Behind the app · Jun 4, 2026
2 min read · Trevor Edwards

Why Clocked learns your take-home instead of guessing it

A flat "you keep 75%" is a fine place to start and a bad place to stop. Here is how Clocked tightens that estimate every time you log a paycheck.

Your take-home rate is personal. It depends on your withholding, your state, your benefits, and a dozen deductions no app can know in advance. So Clocked does not pretend to know it on day one.

Start with a placeholder

Before you have logged any paychecks, Clocked assumes you keep 75% of gross, or an estimated withholding percentage you set yourself. It is a placeholder, clearly a projection, and only there so the early numbers are not blank.

Then let reality correct it

Each paycheck you log updates a learned take-home rate using a weighted average that leans on your most recent check. The estimate stops being a round number and starts being yours.

It also knows when to ignore a check. A correction or a bonus-heavy paycheck with an implausible net-to-gross ratio is left out of the average, so one strange payday does not quietly skew every projection that follows.

The right take-home rate is not a number you set. It is one your paychecks teach the app.