Show Financial Aid qualified as well as granted in Business Office Screen

How the system is built now is a major issue between the Financial Aid office and the Business Office for institutions of higher education.

For Federal aid (Pell grant, Student loans, VA aid, etc.), which is the majority of aid received by our students, when we award what the student is eligible to receive it is put into the qualified fields for the award(s). Then aid is requested after registration/credit amounts are confirmed as most aid eligibility is linked to credit load/amounts.

Then once the funds are received, usually a week or more after the confirmation, we put the amounts received into the granted fields it as we obtain the funds then.

Currently the system functionality is described as such (from a help ticket) "The Financial Aid that is entered in Enrollment Management will not show at all in Billing Management unless there is a Decision of Awarded, and a Candidate Decision of Accepted. When the Candidate Decision is Accepted, you will not be able to save the Financial Aid in Enrollment Management without an Amount Granted entered. This means that there is currently no way to display only the Amount Qualified in Billing Management without actually awarding the Financial Aid."

Therefore, the business office cannot see any prospective (qualified) aid at time of registration (when payment is due to our school), and we cannot just grant the aid as we do not have it until the funds come down and enrollment/ credit amounts confirmed.

That means that currently all the payments that need to be done by the student/parent of student at registration time need to be hand calculated by the Business Office from information delivered by other means (paper receipts/award offers, shared excels, etc) to them from the Financial Aid office. This is causing a lot of frustration from students/parents.

Can the system be updated to have the qualified amounts that are entered in the Enrollment Management side (Financial Aid) to the Business Office Side but not be added to any Business office ledger until it is granted?

Thanks

  • Guest
  • Sep 10 2020
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Employee Name Ben Bishop
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  • Guest commented
    1 Oct, 2020 08:32pm

    I agree. We have a related issue in that there is no place on the enrollment management side that allows for the disbursement date to selected so it will show up in billing. Disbursement amounts and dates are critical data that needs to match in both enrollment management and billing. The current set up is cumbersome for adhoc disbursements and prone to error.