how long does it take for military advances to go through? And also?

how does one know that they've done everything correctly in order to acquire the military pay advance, besides the money showing up a few days later?

i ask because my husband is in the reserves and in another state, and though he's been there for four days now, his advance still isn't in yet, even though he's been assured he's gone through all the proper channels. Now we've had to dig into our personal accounts just to finance his expensive stay in this uber expensive state (Hawaii) and we're now overdrafted because we can't afford it any longer. he'd put his paperwork in as early as he could, under the circumstances, but now my question is what do we do?

Is this normal for it to take so long?