About School Account Statement (SAS) reconciliation review

The U.S. Department of Education issues an award-year specific School Account Statement (SAS), similar to a bank statement, on a monthly basis to institutions participating in Title IV aid processing. Statements are available for both federal Direct Loan programs and for the federal Pell Grant program. For information on how to receive and request these statements review the FSA Partner Connect Portal and the FSA Handbook.

SAS review is an important monthly and annual process for Title IV Aid compliance to maintain accurate data and is often requested during annual internal and Title IV audits.

Upon receipt of the SAS your institution can compare the SAS Cash Summary to your internal records to identify and research discrepancies.

Campus Cafe provides a SAS Reconciliation tool that compares the SAS record with information in Campus Cafe and highlights discrepancies to research.

Prerequisites

• Obtain the School Account Statement from the U.S. Department of Education and save it to your computer.

  • COD sends monthly SAS reports to the institution, but an institution can manually request a file from COD.

  • When manually requesting the report, please make sure to select the “SAS Disbursement Detail” report, and then select the Pell or the Direct Loan program

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Required permissions

Access SAS reconciliation review in Campus Cafe

1. Go to Financials > F/A COD Documents.

2. At the top pf the screen click Reconciliation.
   
   

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3. Click Browse and select the statement(s) you received from the department and to compare to Campus Cafe records. You can do this multiple times for different SAS documents and for Pell and Direct Loans. The upload functions supports fixed length and CSV files and also monthly and year-to-date SAS records.
   
   

4. Click Get Reconciliation Report.
   
   

5. You’ll see a list of all students on the SAS reconciliation report. You may export this information to Excel, PDF, print, or copy the information, or review in Campus Cafe.

Understanding and interpreting the SAS reconciliation review output

1. The output from the SAS review provides student information and the following fields: COD Award ID, Award Code, Award Year, Disbursement Sequence Number, Disbursement Number, Campus Cafe Amount, COD Amount, and an Error Message as applicable.

   • Rows that match appear white with black text. The Match column contains a green check box if the SAS and Campus Cafe information matches.

   • Rows mismatched appear yellow with red text. The Match column is empty. These items require further review to meet Department of Education’s SAS reconciliation guidelines.

2. In the event of a mismatch, you’ll see an error listed:

3. Once the issues are identified through the Campus Cafe reconciliation tool, you can research mismatched items to determine where the discrepancy lies and adjust the data in the U.S. Department of Education's Common Origination and Disbursement (COD) system or in Campus Cafe to match if appropriate.
   
   For more information on reconciliation best practices, review the FSA Student Handbook Volume 4, Chapter 6 for Direct Loan Reconciliation and Volume 4, Chapter 5 for Pell Grant Reconciliation.