By Lionel Ilarraza··

Pay stub scanner: extract and review paycheck lines

A scan can reduce data entry, but OCR is not a legal payroll audit. TakeHome IQ attempts to capture common earnings, tax, deduction, payroll-program, reimbursement, YTD, and net-pay rows. Review the original image before relying on the extracted values.

What the scan attempts to capture

Common captured fields include gross and net pay, earnings rows, federal and state withholding, Social Security and Medicare, observed local or employee-program rows, deductions, reimbursements, and available YTD values. Uncommon labels, low image quality, memo rows, and jurisdiction- specific lines can be omitted, aggregated, misrouted, or left unresolved.

What reconciliation means

When enough fields exist, the app compares captured cash-flow components with printed net pay using a one-dollar tolerance. A result within that tolerance means the captured rows are internally consistent. It does not prove that the employer's tax treatment, legal classification, or payroll calculation is correct.

A difference outside the tolerance prompts review for missing, duplicate, memo, reimbursement, noncash, or misclassified rows. It does not identify the wrong row or prove an employer error from one subtotal.

How the paycheck comparison works

Available captured amounts are compared with supported estimate categories such as gross, federal withholding, Social Security, Medicare, combined state or program amounts, deductions, and net pay. A delta shows where to investigate. It does not establish whether payroll, OCR, or the estimate is wrong.

Possible explanations are not proven causes

The app can surface conservative inputs to review, and unresolved cases may remain unknown. Confirm a suspected cause against the original stub, employer records, elections, work and resident locations, YTD wage bases, and current official guidance.

Projection audit trail vs. employer calculation

TakeHome IQ's audit trail explains how its own projection was calculated. It does not reconstruct every step used by the employer or certify the legal identity of every scanned state, local, or payroll-program row.

Where scan data is processed and stored

Your pay stub contains sensitive information: your name, your employer, your earnings, account numbers, and other printed details. With your consent, everything visible in the selected image passes through our scan services to a third-party AI provider. Separately, our services can receive device locale and network or app-attestation security metadata for rate limiting and abuse prevention. Those security fields are not forwarded to the AI provider, and the attestation key is not a TakeHome IQ account. TakeHome IQ does not write the image to its app database. The provider's standard API terms can retain inputs for up to 30 days, with policy or legal exceptions, and say commercial API inputs are not used for training by default. No TakeHome IQ signup is required to scan. Extracted figures are stored locally and may sync through your private iCloud database.

Read more about how we handle your data in our privacy policy.

Extract, compare, and review.

The scanner attempts to capture common rows and compare available totals. Confirm uncertain, missing, or unresolved fields before saving.

The scan captures candidate rows for review; it does not validate employer payroll or establish legal tax treatment.

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