Extract data from termination letters
A termination letter ends an employment relationship in writing and sets out the terms of the exit, and an HR operations team processes it at the moment several downstream systems need clean data at once: payroll has to cut a final check, benefits has to close or continue coverage, and IT has to schedule offboarding. It states the employee and their role, the employer, the start and end dates of employment, the reason and type of termination, the notice period, and the money owed on the way out. When Meridian Retail Group Inc. issues a letter ending Rebecca Cho's employment as Regional Operations Manager effective 2026-07-31, the figures on that page drive the final payroll run and the benefits close-out. What has to reconcile is the final pay. A final payment is assembled from components: the last regular pay period, a payout of accrued but unused vacation, and, where offered, a severance amount, and the components have to sum to the total the letter states. For Rebecca Cho, $4,000 of final salary, a $6,000 payout of 15 accrued vacation days, and $18,000 of severance foot to a $28,000 final payment in USD. Alongside the money sit the operational fields: the final paycheck date, whether continued health coverage such as COBRA continuation is offered, and the equipment-return and exit instructions that offboarding runs from. Talonic reads the termination letter and returns the employment record, the termination reason and type, and the final-compensation breakdown as typed fields, with the components reconciled to the stated total. A letter dated 2026-07-17 with a 2026-07-31 effective date and a 2026-08-07 final paycheck date loads into the HRIS and payroll instead of a retyped page, so the exit is processed from structured data. This extraction captures what the letter states and offers no view on whether the termination is lawful.
What gets extracted from termination letters
How extraction works for termination letters
Termination letters are generated from HRIS platforms such as Workday and BambooHR, drafted in document templates, and issued as signed PDFs and scans, so the wording and the order of the exit terms drift from one letter to the next. Talonic classifies the letter and maps it to the employment schema in the Field Registry, which separates the employment record, the termination reason and type, and the final-compensation breakdown. Final-pay components, final salary, accrued-vacation payout, and severance, are typed as numbers in their ISO 4217 currency and reconciled so the parts foot to the stated final payment, and the accrued vacation days are kept alongside their payout amount. Termination type, voluntary, involuntary, or mutual, is captured as its own field, the notice period and the employment start and end dates are parsed to ISO 8601, and a health-coverage continuation flag is read where the letter states it. Every value returns with a confidence score and a pixel-region pointer under DIN SPEC 91491, so an HR administrator can verify a severance figure or an end date against the source letter before closing the record. Overall, the extraction structures what the letter states and does not assess the legality of the termination or advise on employment law.
Sample extraction
An involuntary termination letter with a final-pay breakdown
{
"document_number": "TERM-2026-0442",
"document_date": "2026-07-17",
"candidate_name": "Rebecca Cho",
"employee_id": "EMP-20481",
"job_title": "Regional Operations Manager",
"employer": "Meridian Retail Group Inc.",
"employee_department": "Operations",
"employment_start_date": "2019-03-04",
"employment_end_date": "2026-07-31",
"effective_date": "2026-07-31",
"termination_reason": "Position redundancy",
"termination_type": "involuntary",
"notice_period": "30 days",
"severance_amount": 18000,
"currency": "USD",
"final_paycheck_date": "2026-08-07",
"accrued_vacation_days": 15,
"health_insurance_continuation": true,
"final_compensation": [
{
"component_type": "Final salary",
"amount": 4000,
"currency": "USD",
"description": "Final regular pay period through end date"
},
{
"component_type": "Accrued vacation payout",
"amount": 6000,
"currency": "USD",
"description": "15 unused vacation days"
},
{
"component_type": "Severance",
"amount": 18000,
"currency": "USD",
"description": "Severance payment as stated in letter"
}
],
"final_payment_total": 28000
}Frequently asked
Does the final pay foot to a single total?
Yes. The final salary, accrued-vacation payout, and severance are each typed in the stated currency and summed, so a $28,000 final payment is checked against its $4,000, $6,000, and $18,000 components rather than trusted as a headline figure.
How is the termination type captured?
The termination type is read as its own field, voluntary, involuntary, or mutual, alongside the stated reason such as resignation, redundancy, or dismissal, so an HR system routes and reports each exit correctly.
Does it capture continued health coverage?
A health-coverage continuation indicator is read where the letter states it, for example whether COBRA continuation is offered, so benefits can act on the close-out or continuation without rereading the letter.
Does it advise on whether the termination is lawful?
No. Talonic structures what the letter states, the dates, the type, and the final pay, and links each value to its source region. Whether a termination is lawful is a legal question for counsel, not the extraction.
Ready to extract from your own termination letters?
Author note
Reviewed by Talonic engineering · last reviewed 2026-07-07