Scan a paystub

Beyond Payday's AI Paystub Scanner reads a photo or PDF of your paystub and fills in an income entry for you — employer, pay rate, withholdings, and deductions — so you don't have to type it all in by hand. It's a Pro feature, but every Free-plan account gets 3 scans to try it first.

Before you start

• The AI Paystub Scanner is a Pro feature (included in the 30-day trial). Free-plan accounts get 3 scans to try it, then need Pro to keep scanning.
• You need permission to create income entries (the account owner always has it).
• Have a clear photo or PDF of your paystub ready — JPEG, PNG, WebP, or PDF, up to 10MB.

Steps

1. Go to Income (opens in a new tab) and click Scan Paystub.
2. Drop your paystub into the upload area, click it to browse your files, or on mobile tap Take a Photo.
3. Wait while Beyond Payday optimizes the image and analyzes your paystub — this usually takes 5-10 seconds.
4. Beyond Payday creates a new income entry from what it found and opens it, with an AI-Extracted Data banner showing what it filled in and what it couldn't determine.
5. Check every field against your real paystub — employer, pay rate, pay frequency, tax rate, deductions, bonus, and tips — and fix anything that's off. The tax rate it fills in is income tax only (federal, state and local). Social Security and Medicare on the stub are left out because Beyond Payday adds them itself.
6. Click Save.

How it works

• The scan uses AI vision to read your paystub image and returns a confidence rating for the extraction — labeled High Confidence, Medium Confidence, or Low Confidence next to Extraction Quality — so you know how carefully to double-check it.
• The income entry is created immediately. As soon as the scan finishes, Beyond Payday saves it and opens it for you to review, rather than waiting for you to confirm first. If something looks wrong, fix the fields and click Save, or delete the entry if the scan didn't work out.
• Scans are limited to 10 per hour per person.
• Your paystub image is processed in memory and never stored — only the extracted numbers are saved to your account.

Good to know

• If you upload a multi-page PDF, Beyond Payday only scans the first page — make sure your pay rate and withholding details are on page 1.
• Because the entry saves right away, treat the review step as a chance to fix mistakes, not a preview you can walk away from with no consequence.
• The scanner works best on a clear, well-lit photo or a text-based PDF — a blurry photo lowers the confidence score and leaves more fields for you to fill in by hand.
• Free-plan accounts can try the scanner 3 times total before needing to upgrade to Pro.