What is a pay period?

If the pay period is the interval in which you choose to pay your employees, for example, weekly, semi-monthly, monthly, quarterly, or annually, then, the period number is the number assigned to each pay period. For example, Jane's organization pays biweekly, which means her organization usually has 2 pay periods each month. Months that have five weeks may have an additional pay period. This is what Jane's period dates would look like for 2011:

Pay period column in History of Period Dates