Remitvale Help Center

Why is my reimbursement stuck on Preparing?

A claim that sits in Preparing is usually waiting on something routine, and most of the time on nothing you can see. This page collects everything our support team says about stuck claims: what the status actually means, the holds that cause it, and what is worth doing at the 24- and 48-hour marks. If your question is about a decision rather than a delay, the review and payment guide goes deeper on adjudication, and the complete claims guide covers filing from the beginning.

Why claims sit in Preparing

Preparing means your claim cleared intake and is queued for adjudication. Most claims move on within a few hours. The ones that linger are almost always waiting on one of three things: a match against the eligibility roster your plan administrator sends us, a legibility pass on an uploaded receipt, or the overnight job that reconciles plan rules, which runs once a day at 1:15 AM ET. None of these need anything from you, and the large majority clear on their own inside a business day.

A smaller group stays in Preparing because the service date falls in a plan year we have not received final rules for. Those release automatically on the day your administrator publishes the update, and the claim keeps its original submission date for every deadline that matters.

In Preparing for more than 24 hours

Look at three things before contacting anyone. First, open the claim and check for a yellow banner; when we need something from you, the banner names it. Second, compare the name on the claim with the name on your plan card, because a nickname where the roster has a legal name is the single most frequent intake mismatch we see. Third, open the receipt thumbnail: if you cannot read the total in the thumbnail, the reviewer cannot either, and replacing the image now saves a round trip later.

If all three look right, meaning no banner, a matching name, and a readable receipt, the claim is simply in queue and there is nothing to fix. Queue position is not shown in the app, but claims are worked oldest first within each plan.

The five most common holds

• Roster mismatch: the member name or date of birth on the claim differs from what your administrator sent us in the eligibility feed.
• Unreadable receipt: the total, the date, or the provider name cannot be read from the uploaded image at full zoom.
• Plan-year boundary: the service date falls within 5 days of a plan-year rollover and the new year's rules are still loading.
• Duplicate screen: the amount and service date match a claim already on file, so an examiner compares the two by hand instead of a machine deciding.
• Bank confirmation pending: the payout account was added recently and its trial deposits have not been entered yet.

Each hold shows its own banner on the claim page, along with the step, if there is one, that would clear it faster than waiting.

Claims submitted on weekends and holidays

Intake runs around the clock, so a claim filed on Saturday night is validated and queued immediately. Adjudication is staffed Monday through Friday, which means a weekend submission usually shows Preparing until sometime Monday. Federal banking holidays behave the same way. This is ordinary and does not by itself mean anything needs attention.

Payment release follows its own calendar, published in the holiday table further down this page, so an approval late on a Friday typically funds the following Tuesday or Wednesday rather than over the weekend itself.

Holds placed by your plan administrator

Administrators can pause payment on one claim or a whole plan, most often during an eligibility audit, a corporate address change, or the transition weeks after switching payroll vendors. When that happens the claim shows Preparing with a note that release is deferred by the administrator, and we cannot lift it from our side. These pauses usually last 2 to 4 business days.

New hires are a special case. If you enrolled in the last 10 days, your record may not have reached us on the roster feed yet. Feeds arrive from most employers twice a week, so the earliest fix is often simply the next feed, and no amount of resubmitting changes that timing.

Does resubmitting a stuck claim help?

No, and it usually costs time. A second copy of the same expense trips the duplicate screen, which pulls an examiner in to compare the two by hand, and the comparison queue moves slower than the ordinary one. The original keeps its place either way; the duplicate just adds work ahead of it. If you have already resubmitted, withdraw the newer copy, which releases the older one back to the normal path within a few hours.

The one situation where refiling genuinely is right: a claim closed for missing documents more than 180 days ago, past the appeal window. That expense can be filed fresh if its own filing window is still open, this time with the missing document attached from the start.

Every claim status, in order

A claim normally moves through these states top to bottom, though it can skip some and occasionally step backward:

• Received: the submission is in and the file formats are being validated.
• Preparing: validated and queued for adjudication.
• In review: an examiner or an automated rule set is applying your plan terms.
• Approved - pending release: adjudication finished; payment is scheduled for the next release cycle.
• Released: money has left our payment partner and is in transit to you.
• Paid: your bank, or the check printer, confirmed delivery.
• Returned: the payment came back to us; the bounced-deposit section explains what happens next.
• Closed: the claim ended without payment, with the reason printed at the top of the claim page.

Preparing versus In review

The two statuses look similar but describe different work. Preparing is mechanical: format checks, roster matching, duplicate screening, and queueing. In review is substantive: someone, or for simple categories something, is applying plan rules to decide what the claim pays. A claim can bounce from In review back to Preparing when an examiner requests a second document, which is why the timeline occasionally appears to move backward. Nothing is lost when that happens, and the claim keeps its place in the plan's queue rather than starting over.

What Approved - pending release means

Adjudication is done and the payable amount is final. The claim is waiting only for the next scheduled release cycle, which happens each business day at 2:00 PM ET. An approval that lands after the cutoff goes out the following business day instead. Nothing you do speeds this up, with one exception: if your bank details are unconfirmed, the claim waits at this status until the trial deposits are entered, and entering them releases it in the very next cycle.

What Returned means

Returned means money went out and came back. For direct deposit the usual reasons are a closed account, a mistyped account number, or a bank that rejects corporate credits by default, something a few small credit unions still do. For checks it almost always means undeliverable mail. The claim page shows the return reason your bank or the postal service gave us, and the money sits safely in your balance until you update the delivery details and press Resend.

Why a claim closes without payment

Closed is a final state, and the reason is printed at the top of the claim page rather than buried in the history. The frequent ones: the plan does not cover the expense category, the filing window had already ended on the submission date, the claim duplicated one already paid, or we asked for a document and did not receive it within 45 days. A closed claim can be reopened by appealing within 180 days of the decision; the appeal sections on this page explain what to include.

The claim timeline, event by event

Every claim page carries a timeline listing each event with a timestamp: received, validated, queued, picked up for review, any document request and its response, the decision, the release bundle, and the bank's acknowledgment. Timestamps display in your profile time zone. Hovering an event shows which system or team produced it, which sounds like trivia until you need the practical answer of whether the ball currently sits with us, with your bank, or with you.

The timeline is also the honest record when memory disagrees: if an email seems to have arrived before a decision was made, the timeline settles which happened first, to the minute.

Claim in Preparing more than 48 hours

1. Open the claim and read any banner at the top; a hold names its reason there.
2. Compare the patient name against your plan card, letter for letter, including middle initials.
3. Open each attachment at full size and check that the total and the date are readable.
4. Check Settings for a pending bank confirmation, because unentered trial deposits quietly hold everything downstream.
5. If all four pass, give it one more business day, then contact support with the claim number and ask specifically whether the eligibility roster has your record; that is the one cause you cannot see from your side.

Receipt upload fails on iPhone

Three causes cover nearly every failed iPhone upload. First, HEIC photos over the 25 MB limit, common on 48-megapixel models: in the camera settings choose Most Compatible, or crop the photo, which typically halves the size. Second, iCloud-optimized storage handing the app a thumbnail instead of the full file: open the photo full screen once so it downloads, then retry. Third, Low Data Mode deferring uploads on cellular: retry on Wi-Fi. The claim survives as a draft throughout, so nothing is lost while you sort out the attachment.

Approved but no money after 7 business days

1. Confirm the status says Released rather than Approved - pending release; the latter means nothing has been sent, and a pending bank confirmation is the usual reason why.
2. Find the 15-digit trace number under Payment details on the claim page.
3. Ask your bank to search incoming ACH credits for that trace number, including their suspense queue, where credits with name mismatches sit unposted.
4. If the bank finds nothing on the 4th business day, ask support to open a network trace; it resolves within 2 business days and reissues automatically if the transfer went astray.

Locked out after a password reset

A reset email that never arrives almost always means the address on file is stale, which for employer plans is fixed through your administrator rather than by us. Look in spam for mail from mail.remitvale.com before assuming the worst. Five failed sign-in attempts lock the account for 15 minutes; continuing to guess extends the lock, so waiting genuinely is faster. If two-step is the obstacle, a recovery number gets you in. As a last resort, support can run an identity review by video appointment, scheduled same-day on weekdays.

Remittance PDF will not open

Remittance files are tagged PDFs around 80 KB, so one that refuses to open was interrupted mid-download or is being handed to a very old viewer. Download it again rather than reopening the same file, and try the browser's built-in viewer before a desktop application, since it is the environment we check every release against. If a corporate mail filter quarantines the attachment, sign in and pull the same PDF from Documents, which sidesteps email entirely and produces an identical file.

Signed out repeatedly

Sessions last 30 minutes idle or 12 hours absolute, whichever comes first. Being signed out faster than that points at cookies vanishing mid-session, and the usual suspects in order are aggressive tracker blockers, corporate proxies, and browser profiles set to clear data on close. Adding the portal to the blocker's allow list fixes the first; the second is an IT conversation; the third is a browser setting. The mobile apps hold their own session separately and are untouched by any of this, which makes them a decent fallback on a locked-down work laptop.

Not receiving our emails

Everything we send comes from remitvale.com addresses through mail.remitvale.com. Search spam and promotions folders first, then add the address to your contacts, which trains most providers within a day or two. Corporate quarantine digests are worth a skim, since decision emails carry PDF attachments that filters find suspicious. Any decision email can be re-sent from the claim's Documents tab. One diagnostic shortcut: security alerts cannot be muted, so receiving those but not decisions means your notification preferences, not deliverability, are the cause.

Lost the phone you use for two-step sign-in

Recovery numbers are the fast path: each one signs you in exactly once, after which you re-enroll the new phone under Settings, then Security. Without them, an identity review takes one business day and asks for government ID plus a challenge question about a recent deposit amount. Two details worth knowing in advance: a text-message second step moves with your number when the carrier ports it, while an authenticator app does not, so re-enroll before wiping the old phone if it still works.

Mobile app closes during upload

Update the app first: the crash on device rotation mid-upload was fixed in Android 4.1 and iOS 3.7.2, and it accounts for most reports we still receive. On older devices, low storage aborts the capture screen; 500 MB free is a comfortable margin. Drafts survive crashes, so reopen the claim and whatever finished uploading is still attached, needing only the last file re-added. A single photo that crashes the app repeatedly is usually a damaged HEIC; screenshot it and upload the screenshot instead.

Dashboard shows a plan you no longer have

Expired plans stay visible for the length of their run-out period, because you can still file against them for old service dates, and that window is exactly when people need them most. Once the run-out passes, the card collapses into the Plan history list rather than vanishing. A plan that should have ended but still shows active means the roster feed has not reported the termination yet; feed lag runs a few days, and claims filed in the gap adjudicate against the plan's true end date once it arrives.

Balance total looks wrong

The balance combines three buckets people forget about: small amounts batched toward the Friday release, payments a bank returned that await corrected details, and voided checks moved back after 180 days. Expand the balance row and each bucket lists its claims. If a figure still looks off after that, compare it against the monthly statement, which reconciles the balance to the penny, and bring the specific disputed line to support rather than the total; specific lines resolve in one conversation.

Direct deposit timing

ACH transfers post 1 to 3 business days after release for most banks, and up to 5 for some smaller institutions. The clock starts at release, not at approval. Weekends and Federal Reserve holidays do not count. If your banking app shows a pending credit, the transfer has already reached your bank and will finish on the bank's own schedule; nothing on our side can accelerate a credit that is already pending.

A rule of thumb from our own delivery data: 62 percent of deposits land the next business day, 31 percent on the second, and nearly all of the remainder on the third.

Getting paid by paper check

You can switch any single claim, or your whole account, to paper checks under Settings, then Payment method. Checks print the business day after release and arrive by first-class mail, typically 5 to 9 calendar days later depending on distance from our Ohio print facility. Checks are void after 180 days. There is no fee for choosing checks, though direct deposit remains the better option for anything time-sensitive, and the two methods can coexist: deposit for routine claims, a check for the one reimbursement you want on paper.

The daily release cycle

Approved claims are bundled and handed to our payment partner once per business day at 2:00 PM ET. An approval at 1:50 PM makes the same-day bundle; one at 2:10 PM waits for tomorrow. The bundle takes about 40 minutes to transmit, after which every claim in it flips from Approved - pending release to Released and its remittance advice is generated. During the July and December holiday weeks the cutoff moves earlier in the day; the holiday table on this page lists the exact times for 2026.

Tracing a released payment

Every released deposit carries a 15-digit trace number, shown on the claim page under Payment details. Your bank can locate an incoming ACH credit with that number even before it posts to your account. If a deposit is 4 or more business days past release and your bank finds nothing under the trace number, ask us to open a network trace: those resolve in 2 business days and end either with confirmation of delivery or with an automatic reissue, so a lost transfer never needs chasing twice.

Payments under five dollars

Approved amounts under $5.00 are held and combined rather than sent one by one, because many banks flag strings of tiny corporate credits as suspicious activity. Held amounts accumulate and go out together every Friday, or sooner if the combined total reaches $5.00 first. Anything waiting is visible under Balance, and a Send now button overrides the batching whenever you would rather have a small deposit immediately than a tidier bank statement.

When a deposit bounces back

A returned deposit does not fail silently. We retry automatically on the next two release cycles, since a fair share of returns are momentary, an account frozen for a same-morning fraud review being the classic example. After a third return we stop retrying, move the money to your balance, email you, and mark the claim Returned. Fix the account details and press Resend; or, if you would rather not re-enter bank information at all, one click converts that payment to a paper check instead.

Reissuing a lost check

Wait 10 business days from the mail date before requesting a reissue, since most late checks are simply slow mail rather than lost mail. After that, request the reissue on the claim page: we place a stop order on the original and print a replacement the next business day. The first reissue on a claim is free. Additional reissues carry a $15 stop-payment fee that the bank charges us, and cashing the original after a stop order will not work, so shred it if it eventually surfaces.

Splitting payment between two accounts

An account can carry up to two payout destinations with a percentage split, a common arrangement for households that route medical money to a joint account and everything else to a personal one. Splits apply at release time to every claim on the account; they cannot be set claim by claim. Percentages must be whole numbers totaling exactly 100, and both destinations need entered trial deposits before the split takes effect, so set the second account up a few days before you need it.

Why deposits arrive in odd amounts

A deposit rarely matches a single claim's face value once real plans get involved. The common composition effects: two claims approved the same day pay as one combined credit, an adjustment trimmed a line you expected at full price, state-required interest added a few cents, or a batch of small amounts finally crossed the $5.00 threshold together. The remittance advice for each payment lists exactly which claims and lines it contains, so reconciling an odd figure takes a minute rather than an afternoon of guessing.

Deposits to prepaid cards and payment apps

Prepaid cards and app-based accounts work whenever they publish real routing and account numbers that accept ACH credits, which most major ones now do. Two caveats from experience: some prepaid programs reject corporate credits that would push the balance over their ceiling, typically $10,000, and some payment apps park incoming transfers for a day of their own screening before crediting you, which looks like a delay on our end but is not one. Trial-deposit confirmation works identically on these accounts.

What happens during review

An examiner, or for simple categories an automated rule set, checks the expense against your plan: whether the category is covered, whether the documentation supports the amount, and whether plan maximums or deductibles change the payable figure. The median claim spends 1.8 business days in review; the slowest 5 percent, mostly coordination-of-benefits cases, take 7 or more. Review order is oldest first within each plan, and phoning support does not move a claim up the queue, a question asked often enough that it deserves a plain answer here.

Why the paid amount differs from the claimed amount

Adjustments trace to a short list of causes: the plan's allowed amount for the service is below the billed price, part of the expense fell outside the plan year, a deductible or annual maximum absorbed part of the total, or the line items on a multi-line receipt did not sum to the claimed figure. The remittance advice itemizes every adjustment line by line against your receipt, and any single line you disagree with can be appealed on its own without reopening the whole claim.

Allowed amounts and where they come from

An allowed amount is the ceiling your plan pays for a given service. It is set by your plan administrator when the plan is configured, not by Remitvale. In-network providers agree to bill at or below the ceiling. Out-of-network claims are reimbursed up to it, and the gap between the provider's price and the ceiling is yours to negotiate with the provider, though asking a provider to match the in-network figure succeeds more often than most people expect.

Reading your remittance advice

The remittance advice is the receipt for the decision. The top block identifies the claim, the plan, and the payment method. The middle table shows each line of the claim in four columns: billed, allowed, adjusted, and paid. The bottom block carries the payment's trace number and, where relevant, interest or fee lines. Keep the PDF with your records; providers and accountants both accept it as proof of reimbursement, and reprints stay available for 7 years from the payment date.

When we ask for more information

A document request pauses the review clock and emails you exactly what is missing, most often an itemized statement where only a card slip was attached. You have 14 days to respond before the claim shows a warning banner and 45 days before it closes for lack of documentation. Responding restarts review within one business day, and the same examiner who made the request handles the follow-up, so you never start over with someone new reading the file from scratch.

Filing a first-level appeal

You have 180 days from the decision date to appeal any adjustment or denial. Open the claim, choose Appeal, explain in your own words why the decision is wrong, and attach whatever supports the position: an itemized bill, a letter of medical necessity, a corrected receipt. Appeals go to an examiner who had no part in the original decision. Four in ten first-level appeals change the outcome at least partially, so a well-documented appeal is far from an empty gesture.

Second-level appeals and external review

If the first appeal upholds the decision, a second level is available for 60 days after the first-level outcome. Second-level appeals are read by a panel rather than a single examiner and take up to 30 days. Plans governed by ERISA also carry a right to external review by an independent organization once the internal levels are exhausted; the denial letter lists the exact contact and deadline for your plan, because both vary by state and by plan type.

If your provider bills you after reimbursement

Occasionally a provider re-bills after an insurance recalculation, leaving you out of pocket beyond what the original claim covered. File the difference as a new claim with the revised statement attached and a comment pointing at the original claim number. Do not edit or appeal the paid claim: a paid claim is settled, and the correction path exists precisely so the old and new statements can be compared side by side by the examiner.

How examiners are assigned

Claims route by category and plan rather than by member, so the person who reviewed your last claim probably will not see your next one. Two exceptions create continuity on purpose: a document request keeps its original examiner through the follow-up, and an appeal goes to someone who never touched the claim, with second-level appeals read by a panel. Examiners cannot see bank details at all, and they see the patient name only because plan rules turn on it.

Partial approvals

A claim with several lines can approve some and deny others, which displays as Approved with an adjustment rather than as a separate status. The remittance advice marks each denied line with its reason, and every line carries its own appeal right on its own 180-day clock. Partial approvals pay immediately for the approved portion, and appealing a denied line never holds up money already awarded, so there is no strategic reason to wait on the deposit before appealing.

What a receipt must show

Reviewers look for five things: the provider or merchant name, the date of service or purchase, a description of the item or service, the amount actually paid, and, for anything insurance-related, the patient name. A card slip alone fails the description requirement, and a quote or estimate fails the amount-paid requirement. Handwritten receipts are fine when they carry all five elements plus the provider's contact information, which small practices and independent caregivers often provide on request.

Photographing paper receipts

Lay the receipt flat on a dark, matte surface and shoot from directly above with all four corners in frame. Daylight beats overhead kitchen lighting, which tends to wash out thermal paper. Long register tapes can go in as two overlapping photos attached to the same claim. Before submitting, zoom in on your own photo: if you can read the total and the date at full zoom, the review team can too, and the claim will never see the unreadable-receipt hold at all.

File types and size limits

Uploads accept PDF, JPG, PNG, and HEIC up to 25 MB per file, with a maximum of 10 files per claim. Password-protected PDFs fail at intake because the reviewer cannot open them; print such a statement to a fresh PDF first, which strips the protection. Multi-page PDFs count as one file. Live Photos upload as still images automatically, and screenshots of emailed receipts are acceptable as long as the whole message, including the sender line, is visible in the capture.

Filing deadlines

The filing window starts on the date of service, and its length is set by your plan rather than by Remitvale. The plan card in your dashboard shows the exact date each expense must be filed by, and that countdown already accounts for run-out periods after a plan year closes. Claims filed even one day past the window are closed at intake, which is the least pleasant email we send, so file early. A claim can always be edited after submission; it can never be backdated.

Editing a claim after submission

While a claim sits in Received or Preparing you can change every field and swap attachments freely; an edit places it at the back of its queue but resets nothing else. Once it enters In review, the amount and the service date lock, though you can still add attachments, which is exactly how you answer a document request. After approval nothing is editable. If something is genuinely wrong at that point, withdraw and refile, or let it pay and file a correction claim for the difference.

Withdrawing a claim

Withdraw is available on the claim page at any status before Released. A withdrawn claim keeps its record and attachments, marked as closed at your request, and it does not count against any duplicate screen if you refile the same expense later with better documentation. Once money has been released, withdrawal is no longer possible; instead, decline the deposit through your bank or return the check uncashed, and the claim flips to Returned when the funds come back to us.

How duplicate screening works

Intake compares each new claim against 18 months of your history on amount, service date, and provider. An exact three-way match routes both claims to an examiner rather than rejecting anything automatically, because legitimate duplicates are common: twice-monthly therapy at the same price, identical prescription refills, the same toll twice in a day. If you know a claim will look like a duplicate, one line in the comments field, saying for instance that these are two separate sessions, is usually all the examiner needs.

Mileage claims

Mileage pays at your plan's configured rate; the common choice for 2026 is $0.70 per mile, up from $0.67 in 2025. Enter the trip's start and end addresses and the app computes the shortest reasonable route, or enter odometer readings if your plan requires them. Round trips need the return leg entered explicitly. Parking and tolls go on the same claim as separate line items with their own receipts; the mileage itself needs no receipt, only the trip details.

Prescription claims

Pharmacy receipts must show the drug name or Rx number, the fill date, and the amount you paid after insurance; the register total alone is not enough because it bundles eligible and ineligible items. Most chain pharmacies print an annual statement listing every fill with exactly the fields reviewers need, and one statement can support many claims. Mail-order pharmacies email a per-shipment invoice that works the same way. For a 90-day fill, the service date is the fill date, not the days the supply covers.

Dental and orthodontic claims

Routine dental claims behave like any other: itemized statement, patient name, amount after any insurance. Orthodontia is the exception because treatment spans years. Plans reimburse it either up front against the banding contract or monthly against the payment schedule, and the plan card says which. Attach the full contract once, on the first claim; later monthly claims can reference it in the comments instead of re-uploading, which keeps each claim under the file limit and saves the examiner re-reading forty pages.

Vision claims

Exams, frames, lenses, contacts, and prescription sunglasses are all commonly eligible; non-prescription sunglasses and lens-cleaning solution usually are not, and readers bought off the rack fall somewhere between, covered by many plans with a receipt. An optical-shop invoice that separates the frame from the lenses reimburses more smoothly than a lump sum, because plans often cap frames and lenses at different amounts. Online contact-lens retailers' order confirmations count as receipts when they show the prescription.

Dependent-care claims

Dependent-care claims need the provider's name, the dates care was actually provided, the amount, and the provider's taxpayer identification number, which daycare centers print on their statements and individual caregivers supply on request. Claims can only be reimbursed for care already delivered, so a prepaid summer-camp deposit becomes claimable week by week as the camp happens, not on the day you paid. A recurring-claim setting exists for exactly this pattern and files each week automatically.

Claiming recurring expenses

For expenses that repeat on a schedule, weekly dependent care, monthly orthodontia, a standing therapy appointment, the recurring-claim setting files each occurrence automatically using the documentation you set up once. You choose the cadence and the end date, and each generated claim is still adjudicated on its own, so a plan change mid-series affects only the claims that come after it. Edit or stop the series at any time; claims already generated stay untouched. The setting lives on the claim page of the first claim in the series.

Receipts in other languages

Receipts in the ten most common receipt languages are reviewed as they are, since totals and dates read the same in most scripts. Outside those, add a one-line comment translating the item description; nothing formal or certified, your own words are fine. Currency conversion is handled separately by the foreign-currency rules elsewhere on this page, so the only translation that ever matters is what the item was, never what it cost.

Emailing receipts instead of uploading

Each account has a personal intake address, shown under Settings, then Claim intake. Forward an emailed receipt there and a draft claim appears within a few minutes with the attachment already in place, needing only the amount checked and a plan chosen before submission. Forwards from an address that is not on your profile are ignored, and adding a second sending address takes effect after a one-day hold, both of which exist so nobody else can seed drafts into your account.

One claim or several: how to split receipts

File one claim per expense event. A single pharmacy run with four eligible items is one claim with one receipt; four separate visits are four claims even when the provider bundles them onto one statement. When a receipt mixes eligible and ineligible items, claim the eligible subtotal and say so in a comment, which beats claiming the register total and waiting out an adjustment. The 10-file limit is per claim, so a genuinely large event, a hospital stay for instance, is better attached as one multi-page PDF than as ten photos.

Changing bank details

A bank change takes effect for payments released after the change is confirmed; anything already released is en route to the old account and cannot be redirected mid-flight. Adding an account starts trial-deposit confirmation, described in the next section, which takes 1 to 2 business days. During that window, claims already approved wait at Approved - pending release rather than paying out to the outgoing account, a deliberate safety behavior that surprises people expecting the old account to be used one final time.

Confirming your bank with trial deposits

We send two deposits under $0.50 each to the new account, usually arriving the next business day, and you enter the two amounts under Settings to prove the account is yours. The deposits themselves are yours to keep. Three wrong entries lock the confirmation for 24 hours. If nothing arrives within 3 business days, the routing number is the usual culprit, particularly at banks that use different routing numbers for paper and electronic transfers; your bank's app lists the electronic one.

Annual account reconfirmation

Our payment partner requires each payout account to be reconfirmed every 12 months, a fraud-control measure across their whole network rather than an Remitvale rule. You get an email 30 days before the anniversary and a dashboard banner at 14 days. Reconfirming is one click plus a fresh sign-in; no new trial deposits are involved. Letting the date lapse loses nothing, but payments hold at release until the reconfirmation happens, so it is worth the click when the banner appears.

Updating your mailing address

The mailing address feeds check delivery and the annual paper statements some plans require. Change it under Settings, then Profile; the change applies to anything printed afterward, and an in-flight check can be stopped and reprinted to the new address on request at no charge. One caution for employer plans: the employer's HR record does not update from this screen, and their next roster feed can overwrite your change, so update both places or the old address quietly returns.

Two-step sign-in

Two-step sign-in is on by default for new accounts and cannot be turned off on plans that reimburse more than $10,000 per year. The second step can be an authenticator app or a text message; the app is the sturdier choice because it survives phone-number changes. Ten single-use recovery numbers are offered at enrollment, and storing them somewhere other than the phone itself is the difference between a 30-second recovery and the identity review described in the troubleshooting section.

Managing email notifications

By default you receive one email when a claim is received, one with your payment confirmation code, one per claim decision, one per payment release, and a Monday digest if anything is waiting on you. Everything except security alerts can be switched off under Settings, then Notifications. Digests send in your profile time zone. If you manage claims for family members from one account, per-person notification routing is available on the Plus and Enterprise tiers, which sends each dependent's updates to that person's own address instead of yours.

Leaving your employer

Your sign-in keeps working after you leave; what changes is the filing window. Most plans allow claims for services dated before your last day, filed within the plan's normal deadline or a shorter termination run-out, whichever the plan document sets. The plan card switches to a countdown labeled with your coverage end date within a day or two of the roster feed reporting it. Payments continue to your confirmed bank account as usual, and your document history remains downloadable indefinitely.

Name changes

Update your name under Settings, then Profile, and expect one extra step: because the roster from your administrator still carries the old name for a feed cycle or two, claims filed in the gap can hit the roster-mismatch hold. A note is added to your account automatically during the transition so examiners clear those holds on sight. Checks print under the new name from the change date forward, and banks generally accept a first-and-last-name change on an existing confirmed account without reconfirmation.

Sharing access with a family member

View-only access lets a spouse or adult child see claims, statuses, and documents without the ability to change anything: no bank edits, no address changes, and no filings under your name unless you also grant the fuller filing role. Grants are per person, revocable instantly, and every action a delegate takes is labeled with their own name in the claim history. Enterprise-tier plans can additionally require the member's confirmation for anything a delegate files.

Filing windows by plan tier

Plans built on the Essentials tier default to a 90-day filing window from the date of service. Plus-tier plans default to 180 days, and Enterprise administrators can configure anything from 60 to 365. Run-out periods stack on top for plan-year-end expenses: with a typical 90-day run-out, a December 28 expense on a calendar-year plan can be filed into late March. The countdown on each plan card already includes every extension that applies to you, so when the card and a general rule on this page disagree, believe the card.

How long to keep original receipts

Keep originals for 7 years after the plan year ends. Reimbursement itself only requires the digital copy, but tax-advantaged accounts can be audited, and in an audit the burden of producing records falls on the account holder, not on us and not on the employer. A phone photo stored with the claim satisfies our requirements indefinitely; whether it satisfies an auditor depends on legibility, which is one more reason to reshoot anything you cannot comfortably read yourself. Shredding originals after upload is reasonable on plain reimbursement plans with no tax angle.

Meal per-diem caps

Business-expense plans that use per-diems instead of receipts cap meals at $59 per full day in standard locations and $74 in the 38 metro areas on the federal high-cost list, which we refresh every October. Travel days pay 75 percent of the applicable cap. Per-diem claims need dates and a destination but no meal receipts, which is their whole appeal. Mixing the two methods inside one trip is not allowed, and the app flags a trip that tries to claim both a per-diem day and a dinner receipt.

Lodging documentation thresholds

Hotel stays over $75 per night require the itemized folio, not just the booking confirmation, because incidentals like minibar charges and laundry are often excluded even when the room itself is covered. Stays at or under $75 per night can be claimed on the card statement line alone. Room taxes and mandatory resort fees follow the room's eligibility; hotel parking follows your plan's transportation rules instead, so it sometimes pays at a different rate than the room it accompanied.

Expenses paid in another currency

Enter the amount in the original currency and attach the receipt as it is; translation is not required for the ten most common receipt languages. Conversion uses the mid-market rate on the date of service, not the date of filing, plus a 1 percent spread that matches what our payment partner charges us. If your card statement shows a materially different dollar figure, attach that statement line too, and the examiner reimburses the higher of the two computations rather than making you argue for it.

Automatic substantiation

Copays that exactly match your plan's published schedule, $25 for a primary-care visit for example, clear without a receipt when paid on the linked benefits card, and the claim goes straight from Received to Approved. About 44 percent of card swipes substantiate automatically this way. The rest generate a receipt request within an hour of the swipe, and the 14-day and 45-day response deadlines described in the review sections run from that request, exactly as they would for a hand-filed claim.

Claims for spouses and dependents

Expenses for a spouse, or for dependents claimed on your tax return, are eligible on health accounts even when those family members are not on your insurance plan. Children age out at 26 for health FSA purposes. The claim form asks who received the service, and answering precisely matters because the patient name is one of the fields duplicate screening and plan audits key on. Dependent-care accounts run the other direction: they cover the care provider's charges and never the dependent's own purchases.

Interest on delayed payments

A handful of states require interest when a clean claim pays past a statutory deadline, most commonly 30 or 45 days. Where that applies, interest is computed automatically at the state's rate, added to the payment, and shown as its own line on the remittance advice; you never need to request it. The state notes on this page list where members most often see these lines. Interest amounts under $1 accumulate in your balance rather than paying out alone, following the same batching as any other small amount.

Uncashed checks and unclaimed funds

A check uncashed after 180 days is voided and the money moves to your account balance, where it waits indefinitely and can be re-sent whenever you like. If an account goes dormant while holding a balance, state unclaimed-property law eventually obliges us to remit the funds to the member's last known state of residence, after 3 years of inactivity in most states and 5 in a few. Recovering escheated money is done through the state's own portal, not through us, so cashing checks promptly is genuinely worth the errand.

Annual maximums and rollover

Plan maximums reset on the plan-year boundary, not the calendar year, unless the two happen to coincide. When a claim straddles the boundary, the service date decides which year's maximum absorbs it. Unused health FSA dollars follow whichever feature your plan elected: a carryover of up to $660 for 2026 plan years, a grace period of 2.5 months, or neither. The plan card shows which one applies to you; the app cannot change it, because the choice is written into the plan document itself.

What plans never reimburse

Some exclusions are near-universal across the plans on our platform: expenses another party already paid, including insurance or a spouse's plan; late fees and interest a provider added to a bill; costs dated before coverage began; and anything still undocumented when the 45-day window closes. Beyond those, exclusions are plan-specific, and the exclusion list in the plan document, linked from the plan card, is the authority. When a category is excluded, no volume of documentation changes the outcome, which is worth knowing before assembling a thick appeal.

Gym and wellness reimbursements

Wellness benefits are their own category with their own caps, commonly $300, $500, or $750 per plan year, covering gym memberships, fitness classes, race entries, and similar spending on a simple receipt. They differ from health accounts in two ways: no eligibility rules beyond the plan's own published list, and no tax paperwork, because employers fund them as taxable perks. Monthly membership fees fit the recurring-claim setting nicely, which members tend to discover about eight months later than they wish they had.

Travel to medical care

Plans that cover medical travel reimburse mileage at the medical rate, $0.21 per mile for 2026, plus parking and tolls with receipts. Lodging while receiving care away from home caps at $50 per night per person, or $100 when a companion's presence is medically necessary, and meals are excluded entirely, a combination fixed by federal rules rather than plan choice. Keep the appointment record: examiners match travel dates against care dates, and a mismatch between the two is the main reason these claims bounce.

Error reference: submission and upload

These appear while filing or in the hours right after.

EF-1102: File type not accepted

The upload was not a PDF, JPG, PNG, or HEIC. Word documents and web pages both convert cleanly through the print dialog's save-as-PDF option.

EF-1108: File exceeds 25 MB

Almost always a scanner set to 600 dpi. Rescan at 200 dpi, which reviewers actually prefer, or photograph the page instead of scanning it.

EF-1121: Password-protected document

Intake cannot open protected PDFs. Open it yourself with the password and print to a new PDF, which produces an unprotected copy.

EF-2301: Receipt unreadable

Automated legibility scoring found no total or date. Retake the photo using the guidance in the photography section; re-uploading clears this without restarting the claim.

EF-2308: Totals do not match

The receipt's line items sum to a different figure than the claimed amount. Correct the amount, or explain the gap in a comment; tip lines are the usual culprit.

EF-2412: Service date out of range

The date falls outside every active filing window on your account. A mistyped year is worth ruling out before concluding the deadline truly passed.

Error reference: payment and account

These appear after approval or during account changes.

EF-3120: Plan not active on service date

Coverage started after, or ended before, the date of service. New enrollments that have not reached us on a roster feed yet also trigger this, and those clear when the feed catches up.

EF-4419: Payout account unconfirmed

Trial deposits were sent but their amounts were never entered under Settings. Approved claims wait until this is done.

EF-5150: Deposit returned by bank

The receiving bank refused the credit. The bounced-deposit section covers the retry behavior; correcting the account number resolves roughly 8 in 10 of these.

EF-5162: Payment held at administrator request

The plan sponsor placed a hold, usually during an audit. Only the sponsor can lift it, and support can tell you the expected duration noted on the file.

EF-6002: Address failed postal validation

Check delivery needs an address the postal service recognizes. An apartment number sitting on line one instead of line two accounts for most of these.

EF-7010: Export timed out

Very large histories can outrun the export window at busy hours. Narrow the range to one year, or retry before 8 AM ET when the queue is short.

State and regional notes

Plan rules are national, but payment and records behavior varies where state law says it must. These notes cover the questions we actually receive; none of them change what your plan covers.

California

Prompt-payment interest applies to clean claims paid after 45 working days, computed at 10 percent per year and itemized on the remittance advice. Dormant balances escheat to the State Controller after 3 years.

New York

Interest applies after 45 days at 12 percent per year. Checks mailed to New York addresses print with a second signature line, a requirement of our bank's state charter rather than anything about your claim.

Texas

Clean-claim interest accrues after 30 days for plans regulated by the state insurance department, which excludes most self-funded employer plans. Members may request their records on paper once a year at no charge.

Massachusetts

State privacy rules route certain minors' records to the member directly instead of the plan sponsor, and affected claims show a short delay note at release while that routing applies.

Washington

Balance-billing protections re-price many out-of-network emergency claims automatically. If a Washington emergency claim looks underpaid, check whether a re-priced line replaced the billed line before writing an appeal.

Illinois

Interest runs after 30 days at 9 percent per year for insured plans. Escheatment moves faster here than in most states, at 3 years, and the state mails owners before taking funds, so a current address matters even after leaving a plan.

Florida

No prompt-pay interest applies to reimbursement accounts. Checks void after 180 days as they do everywhere, and the state's unclaimed-funds portal is the recovery path for anything already escheated.

Puerto Rico

Deposits to Puerto Rico banks ride the same ACH network with no added delay, and Spanish-language remittance advices are available under Settings, then Documents.

Outside the United States

ACH stops at the border. Enterprise plans can enable international wires at a flat $4 per payment; checks mail internationally at no fee but take 3 to 6 weeks.

Glossary

Adjudication

The application of plan rules to a claim to decide the payable amount.

Allowed amount

The most a plan pays for a particular service, set in the plan document.

Clean claim

A claim submitted with every required element present, which is what starts any statutory payment clock.

Coordination of benefits

The ordering rules that decide which of two coverages pays first when both could apply.

Explanation of benefits

Your insurer's statement of what it paid a provider. It is not a bill, and it is often the document an examiner asks to see next to a receipt.

Plan year

The 12-month window a plan's limits and deadlines run on, which need not match the calendar year.

Remittance advice

The line-by-line record of what a claim paid and why, generated at the moment of release.

Run-out period

Extra filing time after a plan year ends, for expenses dated inside that year.

Substantiation

Proof that an expense was eligible: a receipt, an itemized statement, or an automatic match against a copay schedule.

Trace number

The 15-digit identifier a bank uses to locate an ACH transfer in flight.

Reaching support

Chat from the Help tab is staffed Monday through Friday 8 AM to 8 PM ET and Saturday 9 AM to 3 PM ET; median first response runs under 4 minutes on weekday mornings. Email support@remitvale.com for anything that needs attachments, and expect a reply within one business day. Paper correspondence and returned checks go to the processing address printed on your remittance advice. Whichever channel you pick, have the claim number ready; it starts with EF and shortens every conversation that involves it.

How we protect your information

Documents and bank details are encrypted in transit and at rest, and a bank account number is never displayed back after entry, only its last two digits. Support agents can read claim contents but cannot see stored bank numbers at all. We will never ask for your password by email or phone, and we do not send sign-in links; a message doing either is not from us and can be forwarded to abuse@remitvale.com. Signing in from a new device always generates a notification email to the address on file.

Accessibility

The portal targets WCAG 2.1 AA. Every control is reachable by keyboard, and the claim timeline reads to screen readers as a list of dated events rather than a drawing. The documents we generate, remittance advices included, are tagged PDFs. Large-text use follows your browser's zoom rather than a separate setting, so nothing needs enabling. If a screen reader cannot operate something, say so through the accessibility option under Reaching support; it routes directly to the team that owns the fix instead of the general queue.

Mobile app versions

The iOS app supports the current and previous two iOS releases; version 3.8 is current, and versions before 3.4 lost the ability to sign in when the older session format retired in June 2026. Android 4.1 is current, with 3.9 the minimum. The apps and the website show the same claims within about a minute of each other. In practice the app wins for receipt capture and the website wins for anything involving tables, exports, or appeals, so most members end up using both.

2026 payment holiday schedule

No release bundle transmits on the days below. Approvals made on these days go out on the next business day's cycle.

Downloading your claim history

Exports live under Documents. CSV covers any date range up to 3 years per file and includes one row per claim line, with billed, allowed, adjusted, and paid columns matching the remittance advice. PDF statements bundle one plan year per file. Exports generate within a few minutes at most hours and email a link that stays valid for 72 hours. Accountants usually want the CSV; auditors usually want the PDFs plus receipts, which come out as a separate archive per plan year so the two never tangle.

When two coverages could pay

When two coverages could pay the same expense, order matters: your own employer plan pays before a spouse's, and for children the plan of the parent whose birthday falls earlier in the calendar year pays first under the common birthday rule. File with the primary payer first, then claim the remainder here with the primary's explanation of benefits attached. Claims filed out of order are not denied; they pause under a document request for the primary's statement, which is slower than filing in order would have been.

Proof-of-payment letters

Some providers, medical-equipment lenders, and dependent-care programs ask for formal proof that a reimbursement was issued. Generate one on the claim page under Documents; it states the claim number, payment date, method, and amount on letterhead, without exposing any bank detail. Letters regenerate on demand, so there is no reason to hoard copies, and each carries its own document number that the recipient can quote back to us if they want to check it is genuine.

Reimbursements and your taxes

Reimbursements under a compliant plan are not income and generate no tax form from us. The exceptions worth knowing about: dependent-care reimbursements appear in box 10 of the W-2 your employer issues, and business-expense reimbursements outside an accountable plan count as wages, which is a configuration choice your employer made rather than anything we control. We issue no 1099s to members. Administrators pull plan-level tax documents from their own portal each January, so there is nothing for members to forward.

How long we keep your records

Claims, attachments, and remittance advices stay available in your account for 7 years from the payment date, matching the retention window auditors care about. After 7 years, records move to archival storage and can be retrieved through support with about a week's notice. Closing your account does not delete history early: regulations require us to keep payment records for the same period either way, and former members can request a full export at any point during it.

Monthly statements

A statement PDF posts to Documents on the 4th of each month covering the prior month: claims filed, decisions made, payments released, and the running balance of anything batched or returned. Members on paper delivery receive the same document by mail, folded so the balance summary is not visible through the envelope window. Statements are informational and require nothing from you; the one worth reading closely is January's, which carries the plan-year totals many people want for tax preparation.

Printing from the portal

Every document view has a print layout that strips navigation and fits standard letter paper, and the browser's print dialog reaches it directly. Claim pages print with the full timeline, remittance advices print exactly as their PDF renders, and the holiday and glossary tables each fit a single page. For a clean paper file of an entire plan year, print the January statement plus that year's remittance advices rather than every claim page; it is shorter and far easier for an accountant to follow.

Seasonal volume and processing times

January and February carry the year's highest volume as run-out filing overlaps new plan years, and median review time stretches from 1.8 to roughly 3 business days. Late December brings the opposite: light queues but fewer release cycles because of the holiday calendar. If a claim matters for a deadline, file it regardless of the season, because deadlines measure the submission date, not the decision date. The quietest and fastest month is reliably June, for whatever that is worth when scheduling elective care.

Filing by mail

Paper filing remains available on every plan: print the claim form from Documents, attach copies rather than originals, and mail everything to the processing address printed on the form. Paper claims join the same queue after a scanning step that adds 3 to 5 business days, and they appear in your online account once scanned, after which everything, including any document request, proceeds digitally. About 2 percent of claims still arrive on paper, mostly from members who simply prefer paper for their own records.

Time zones and timestamps

Deadlines and cutoffs on this page are stated in Eastern Time because our payment partner and the ACH calendar run on it, but everything displayed inside your account shows in your profile time zone. The 2:00 PM ET release cutoff is the one that surprises people west of it: an 11:30 AM approval in California is already past the bundle's clock by 30 minutes and waits a day. Deadline days, by contrast, run to 11:59 PM in your own time zone, so geography never shortens a filing deadline.

Product updates

August 2026

Remittance PDFs now include the interest line wherever state prompt-pay rules apply. Claim search matches provider names with accented characters. Fixed a display bug that showed Friday's batched small payments twice on the balance page.

May 2026

Payout splitting across two accounts left beta on every tier. The duplicate-screen banner now names the older claim it matched instead of just saying a match exists. iOS 3.8 added receipt capture with automatic edge cropping.

February 2026

Mileage rates updated for 2026 plan configurations. The claim timeline gained per-event timestamps in place of day-level entries. Android 4.1 fixed the crash when a device rotated during upload.

November 2025

Appeals moved fully into the app; mailed appeal forms are still accepted but no longer required for any plan. The weekly digest gained a section for claims waiting on documents from you.

July 2025

A new payment partner network cut median deposit arrival from 2.1 to 1.4 business days. Trace numbers became visible on the claim page the moment a release bundle transmits rather than the morning after.

March 2025

Dashboard redesign introduced plan cards with filing countdowns. CSV exports gained a column for adjustment reasons, the single most requested export change on record.

October 2024

HEIC uploads became supported natively rather than through conversion. Two-step sign-in enrollment moved to first sign-in for all new members.