CMS is moving Payroll-Based Journal submissions from QIES to iQIES on August 17, 2026. QIES stops accepting PBJ data after 11:59 PM ET on August 14. Your quarterly deadlines and reporting requirements don’t change — but if your vendor isn’t set up in iQIES before the switch, your Q4 submission stalls.
This is a system migration, not a policy change, which is exactly why it’s easy to miss. Nothing about what you report is different. Everything about where you report it is. Facilities that treat it as a non-event tend to discover the problem in November, when the Q4 deadline is a week out and nobody has iQIES access.
What’s changing with PBJ reporting in August 2026?
The Payroll-Based Journal system is being consolidated into iQIES, the same platform that already handles MDS and other CMS quality submissions. CMS announced the move in memo QSO-26-12-NH, released July 14, 2026.
The practical effect for a skilled nursing facility is a hard cutover with a blackout window in the middle of it:
| Date | What happens |
|---|---|
| Through Aug 14, 2026 (11:59 PM ET) | Final window to submit FY2026 Q3 data — in QIES only. This is also the normal Q3 deadline. |
| Jul 1 – Aug 16, 2026 | FY2026 Q4 submissions are not accepted in either system. |
| Aug 17, 2026 | iQIES goes live. All PBJ data submits through iQIES from this point forward. |
| Nov 14, 2026 | FY2026 Q4 deadline — unchanged. |
What is not changing?
Nothing about your reporting obligations. Quarterly deadlines stay the same, the data you report stays the same, and the job codes and pay types you use stay the same. CMS was explicit that no changes to quarterly deadlines or reporting requirements are being made alongside the transition.
That’s worth saying plainly, because a system migration tends to generate rumors that requirements are changing too. They aren’t. If your PBJ process is clean today, it stays clean — it just submits somewhere else.
What do you need to do before August 17?
One thing, and it’s the item most likely to bite you: if a vendor submits PBJ on your behalf, they must request access for your facility in iQIES, and you must approve that request. It isn’t automatic, and it doesn’t carry over from QIES.
That approval step sits with the facility, not the vendor. If nobody at your building is watching for it, the request sits unapproved and your first iQIES submission fails. Sort it before the cutover rather than in November.
- Confirm FY2026 Q3 is submitted and accepted before 11:59 PM ET on August 14.
- Ask your payroll or PBJ vendor directly whether they’ve requested iQIES access for each of your facilities — by name, per building, not “we’re handling it.”
- Identify who at the facility approves that request, and make sure they know it’s coming.
- Verify your own staff have working iQIES credentials, especially if PBJ has always been someone else’s job.
What changed in the April data spec?
Separately from the iQIES move, CMS updated the PBJ file specification earlier this year, and it’s already in force. As of April 1, 2026, fileSpecVersion 4.10.0 is required for all PBJ submissions. Files sent in older versions (2.00.0, 2.00.3, 4.00.0) are rejected outright.
The change with real operational teeth: you can no longer report more than 22.5 hours per employee ID per day, across all job titles combined. If your data has ever pushed past that — double-shift coverage recorded under one ID, or a coding error that stacks hours — it now fails rather than passing quietly.
How do contract and per diem hours factor into PBJ?
They count. Contract and agency hours are reportable alongside employee hours, under the same job codes, and they feed the same staffing measures behind your Five-Star staffing rating. Bringing in outside coverage doesn’t hurt your staffing numbers — failing to capture those hours accurately does.
This is where PBJ errors cluster in practice. Employee hours come off your own payroll system and are usually clean. Contract hours arrive from somewhere else — invoices, timesheets, a spreadsheet from a staffing partner — and get reconciled at quarter-end, under deadline, by someone matching names to job codes. That’s the reconciliation worth tightening before the cutover, not after.
Why hours actually worked is the number that matters
PBJ reports hours worked — not hours scheduled. A shift you booked and staffed on paper contributes nothing to your numbers if the person doesn’t arrive. That’s the quiet link between a staffing decision and a compliance one: unreliable coverage doesn’t just strain the floor that day, it shows up as a hole in the data CMS uses to rate you.
It’s the same reason credentialing matters at the moment of the shift rather than at onboarding. If a surveyor pulls a file mid-shift, “we’ll get that document” isn’t an answer.
This is what Switch is built around on the facility side: providers arrive fully credentialed and current, and shifts get worked at a 96% work rate — because accountability runs both ways, with the strictest cancellation policy in the category. Coverage you can count on is coverage that lands in your PBJ file.
If census volatility is what’s driving your contract hours in the first place, we’ve written about what the nurse shortage actually costs a facility in 2026, and built a CNA turnover cost calculator to put a number on the churn underneath it.
Can Switch handle the PBJ reporting for your Switch hours?
Yes. For shifts worked through Switch, we can provide the PBJ detail you need — provider, role, date, and hours worked — so the contract side of your submission isn’t something you reconstruct from invoices under a quarter-end deadline. That’s the piece most likely to introduce errors, and it’s the piece we already have clean.
If you’d like us to take on more of your PBJ reporting than just the hours worked through our platform, tell us on the form below. We’re actively scoping how much of the submission facilities want handled for them, and the answers shape what we build next.
Talk to us about PBJ reporting support →
Your PBJ transition checklist
- Now: confirm Q3 submitted and accepted in QIES before Aug 14, 11:59 PM ET.
- Now: confirm your vendor has requested iQIES access per facility — and that someone on your side approves it.
- Before Aug 17: verify facility staff have working iQIES credentials.
- Before Aug 17: confirm your files are on fileSpecVersion 4.10.0 and that no employee ID exceeds 22.5 hours in a day.
- Aug 17 onward: submit Q4 through iQIES; deadline is unchanged at Nov 14.
- Ongoing: tighten how contract and per diem hours get captured and coded, so quarter-end reconciliation isn’t a scramble — or have us hand you the detail for the shifts worked through Switch.
Frequently asked questions
August 17, 2026. QIES stops accepting PBJ data after 11:59 PM ET on August 14, and all submissions run through iQIES from August 17 forward (CMS memo QSO-26-12-NH).
No. CMS was explicit that quarterly deadlines and reporting requirements stay the same. Only the submission system changes. The FY2026 Q4 deadline is still November 14, 2026.
Confirm Q3 is submitted in QIES before August 14, then make sure your PBJ vendor has requested iQIES access for each of your facilities — and that someone at the facility approves it. That approval is the step most likely to be missed.
Yes. Contract and agency hours are reportable alongside employee hours under the same job codes, and they feed the staffing measures behind your Five-Star rating. Using outside coverage doesn’t hurt your numbers — failing to capture those hours accurately does.
As of April 1, 2026, PBJ rejects any submission reporting more than 22.5 hours per employee ID per day across all job titles. Files must also use fileSpecVersion 4.10.0; older versions are rejected outright.
Q3 data can’t be submitted in QIES after that point, and Q4 submissions don’t open in iQIES until August 17. Late or missing quarterly data can affect the staffing portion of your Five-Star rating, so treat August 14 as firm.
The bottom line
The August 17 move is a plumbing change with a real failure mode: unapproved vendor access. Nothing about your obligations changes, but the path your data travels does — and the facilities that handle it cleanly will be the ones that checked vendor access in early August instead of mid-November.
If unpredictable census is what keeps pushing you toward contract coverage, see how Switch fills shifts with credentialed per diem providers — and how a 96% work rate changes what your staffing plan can actually rely on.
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