The short answer is No. Although there is a year-end that is established for submission of claims, there is no restriction on when claims can be submitted.
To our knowledge, we are also the only provider that supports all carry forward options without any black-out periods. Employees can submit claims at any time, without payment delays.
Our system automatically figures out what period to assign the claim to. Its completely transparent for the employee or owner-employee submitting the claim.
Here are some more details:
Your company can specify its desired "run-off" length: typically this is 60 days. This is the length of time employees have, after the end of period, to submit claims and still have them be processed against the benefit allocation for that closed period.
During run-off, employees can also submit claims for the new period, and we'll process them against the new period's benefit allocation. During run-off employees can even mix and match claims from the two periods; our system will automatically allocate each receipt to the correct period and benefit limit.
Carry forwards can even be utilized during run-off, as necessary.
Once run-off is complete, the remaining carry forward is applied to the new period.