my understanding is that they are handled by the regional offices.
in the other thread that I mentioned one chap said he submitted just before the due date but got no response. so he called his local office a few days after the due date, they looked him up and said sorry we'll get on to it right now and then he received the approved notification shortly thereafter.
based on my own online reporting the notification date and therefore the next reporting date are set by the system. eg. if I submit at 8pm tonight then that is the notification date, not when the IO picks up my application from the job queue.
so if they can see your pending report then it should be a simple matter of them approving the application. yerr I know, TIT ????