name and any "doing business as" name, choose their TIN type (SSN or EIN), enter the TIN, and upload a signed Form W-9. Once the year-end 1099 is generated, an opted-in contractor receives it through the app rather than by mail.
Banking and direct deposit
Direct deposit accounts are managed at My Profile > Bank Details. Employees can add multiple ACH accounts and split their pay across them.
To add an account:
Open My Profile > Bank Details and tap Add a bank account.
Enter the Account holder name, choose the Account type (checking or savings), and enter the 9-digit Routing number and the Account number (5–17 digits or letters). The account number is masked by default and only revealed while it's focused.
Tap Add to save. The account is added without a payment split — by default the first account becomes the remaining-balance account.
When more than one account exists, each non-primary account can be set to a Fixed amount (a dollar value taken out of each pay), a Percentage of net pay, or Remaining balance. Only one account can be the remaining-balance account; whatever isn't routed to the fixed-amount and percentage accounts lands there.
To edit or remove an account, open the account row on the Bank Details screen, tap the edit icon, change the fields or the payment split, then tap Update. Delete is on the same screen and removes the account after a confirmation prompt.
Heads-up: Whenever an employee adds, edits, or removes a bank account, Workforce notifies the employee by email and also notifies the organization's payroll officers and admins. There is no voided-check upload step in the app — Workforce relies on the routing and account numbers the employee enters.
W-4 and state withholding certificates
Withholding certificates are filled out from My Profile > Tax Forms. The screen shows a row for Payroll Settings at the top, then one row for the federal W-4, and one row for each state withholding certificate that applies to the employee based on their work and home addresses. The list is generated from the employee's tax jurisdictions, so adding or moving an address can add or remove rows here.
Payroll Settings is where the employee enters their Social Security Number (9 digits, masked unless the field is focused) and ticks the checkbox to opt in to electronic W-2 delivery. SSN must be on file before any of the withholding certificates can be signed. The pay run also blocks a pay stub from being issued if SSN is still missing 30 days after the employee's start date.
For the federal W-4 and each state form, the employee opens the row, fills in the official certificate fields shown for that jurisdiction (filing status, dependents, additional withholding, exemptions, and any state-specific items), and signs the certificate at the bottom. Workforce shows the field set that matches the form revision currently in effect — the 2020+ federal W-4, for example, doesn't ask for allowances. For states with reciprocity, a non-resident withholding section lets the employee declare a reciprocal state instead of having tax withheld for the work state.
If the WOTC (Work Opportunity Tax Credit) screening is enabled on the employee's account, an extra Work Opportunity Tax Credit Forms row also appears under Tax Forms, with the IRS Form 8850 pre-screening notice and the ETA Form 9061 individual characteristics form. Both are optional for the employee.
Personal details and address
Two more tabs on My Profile feed payroll, even though they aren't payroll-only screens:
Personal Details — legal first/middle/last name and suffix, preferred name, email, personal email, phone, date of birth. The legal name fields here are the names that appear on the W-2 and on the W-4, so changes after a marriage or legal name change need to flow through here.
Address Details — the employee's home address. Address changes can change which state and local tax certificates show up under Tax Forms; if an employee moves across state lines, expect a new state withholding certificate to appear and the old one to be retired.
Both screens are read-only by default and have an edit icon in the top-right corner to switch into edit mode.
I-9
The employee section of Form I-9 is presented as a tab during onboarding only — it appears in My Profile while the employee is going through their onboarding workflow, and disappears once Section 1 has been submitted. After that it's read-only on Workforce's side; if Section 1 needs to be re-done, an admin has to request a resubmission from the back office, which puts the I-9 tab back in the employee's app.
What still needs an admin or payroll officer
A handful of payroll fields are intentionally not editable by the employee. These have to be changed by an organization admin or payroll officer:
Pay rate, salary, and pay frequency
Job, classification, and home/work location
Deduction and contribution setup (health, 401(k), HSA, etc.)
Garnishments and child-support orders
Employee status and termination details
Employer Section 2 of Form I-9
Tip for new hires: Have employees finish Personal Details, Address Details, the W-4 and any state withholding certificates, and add at least one Bank Details account on day one. Without SSN and a signed W-4, the first pay run can't issue a pay stub for them.