Overview
A Benefit Period is the window of time during which you can incur and submit eligible health expenses for reimbursement. For Health Spending Accounts (HSAs), this is usually a one-year period.
Sounds simple but understanding how dates affect claim eligibility can get a little confusing.
Let’s break it down.
The details
The basics
According to CRA guidelines, your HSA funds can only be used for expenses dated within the same Benefit Period.
That means:
- You can’t carry forward expenses from one Benefit Period to the next.
- To be eligible, the service date of your expense must fall within the Benefit Period start date and end date.
A real-life example
Let’s say your Benefit Period runs from 2025-07-01 to 2026-06-30.
- You receive $2000.00 in HSA contributions during this time.
- You submit $2200.00 worth of expenses, all dated between 2025-07-01 and 2026-06-30.
Here’s what happens:
- You’ll be reimbursed $2000.00 - the full amount available for this Benefit Period.
- The remaining $200.00 can’t be reimbursed from future contributions, even if you get more funds in 2026-07.
New contributions (starting 2026-07-01) can only be used for expenses dated between 2026-07-01 and 2027-06-30.
If your funds are used up, you’ll see a message on the claim letting you know that you’ve exhausted funds for the Benefit Period.
What about unused contributions?
Your Plan is a 2 year HSA Rollback. This means that any unused funds from year 1 will carry forward to year 2, and will be available to reimburse expenses in year 2.
At the end of year 2, any funds leftover from year one will be reset back to $0.00, year 2 will become year 1, and you’ll begin a new 2 year cycle.
Let’s take a look at that more closely:
Year 1
- Funds available: $2,000.00
- $2,000.00 contribution in Year 1
- Claims: $1,000.00
- Balance carried forward: $1,000.00
Year 2
- Funds available $3,000.00
- $1,000.00 carried forward from Year 1
- $2,000.00 contribution in Year 2
- Claims: $500.00
- Balance: $2,500.00
- $500.00 remained from Year 1 contribution
- $2000.00 remaining from Year 2 contribution
- Reset: $500.00
- Unused Year 1 contributions are reset
- Balance carried forward: $2,000.00
Year 3
- Funds available: $4,000.00
- $2,000.00 carried forward from Year 2
- $2,000.00 contribution in Year 3
- Claims $3,500.00
- Balance $500.00
- $0.00 remaining from Year 2 contributions
- $500.00 remaining from Year 3 contributions
- Reset: $0.00
- Year 2 contributions were fully used. There is no amount leftover to reset.
- Balance carried forward: $500.00
Anything else?
Even if your expenses are eligible, don’t forget: with HSA Rollback, you must submit your expenses no later than 30 days after the Benefit Period ends.
Here are a few other articles to help you out: