About financial aid disbursement term rules

When you give a student a financial aid award, you must tell Campus Cafe if the award is provided (disbursed) to a student all at once or in multiple installments. Semester-based institutions typically divide an annual award between fall and spring semesters. However, you can set different rules depending on the award and student's enrollment load (full time, three-quarter time, half time, etc.).

Prerequisites

• Create financial aid award codes.

Required permissions

Turn on disbursement rules (set by default)

1. Go to Admin > Custom Control.

2. In Search enter FA_PKGTERM.

3. Click the pencil.

4. Parameter Value 1-1 enter Y. Entering N will use a legacy packaging function.

Video tutorial

Custom named rules

When you establish a disbursement rule, you can tell Campus Cafe which elements of a student’s record to consider. If set to consider it, Campus Cafe considers a student’s major, program start date, part-time code and/or degree override start date when assigning a disbursement rule.

If you need to consider a different factor such as multiple student cohorts, you can create custom named rules and then attach them to a disbursement rule. This rule then takes precedence over all other rules.

If your institution is borrower based with many different starting cohorts, you may create a few named label disbursement rules/schedules that you can re-use by changing the academic/award/payment period dates after you have completed packaging a previous cohort. The way you don’t have to completely recreate a rule with all of the disbursements.

If enabled, the rule must be applied on the student's packaging page and works in conjunction with any other enabled rules. You must also set custom control FA_RULEKEY, Sequence 4 to N (see configure disbursement rules).

Create named rule

1. Go to Admin > STParm.

2. In Parameter Code enter FCPKGR.

3. In Parameter Value enter a short description for the rule.

4. Click Add.

5. In Description and Long Description enter text to describe the rule.

6. Click Save.

7. Go to Admin > Refresh Data Cache.

Configure disbursement rules

Before setting up your first disbursement rules, you need to tell Campus Cafe what traits about a student to consider. For example, you may tell Campus Cafe that a student’s disbursement rule varies by major or whether the student is part time.

1. Go to Admin > Custom Control.

2. In Search enter FA_RULEKEY.

3. Click the pencil.

4. Adjust each Parameter Value to align with your institution’s business practices. Refer to below table.

5. Click Save.

6. Go to Admin > Refresh Data Cache.

7. Log out of Campus Cafe and log in again.

Establish disbursement rules

1. Go to Financials > F/A Disbursement Term Rules.

2. Click Add/Update at the top.

3. Under New Rule Group select the appropriate criteria.

   1. Select the financial aid Award Year.

   2. Choose which criteria the disbursement rule applies to. You’ll only see criteria you told Campus Cafe applies to your institution in the Custom Control configuration for FA_RULEKEY.

      1. Start Semester: Select the semester. The rule applies to students with this starting semester.

      2. Part-Time Code: The rule applies to students with this part-time code.

      3. Major Code: The rule applies to students with this major. Leave blank to apply to all majors.

      4. Degree Start/Degree End: The rule applies to students with this degree start and end date.

      5. Named Rule: The rule applies to students with this custom named rule created in STParm using parameter code FCPKGR.

   3. Click the Add or Update box.

4. Under the Add New Rule select the appropriate criteria and set the following criteria for the disbursement.

   • Award Code: The award code associated with the award package. For example, the Rodriguez Scholarship.

   • Percentage Disbursed: The amount of the total award to apply to the student

   • Schedule Semester: The semester in which the disbursement will apply

     • Also, the semester code that will be used to determine enrollment intensity for Pell packaging, the packaging process will review the student’s enrollment in selected rule semester code to determine intensity and then split that by the Percentage disbursed.

   • Scheduled Date: The date the award is anticipated to be applied

   • Award Period Begin Date: Set the Award Period begin date on the 1st disbursement for the award. Setting the date in Subsequent disbursements will override the Award Period date for the specific disbursement.

   • Award Period End Date: Set the Award Period End date on the 1st disbursement for the award. Setting the date in Subsequent disbursements will override the Award Period date for the specific disbursement.

   • Payment Period Start Date: Set the date for the payment period starting date for this disbursement.

   • Payment Period End Date: Set the date for the payment period ending date for this disbursement.

   • AY (Academic Year): Enter a 1 to indicate the disbursement falls within the current academic year (default). Enter a 2 to indicate the disbursement falls outside of the first academic year but draws from the award year shown.  (This is academic year within the same Federal Award Year. {Default '1' is for the current and only year for most Term based programs. '2' is for a 2nd academic year/period within the same Federal Award Year as used by borrower-based programs. 3, 4, and so on can be used where applicable.})

   • Acad. Year Begin Date: Set the Academic Year Begin date on the 1st disbursement for the award. Setting the date in Subsequent disbursements will override the Academic Period date for the specific disbursement. 

   • Acad. Year End Date: Set the Academic Year End date on the 1st disbursement for the award. Setting the date in Subsequent disbursements will override the Academic Period date for the specific disbursement. 

   • NSLDS Sub Usage Period Limit (0.000): [As of July 1st, 2021 the Dept. of Education has removed the Sub Usage regulation and this field no longer affects packaging of Sub loans; recommend setting this field at '0' or to '9'.]  NSLDS Sub Usage Period Limit: NSLDS Sub Usage Period should be set for the 150% limit of the students program. (i.e. "6.0" would be set for 150% of a 4-year program or "3.0" for a 2-year program)

5. Click Save. The rule has been created at the bottom of the screen.

6. Additional disbursements for this rule can be subsequently created without leaving this screen.

   1. For example, the user can create a subsequent spring or summer disbursement for different types of aid on this page efficiently by adjusting the Award Code, schedule semester, or other information and clicking ‘Add’.

   2. Once all scheduled disbursements for the packaging rule have been added for the named rule in the grid below, click the back arrow to return to the disbursement term rule page.

To edit a rule

1. Next to the field click the pencil.

   • Changes are saved as soon as you move out of the field.

   • Delete the rule by clicking the red X under the delete column.

To export rules

1. Click Excel, PDF or Print to export the rules into the desired format.

2. Display or hide columns by clicking Column Visibility.

Open

Use Academic Year field in Term Rule to dictate loan Class Level packaging

1. Go to Admin > Custom Control.

2. In Search enter FA_PKGTERM.

3. Click the pencil.

4. In Parameter Value 2 enter Y. This will then use the Academic year value on a packaging rule to dictate the Sub loan class level amount when packaging rather than the F/A Packaging Record’s Class Level field that comes from the ISIR.

5. Click Save.

Remove Pell and Sub Loan validation on packaging rules (Graduate institutions only)

For institutions that do not have PELL or SUB award codes set up in their Disbursement Term Rule setups need to set this validation custom control, so they do not receive an error message. Campus Cafe checks to make sure packaging rules are set up properly to determine if a student is eligible for Pell, Sub, Unsub, and Plus Title IV aid; and if a rule is missing Pell or Sub award codes, the user will receive a packaging error unless this control is set to skip Pell or Sub packaging.

1. Go to Admin > Custom Control.

2. In Search enter FA_RULE_VALID.

3. Click the pencil.

4. In Parameter Value 1 enter Y.

5. Click Save.