We had that too, but then the merchant changes something in their system and then it switches to requiring a receipt. Then the client calls in mad because it was approved just fine 10 other times and now it magically needs a receipt 🥲

My goodness I’m glad I left that team lol. I’m happy it all works for you though truly. I’m sure the majority of people it works fine with. Of course I’m going to get the bad examples because people aren’t going to call in to say “nothings wrong! Carry on!”

If the daycare provides itemized receipts, awesome. Totally works, but believe me being on the other end of that call telling people that we denied the claim because of insufficient info on the receipt….my goodness please use the form and don’t shoot the messenger when I’m forced to deliver bad news, if it were up to me I’d be approving them and moving on lol!

Congrats on the baby!

For the love of all things holy please don’t forget about the money. I’ve had grown people cry because they forfeited $5000 at the end of the year because they had no clue what they signed up for.

I’d also recommend to see if your provider has a DCFSA claim form that all you need to do is supply a filled out form with a signature of the provider. Literally bypasses the need for itemized receipts like you normally would need. You can submit it January 1st for the full balance of the account and it will get approved in full and paid out throughout the year.

Convinced a coworker to do it, it’s taken out of his paycheck on Friday, and he gets reimbursed for it on Mondays

I had that same issue the other day. Bet it’s just a bunch of people trying to take advantage of the ibonds last minute. There’s been a ton of news coverage on the subject recently

It’s possible being the call center I only saw the people that had problems. In a perfect world it works that way. My company had an app too. The times people would upload blurry or non itemized receipts then need to get new ones or an EOB is SO many.

Our app also has a 4 receipt limit. If you hit that limit? You had to fax in the receipt like it’s 1980.

And my goodness you try telling a man that didn’t bother looking into how these accounts work that he just forfeited $2750 because he didn’t use the money all year.

You’re spot on. It depends on the merchants system if it tells the custodian if the item is qualified or not.

At least that’s how we explained it in the call center

FSA is far riskier, can’t be carried over in full from year to year to grow. It’s truly “use it or lose it”

You really need to know how much you’ll be spending each year.

Honestly to me, I wouldn’t even bother. I worked for a FSA custodian and the pain in the butt it is to get the receipts in that you need to fulfill the requirements can be a headache and time sink.

If you got laid off mid year but never used the funds and never saw a doctor yet? All that money just POOF lost.

Some companies let you roll over like $550 into the next plan year perpetually, even then if you never use it and get laid off or quit it goes POOF.