BASALT · JOURNAL
How to redact a pay stub PDF before sending it
A pay stub can prove employment or income, but it also exposes a Social Security number, employee ID, home address, bank details, deductions, and year-to-date figures. Prepare a limited copy for each request.
Keep the fields that prove the stated purpose
For income verification, the recipient may need your name, employer, pay date, gross pay, and net pay. Ask whether deductions, hours, bank routing numbers, and year-to-date totals are required. Remove extra stubs from a multi-page export if they are not needed.
Find repeated identifiers
Search the employee ID and address in the header, footer, and payment section. Inspect the pay-stub image at high zoom and review OCR text and form fields. A value can remain searchable even when a colored box covers it.
Verify the new copy
Export without overwriting the original. Search for the redacted identifiers in several formats, reopen the file in another viewer, and check comments, attachments, metadata, and earlier revisions. Confirm that the remaining earnings figures are legible and accurate.
Frequently asked questions
What should remain on a redacted pay stub?
Keep only the fields required for the recipient’s purpose, commonly name, employer, dates, and requested income figures.
Do deductions reveal sensitive information?
They can. Benefits, garnishments, and account details may be unnecessary for basic income verification.
Can I use a screenshot instead?
A screenshot can create a flatter copy, but it can also lower legibility and omit context. A verified redacted PDF is usually more useful.
Doing it in Basalt
Basalt detects and permanently removes payroll identifiers on-device, including OCR and hidden form data, then verifies the output before you share it. Download Basalt.
Redaction that proves itself
Basalt destroys the content you mark, then re-opens the file it wrote and proves the content is gone before it saves anything. Your documents never leave your Mac.