If you run a skilled nursing facility, the Payroll-Based Journal isn't optional. CMS requires every SNF to submit direct care staffing data electronically each quarter, and that data feeds directly into your Five-Star staffing rating on Care Compare — the rating families check before they ever call you.
Most facilities have payroll data for their own employees under control. The harder part is often eligible agency and contract labor—such as agency nurses and certain therapy staff—whose reportable hours may sit outside payroll. Not every person who provides a service is reportable: CMS excludes hospice and private-duty staff, and practitioner hours billed separately to Medicare or another payer.
What PBJ requires
At its core, PBJ reporting means submitting, for every quarter:
- Applicable direct-care hours worked each day under CMS job codes 1 through 40; some categories are optional, and facilities should report only hours covered by the current policy manual
- Employee vs. contract designation for every person reported
(You no longer submit census through PBJ — CMS derives daily census from your MDS assessments.)
Submissions go through CMS's system — iQIES as of August 17, 2026 — in a specific XML format, and the deadlines are fixed:
| Fiscal quarter | Period covered | Submission deadline |
|---|---|---|
| Q1 | October 1 – December 31 | February 14 |
| Q2 | January 1 – March 31 | May 15 |
| Q3 | April 1 – June 30 | August 14 |
| Q4 | July 1 – September 30 | November 14 |
If a facility fails to submit any staffing data by the deadline, CMS assigns one star for the staffing rating. Incomplete or inaccurate data can also affect the measures and rating, but it is not automatically treated the same as submitting no data at all.
Where facilities get burned
After working with skilled nursing operators, the same failure points come up again and again:
Contract and agency hours fall through the cracks. Your payroll system knows nothing about the agency CNA who covered three shifts last month. Someone has to chase invoices, match them to dates, and convert them to reportable hours.
Eligible non-employee hours go under-reported. A contract physical therapist who provides reportable services on Tuesdays may not use the facility’s payroll clock, so the team needs another reliable way to capture and review those hours.
Manual reconciliation consumes staff time. Teams may need to assemble spreadsheets from sign-in sheets and invoices, resolve duplicates, and map roles before they can review a submission.
Weak supporting records. During an internal or external review, teams may need to trace reported hours back to source records. An incomplete or illegible paper sign-in sheet makes that work harder.
The fix: capture hours at the front door
Here's the operational opportunity: many contract providers already pass through your front desk. If your check-in system captures who they are, when they arrived, when they left, and what role they were working, your team has a structured, timestamped source record to review for PBJ.
That's how ArrivSure's healthcare module approaches it:
- Providers check in at the kiosk like any other visitor, and a completed configured visit can create a draft PBJ work entry with the selected job code
- NPI and CCN lookup helps staff confirm that entered identifiers match registry records; an NPI does not validate licensure or professional credentials
- Providers sign off on their hours at the kiosk or through a one-time link on their phone
- At quarter end, you review the records and export an XML file formatted to the configured CMS schema instead of building it by hand
The goal is to turn part of the quarterly scramble into a review-and-export task, with reported hours tied back to available check-in and sign-off records. Schema checks can validate file structure, but they do not determine reportability, completeness, accuracy, or CMS acceptance.
Sources and current guidance
Last reviewed September 2, 2026.
- CMS PBJ data-submission overview
- CMS PBJ Policy Manual
- CMS Five-Star Quality Rating System Technical User’s Guide
- CMS NPPES disclosure about what an NPI does—and does not—validate
Confirm current reporting rules with CMS and your compliance advisor. ArrivSure supports source-record collection, review, and export preparation; authorized facility staff remain responsible for the submission.
Want to see how PBJ collection and review could fit your facility’s workflow? Request a demo.