835 Remittance Advice

The 835, also called the electronic remittance advice or ERA, is the payer's answer to a submitted 837 claim. It reports the adjudicated amount for each service line, the payment, and any reductions, each explained by claim adjustment reason codes and remittance advice remark codes that state why an amount was lowered or denied. It is the electronic counterpart of the paper explanation of benefits a practice receives.

An 835 is not the same as the deposit. One 835 can cover many claims across multiple patients, and a single payment can be tied to several 835 files, which is why reconciliation pairs each 835 line back to the originating claim and to the deposit identifier it references.

Reading the 835 is how a practice learns the real outcome of a claim: the difference between what was billed, what was allowed under the contract, and what the payer actually paid after adjustments.

The 835 tells you whether you were paid correctly, underpaid, or denied, and it carries the reason codes you need to appeal or correct. Without reading the 835 at the line level, a practice cannot tell a contractual write-off from a recoverable denial, and money it is owed quietly slips out of accounts receivable.

Copay uses the 835 to reconcile the claims it has purchased, matching each adjudicated line back to the claim it bought so the books close cleanly. Because the purchase is non-recourse, a denied eligible claim shown on the 835 is Copay's loss, not yours.

See how Copay works.