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.

3. Select a Packaging Award Type. Select Internal for disbursement rules for non-federal/other packaging rules. Otherwise select the federal award.

4. Select the financial aid Award Year.

5. Choose which criteria the disbursement rule applies to. You’ll only see criteria you told Campus Cafe applies to your institution.

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

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

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

   • Named Rule: The rule applies to students with this custom named rule.

6. Click Add 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.

   • 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)

7. Click Save.

8. Repeat for subsequent Disbursements and Awards.

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. Parameter Value 1-2 enter Y.

5. 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.