Cocoon estimates the amount of benefit payments you receive from the claims you file for your leave. We have codified the system to make estimates on what you would potentially be paid based on a number of factors:

Using this information, Cocoon establishes a daily rate at the start of your leave for each of your benefit payment sources to then provide to your employer an amount to process for payroll. This mirrors how most states and private insurance policies pay out disability and bonding claims.

For more detailed information on our benefit estimation method, please review our article here.

While Cocoon's estimation method is accurate in most cases, there may be factors outside of Cocoon's view that affect the rate of pay you might be receiving. In these cases, we rely on your help through the benefit verification process.

On Your leaves page, click Verify your payments under the claim you wish to review your payments with Cocoon.

You will be directed through the Verify your leave payments flow to upload supporting documentation. Further information on what you need to upload can be found later in this article.

Once submitted, you will receive an email notification within 48 hours on the status of your submission.

Note that Cocoon does not make determinations for what you will ultimately be paid from your claim payments. The final determination of how you will be paid will be from the state program and/or your private insurance carrier. Cocoon provides you with an estimate that you can use to follow up with your claims adjuster or state representative to reconcile accordingly. For additional assistance in explaining Cocoon's estimates, please reach out with our Support team!

Cocoon estimates the daily rate for state and/or private insurance benefit payments based on your salary and eligibility. However, it's possible that the actual daily rate paid by these sources (private or state insurance) can differ from our estimation due to outside factors outside, like:

By using the verification tool in your Cocoon Pay Dashboard as soon as you get your first payment(s) from each pay source, you can determine if our estimated daily rate matches your actual rate. If it differs, Cocoon can correct for it as soon as possible so you’re getting pay from your employer accurately—making sure you get your full pay as seamlessly as possible.

We recommend working with our support team if you anticipate a potential issue with your claim and are receiving your benefits late. For more on excess employer benefits and potential balances owed, please review our article here.

Cocoon does not require you to submit every payment received from your benefit claims. However, you may want to consider submitting each benefit payment for the below reasons:

To ensure your total pay is accurate, you can use the verification tool in your Cocoon Pay Dashboard to log all of the benefit payments you receive. Logging all of the payments will give us the final picture of how you were paid throughout your leave.

When verifying your payments, you’ll need to gather information from the pay stub that came as an Explanation of Benefits (EOB).

For some entities, like Washington state benefits that are only distributed via debit card, this might only be available through your portal. For others, like the California EDD, they might vary depending on the claim type. For example, the EDD disability payments are available in your portal, but EDD Paid Family Leave (PFL) benefits are only available on the paper EOB.

The information we need to verify state payments includes:

For private insurance payments, we need:

For EOB examples and how to find the information you need, check out this article!

This varies by pay type and source and there are examples below for guidance.

Each EOB or portal (examples below) will contain a date range and you can check our expected dates by clicking on your leave timeline and hovering over the different pay sources.

To verify that you were fully paid for CA Disability, please log into your portal and verify that the last payment end date goes through your leave end date per your leave plan.

CA Paid Family Leave benefits are fully paid out when you see a Notice of Exhaustion on the pay stub, as shown below.

You can log in to your WA State Paid Family and Medical Leave portal to see the start and end dates of your approved leave. Once the portal shows payments through the end date specified, you have been fully paid.

To verify that you were fully paid by MA state, please log into your portal and verify that the last Pay Period end date goes through your leave end date per your leave plan.

Cocoon is committed to helping you ensure you are paid what you are entitled to throughout your leave. Our product reflects the expectations of your pay based on your employer paid leave policy as well as the external benefits you are eligible for. Your employer's payroll team will use our product to help process payroll and ultimately provide you your paycheck for your paid leave.

Cocoon's dashboard shows how we have applied our estimation model throughout your leave and shows projections of how you may be paid from your different pay sources. For the purposes of projecting your pay to your employer, the benefit payments are translated based on how you typically receive your paycheck from your employer. Specific details for each pay period is found under Your payments.

The estimation model will adapt current and future pay periods based on new information received as we receive them, like the information we receive from your benefit verification submissions. We note that your past pay periods will not be changed once those payments were finalized with your employer. Should an adjustment be processed to your benefits, they will be applied to the current pay cycle and future pay periods.

Cocoon integrates with your employer's payroll process. Your employer's payroll team uses Cocoon prior to finalizing your paycheck each pay period you are out on leave. If changes occur during your leave that affect your leave pay, your employer will be notified at the soonest available opportunity through their dashboard prior to the upcoming pay period. Our team will work directly with your employer with urgency if our team has identified an issue with your pay projections from Cocoon.

Cocoon will not reach out to your state or private insurance carrier on your behalf regarding your claim payments. Due to concerns of identity fraud and the limited access of benefit claims, state programs and insurance providers require the claimant to facilitate all communications regarding your claim after your claim is submitted.

You can reach out to our Support team if you have any questions regarding how to reach out to your state or private insurance carrier, as well as confirming any information provided within Cocoon as needed.