Know When the Numbers Don't Match: Introducing Pay Checker
A payment lands. It is smaller than you expected.
You try to remember the fortnight it covers. There was a stretch of long evenings somewhere in there, a project that ended abruptly, a day the site kept timing out. You open the dashboard, but it shows a single total. You check your email, then a folder of screenshots, then a spreadsheet you stopped updating in June.
An hour later you still cannot say which day the difference came from — only that something feels off.
That is the problem Pay Checker was built to solve. It is live in RaterSidekick now.
Why an independent record matters
AI contractors rarely get one clean work record they control. The work happens on one site, the hours appear in a separate tracking dashboard, and the payment arrives later through a third system. When the totals disagree, the contractor is usually the one reconstructing the story from memory.
A platform dashboard is the platform's record of your work. It may be accurate and completely reliable. It is still the only version of events available if you do not keep one of your own.
That becomes a problem when:
- the hours shown in one part of a platform differ from the final credited total;
- a payment does not match the time or task count you expected;
- a project closes and its history becomes hard to retrieve;
- you work across several platforms with different pay periods and reporting formats; or
- you need to explain a discrepancy to support weeks after the work was done.
One contractor we spoke to — a production accountant by trade — keeps a detailed spreadsheet of hours and task IDs for one platform specifically because of past pay disputes, each of which took four to six weeks to resolve. She is unusually disciplined. Most people are not, and the ones who try tend to stop when work gets busy.
RaterSidekick creates a contractor-owned record beside those platform dashboards. Pay Checker turns that record into a practical comparison.
What Pay Checker compares
Pay Checker works across three measures, organised by pay period:
- Time — the hours in your record against the hours in the source report.
- Tasks — your recorded task count against the reported count, where task data is available.
- Pay — the platform's stated earnings against the payment reported or received. This comparison works from uploaded documents without tracked sessions.
Time and task differences outside the tolerance are flagged. The pay check flags payments below the platform's own figure and periods with no payment recorded. Higher payments are shown, but aren't flagged as underpayment.
Two details matter more than they might sound.
Time differences in your favour are flagged too. If a platform credits more time than you recorded, Pay Checker says so. A difference identifies something to check; it doesn't decide which record is right.
You can sort by biggest gap first. Across a quarter of pay periods, most differences are noise. The point is to get to the two that are not.
How it works
1. Build your own work record
For time and task comparisons, track new sessions with the optional Chrome extension or import records you already keep. Existing spreadsheet history can be brought in. Imports read existing records; they don't reconstruct history you never wrote down. For pay alone, you can start with a payslip or payment report.
2. Add the source report
When the platform or payment record becomes available, add it. Pay Checker works with screenshots, PDFs, spreadsheets and other supported documents that you upload.
Payslips and payment reports are read and saved automatically. Check the resulting figures in Pay Checker against the original document. If an upload was read incorrectly, delete it from Import History and upload a clearer copy; deleting the import recalculates your results. If the report shows earnings but no actual payment, record the amount received in Pay Checker.
3. Compare the two sides
Your figures sit beside the source figures, with the difference calculated for each period. Switch between time, tasks and pay, and order by date or by size of gap.
4. Find the day
If a period is flagged and the source includes daily detail, you can open it and compare day by day. This is the part that changes the conversation: instead of "my August total looks wrong," you have "the 22nd shows two hours on your side and none on mine."
5. Keep the details together
If something needs raising with support, Evidence Packs organise the relevant work and comparison details into one structured record, so you are not rebuilding the case in the message box.
A worked example
Say your record shows 68 hours for a pay period. The source report shows 61.
Pay Checker flags the period, shows the seven-hour difference, and — if the source includes daily rows — helps you find the dates that account for it. It will also show you that your task count was 150 against a reported 135, and that pay came out the same on both sides.
That last part is useful in a different way. Matching pay alongside mismatched hours is a specific pattern worth asking a specific question about.
What Pay Checker will not do
This matters as much as what it does.
It will not tell you why a platform produced a different number. RaterSidekick cannot see inside a platform's calculations, and it does not try to guess. A flagged period is a question, not a verdict.
It will not decide which side is right. Your record and the platform's record are both records. Sometimes the difference is a forgotten timer on your end.
And the pay estimate is an estimate. It is built from the rates you save in Settings, so it works as a guide. The underpayment check compares your actual payment against the platform's own stated figure, never against your estimate — because a comparison against your own assumptions would not tell you anything.
Pay Checker identifies when and by how much two records diverge. What you do with that is your call.
Built with contractor privacy in mind
RaterSidekick records work metadata, not the content of the work.
It does not take screenshots of your work or record prompts, answers, task content, keystrokes or mouse position. Automatic tracking uses high-level activity signals to tell whether a configured work session is active and to recognise configured actions.
For Pay Checker, you choose which source reports to upload. OpenAI reads payslips and other documents, and the extracted figures are saved automatically. Original files are stored temporarily and deleted through completion and cleanup. Read how uploaded documents are handled before uploading.
Pay Checker is live now
Have a payslip or payment report ready? Try Pay Checker free, create your account and start the 7-day RaterSidekick Pro trial. No card is required. Your trial begins when you press Try for free in Billing and ends after 7 days. Subscribe if you want to continue.
You can check pay from uploaded documents with the extension optional. Time and task comparisons need your own work record too.