The Office of the New York State Comptroller has made New York State Payroll Online (NYSPO) available to CUNY employees. This is a service offered through NY.gov, which allows you as an NYS employee to view and print your pay stubs, view and print current and prior W-2s, change your address, and change your federal, state, as well as city tax withholdings. In addition, by enrolling in NYSPO, you have the option to go “paperless” and discontinue receiving USPS mailed pay stubs and/or mailed W-2s. Additionally employees who are enrolled have access to their 2024 W-2 in the first week or so of January 2025 while those who get paper W-2s will have to wait for them be mailed from Albany during the last week of January 2025. If you would like to have online access to your W-2 in early January 2025, now is the time to act.

You can request activation of your NY.gov account using the following path on your CUNYfirst home page. First log in to CUNYfirst, then go to Employee Self Service > Other Employee Tasks. Then click on New York State Payroll Online. Step-by-step instructions can be found online. To begin the process, please follow the instructions on this Webpage starting with Tab “1. Requesting NY.gov Account Activation.” 

After you formally submit your request in CUNYfirst, your NY.gov account is estimated to be activated within 15 to 20 business days. After your NY.gov account is officially activated, a confirmation message will be sent to your preferred email address in CUNYfirst with additional instructions on the next steps you need to take to access New York State Payroll Online (NYSPO).

If you are unsure what your primary business email address in CUNYfirst is, you can find this out using the following path in CUNYfirst Home → Employee Self Service → Personal Details → Contact Details.  

All employees must verify their identities within NY.gov in order for NYSPO to be accessible within their NY.gov accounts. If you create your NY.gov account outside of CUNYfirst, you will experience issues accessing NYSPO. Additionally, if you have existing NY.gov accounts for previous/other NYS organizations (for example NY DMV), you will still need to request an additional NY.gov account via this process to view your CUNY-pay information.

If you have any questions, please contact University Payroll Security at University_Payroll_Security_Adm@cuny.edu.

By Anne Alarcon