Your PBJ submission is due in 45 days after quarter end. You know this. Your payroll company probably knows this. What most facilities don't know — not until they've already lost stars — is how many ways the submission can be technically complete and still devastate your Five-Star staffing rating.
This guide covers everything: what PBJ is, what it requires, the exact submission deadlines, how CMS uses your data on Care Compare, and the nine reporting errors that facilities make every quarter. If you're reading this before your next submission date, you have time to fix them.
What Is PBJ and Why Does It Matter?
Payroll-Based Journal (PBJ) is the mandatory electronic staffing reporting system CMS established under Section 6101 of the Affordable Care Act. Effective July 1, 2016, every skilled nursing facility participating in Medicare or Medicaid is required to submit detailed staffing data each quarter.
The core requirement: facilities must electronically report direct care staffing hours — including employees, agency staff, and contract staff — using payroll and other verifiable, auditable data. Self-reporting from memory or estimates is not acceptable. The hours must come from actual payroll records, time-keeping systems, and staffing contracts.
PBJ data feeds directly into your public Five-Star Quality Rating on Care Compare — the website families, discharge planners, and hospital case managers use to compare facilities. Starting July 30, 2025, CMS began displaying chain-level staffing performance data on Care Compare as well, meaning one location's weak PBJ data now affects the reputation of every building in your chain. Poor PBJ performance = lower staffing stars = fewer referrals = lost revenue.
PBJ Submission Deadlines
PBJ reporting is quarterly. Submissions are due 45 calendar days after the end of each quarter.
| Quarter | Reporting Period | Deadline |
|---|---|---|
| Q1 | January 1 – March 31 | May 14/15 |
| Q2 | April 1 – June 30 | August 14/15 |
| Q3 | July 1 – September 30 | November 14 |
| Q4 | October 1 – December 31 | February 14 |
If you miss the window, CMS automatically assigns the minimum staffing-turnover points for six consecutive quarters — not one, six. A single missed deadline can hurt your Five-Star rating for a year and a half.
The 8-Hour RN Requirement
Federal law requires every SNF to have a Registered Nurse on duty for at least 8 consecutive hours per day, 7 days a week. CMS uses PBJ data to monitor this requirement. If your PBJ data shows four or more days in a single quarter with zero RN hours reported, you automatically receive a one-star staffing rating for that quarter — regardless of your actual staffing levels.
What Data You Must Submit
PBJ reporting is employee-level, day-level data. You're not submitting aggregate weekly totals. You're submitting every direct care employee, every day they worked, and every hour they worked.
Required Data Elements
- Employee ID (unique, consistent across all submissions)
- Job title code (from the 40 CMS-defined job codes)
- Pay type code (exempt, non-exempt, contract)
- Work date (individual daily entries)
- Hours worked each day
Who to Include
- All directly employed direct care staff
- Agency nurses and contract CNAs
- Contract therapists whose time counts toward direct care hours
- Corporate staff working in the facility in a direct care role
What NOT to Include
- Hours paid for leave, vacation, or any absence from work
- Unpaid overtime for salaried staff (only paid hours count)
- Hours worked providing services to residents in non-certified beds
- Hours billed to FFS Medicare under fee-for-service arrangements
CMS no longer accepts census data in PBJ file submissions. If your older software generates PBJ files with census data embedded, those submissions will be rejected. Verify your software is generating current-format XML files.
How PBJ Data Feeds Into Your Five-Star Rating
The Five-Star Quality Rating System rates facilities in three domains: Staffing, Quality Measures, and Health Inspections. The Staffing domain — directly driven by PBJ data — accounts for a significant portion of your overall rating.
The Staffing Domain Measures
- Total Nurse Staffing — RN + LPN + CNA hours per resident per day
- RN Staffing — RN hours per resident per day
- Nurse Turnover — annual turnover percentage for RNs and total nursing staff
- Administrator Turnover — annual administrator turnover
Starting in 2026, PBJ data also feeds into the SNF Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) program — meaning your staffing reporting accuracy now affects Medicare payment adjustments, not just your public rating.
Beginning April 2024, CMS ended the grace period for missing turnover data. If your PBJ submission is missing or deemed inaccurate for turnover calculation, CMS automatically assigns the lowest possible turnover score. Turnover accounts for half of the staffing domain. This is not a minor penalty.
How PBJ Data Appears on Care Compare
Your PBJ data becomes visible on Care Compare approximately 120 days after submission. Families and referral sources can see your staffing hours per resident per day, how your staffing compares to state and national averages, your nurse and administrator turnover rates, and your overall staffing star rating.
Since July 2025, chain operators can also see their chain's aggregate performance — meaning your facility's data is now part of a larger public story if you're part of a multi-facility organization.
Survey prep starts with the right documentation.
PBJ accuracy is one component of survey readiness. The checklist covers documentation and compliance requirements across all departments.
→ Download Free State Survey Readiness ChecklistThe 9 Most Common PBJ Reporting Errors
These are the errors that actually cost facilities stars. Some are data errors. Some are process errors. All of them are fixable if you know to look for them.
Midnight Split Errors
Shifts that cross midnight must be split — the hours before midnight count on one calendar day, the hours after midnight count on the next. Time-keeping systems vary widely in how they handle this, and some payroll exports don't split automatically.
How it hurts: Midnight-split errors create apparent gaps in coverage (showing zero hours on a day when staff actually worked) and double-counting on others.
The fix: Verify your payroll or time-keeping system automatically splits overnight hours at midnight before generating the PBJ export.
Omitting Agency and Contract Staff
Your own payroll hours are probably in your system. The agency RN who worked your 11-to-7 three nights this week almost certainly isn't — unless someone manually entered those hours.
How it hurts: Under-reported direct care hours lower your staffing score. Facilities often discover they've been running at what looks like borderline staffing ratios when their actual covered hours were adequate.
The fix: Establish a weekly process for entering agency and contract hours manually. Assign one person to own this — not the scheduler, not the payroll clerk, one designated person.
Flat-Rate Reporting for Exempt Staff
Directors of Nursing, Staff Educators, and other salaried nursing staff are sometimes reported at a flat 40 hours per week rather than their actual hours worked. PBJ auditors look for this.
The fix: Use actual time-sheet data for all exempt employees, including salaried nursing leadership.
Wrong Job Codes or Inconsistent Employee IDs
CMS defines 40 specific job codes. If an employee's role changes, or if your system generates a new employee ID when someone's status changes, the data integrity of your submission degrades. Employee turnover calculations depend on consistent IDs across quarters.
The fix: Run a quarterly reconciliation of employee IDs before submission — verify that anyone who left and returned, anyone who changed roles, and anyone on an HR system that changed IDs is correctly represented.
Missing Turnover Data (Post-April 2024)
Before April 2024, missing turnover data was excluded from calculations. Now it results in the lowest possible turnover score — automatically, no exceptions.
The fix: Make sure your PBJ submission explicitly includes turnover data. Consult the current PBJ Policy Manual to verify the required turnover reporting elements.
Zero-RN-Hour Days
Four or more days in a quarter with zero RN hours = automatic one-star staffing rating, regardless of how good your other numbers are. This happens when agency RN hours aren't entered, overtime RN hours aren't captured in the PBJ export, or an RN supervisor is counted as admin rather than nursing.
The fix: Run the 1702D Individual Daily Staffing Report before your submission deadline and review it day by day for the quarter. Look for zeros and verify against actual scheduling records.
Submitting After the Deadline
There is no extension process. No hardship exemption. No "we had technical difficulties" exception. Late submissions are rejected.
The fix: Set your internal submission deadline 10 days before the CMS deadline. Run preliminary reports two weeks before. Leave a buffer for correction.
Census Mismatch
PBJ data is combined with MDS-derived census data to calculate staffing hours per resident per day. If discharged residents are still appearing in your census because MDS discharge records weren't filed promptly, your census looks inflated, making your staffing hours per resident look lower than they are.
The fix: Run the MDS Census Report (available in iQIES) before finalizing your PBJ submission. Reconcile it against actual census.
Slow Audit Response
CMS can request documentation for audit within a five-day window. Facilities that fail to respond within five days are automatically downgraded to one star for staffing for that quarter.
The fix: Know exactly where your source documents live: payroll records, agency invoices, time-keeping exports. If a CMS auditor asks, you should be able to respond in two days, not scrambling for five.
The Pre-Submission Checklist
Run these four CMS reports before every submission. They'll catch most errors before CMS sees them.
- Report 1700: Employee Report — verifies all staff are listed with correct IDs and job codes
- Report 1702D: Individual Daily Staffing Report — shows hours by day; review for zeros and gaps
- Report 1702S: Staffing Summary Report — aggregate view for sanity checking
- MDS Census Report: Verify discharged residents are removed from census
Final Verification Before Submission
- No days with zero RN hours
- Agency and contract hours included
- Midnight-split entries correct
- No census entries for discharged residents
- Turnover data included
- Submission at least 10 days before deadline
What Happens When You Get Audited
PBJ audits are conducted by CMS-contracted auditors. An audit document request will ask for payroll records for the reporting period, time-keeping system exports, agency invoices and staffing contracts, employee schedules, and any other records supporting the hours submitted.
You have five days to respond. The response must be complete — partial documentation doesn't stop the audit from resulting in a downgrade.
The best audit preparation is done before submission, not after a request arrives. Maintain organized payroll documentation by quarter, with a folder or system that makes it easy to pull the records a specific auditor would ask for.
Your Action Step
If your last PBJ submission is more than 30 days old, pull it now and run it against the nine error types above. You don't need to wait for an audit to find these. Most facilities that discover PBJ errors catch them through internal review — which means the correction happens before CMS sees the data, not after.
→ Download the Free State Survey Readiness Checklist — PBJ accuracy is one component of survey readiness. The checklist covers documentation and compliance requirements across all departments that drive your facility's overall rating.
Frequently Asked Questions
When is the PBJ submission deadline for 2026?
Q1 2026 (January–March) is due May 14–15, 2026. Q2 is due August 14, Q3 is due November 14, and Q4 2025 data was due February 14, 2026. CMS uses a 45-days-after-quarter-end rule.
What happens if I miss the PBJ deadline?
Your facility receives the minimum staffing-turnover points for six consecutive quarters and may receive a one-star staffing rating for the missed quarter. Late submissions are not accepted.
Does PBJ include agency nurses?
Yes. All direct care hours — employees, agency staff, and contract staff — must be reported. Omitting agency hours is one of the most common PBJ errors.
How does PBJ affect my Five-Star rating?
PBJ data feeds the Staffing domain of the Five-Star Quality Rating System. Your total nursing hours per resident per day, RN hours per resident per day, nurse turnover, and administrator turnover are all calculated from PBJ submissions and displayed publicly on Care Compare.
Can Windows 10 users still submit PBJ?
No. As of November 15, 2025, CMS implemented a policy restriction preventing Windows 10 from connecting to the QIES VPN required for PBJ submission. Users must be on Windows 11 or another compatible operating system.
Sources: CMS PBJ Policy Manual v2.5, CMS CASPER Data, LeadingAge NY PBJ Guidance, Empeon PBJ Reporting Analysis 2024, Forvis Mazars Five-Star PBJ Impact Analysis, AHCANCAL PBJ Resources