The paystub problem is universal in bankruptcy practice. You need 90 days of paystubs. The client says they will send them. A week later you follow up. They send a photo of a printout taken in bad lighting. The numbers are barely legible. You ask for the originals. They say they threw them away. You end up calling the employer.
What payroll integration actually does
When a client connects their payroll account through the bankruptcy.ai portal, the platform pulls their paystubs and W-2s directly from the payroll provider. The client authorizes the connection. The documents are retrieved in their original digital format — not a photo, not a scan, not a PDF the client exported from a portal they have not logged into in eight months.
The documents are organized automatically by type and date. Staff see a live checklist: which paystubs are present, which dates are covered, and whether the 90-day window is complete.
Implications for the means test
The means test calculation depends on accurate income data for the six months before filing. When that data comes directly from the payroll source, the calculation is based on actual pay period data rather than on whatever the client remembered or could locate. For clients with variable income, inconsistent pay periods, or multiple employers, source-direct paystubs significantly reduce the risk of means test errors.
What about clients who cannot connect
Not every client has a payroll account that can be connected. Gig workers, cash-income earners, clients at smaller employers without payroll-provider accounts — manual upload still works for all of them. The system tracks the gap, so the firm knows before running the export that a particular document is present as a manual upload versus pulled from source.