The CommonLine Loan Disbursement process imports alternative loan disbursement data from PowerFAIDS into actual transactions to update a student's receivable account and their Financial Aid CommonLine Student Loans record. CommonLine Loan Disbursement can be automated or can be run interactively.
The CommonLine Loan Disbursement process begins in PowerFAIDS. Students awarded alternative loan funds have loan applications automatically generated. These applications are certified and sent to the client's loan servicing agent for approval; and, when approved, guaranteed, and processed, loan disbursements are eventually distributed back to the school. At the point the loan application is created, the management of the loan occurs in PowerFAIDS tables separate from the awarding tables. This is necessary because the gross amount of the loan is officially disbursed to the student, but loan origination and processing fees are extracted and the student receives the net amount of the loan to apply to their educational costs.
The data communication flow between PowerFAIDS and the client's loan servicing agent occurs via a CommonLine v4 formatted data file. PowerFAIDS provides schools with functionality that analyzes the student for eligibility for loan disbursement and generates a data file to communicate that eligibility to campus business offices. This data file is a regenerated CommonLine v4 formatted file plus additional PowerFAIDS data relevant to the transaction. You must enable the CommonLine Disbursement Authorization process because the CommonLine Loan Disbursement task reads the data file generated by this process.
The PowerFAIDS User Guide provides the following description of the PowerFAIDS CommonLine Disbursement Authorization Process:
The CommonLine Disbursement Authorization in PowerFAIDS is an iterative process. When you screen an incoming disbursement roster to reconfirm student eligibility, some students may be ready for disbursement, but other students have to fulfill some requirement. For example, submit a missing document, before they can receive their funds. PowerFAIDS allows you to approve some disbursements in a roster and withhold approval of others. To support this, each record in the file contains a Current Status and Status Date, and Prior Status and Status Date. By interrogating the file for changes in status, your local programming can discern which previously non authorized disbursements can now be released, ignoring those records with no changes in status.
The CommonLine Loan Disbursements task evaluates records based on the current and prior status to determine if the records are actionable. If actionable, then processing continues; if not, then the record is ignored. The following chart details when a record is actionable:
|
Current Status |
Prior Status |
Definition |
Actionable? |
|
Blank |
Blank |
This loan was processed prior to enabling the CommonLine Disbursement Authorization process. It is treated as received but not ready to be disbursed. |
NO |
|
N (Negotiate) |
Blank, C, R, X |
This students loan disbursement has met eligibility rules in PowerFAIDS for disbursement. |
YES |
|
N (Negotiate) |
N |
This student's loan disbursement was previously processed for disbursement. |
NO |
|
C (Received) |
Blank, N, C, R, X |
This student's loan has been received but is not ready to be disbursed in PowerFAIDS. |
NO |
|
R (Returned) |
Blank, N, C, R, X |
This student's loan disbursement is to be returned. |
NO |
|
X (Exception) |
Blank, N, C, R, X |
This student's loan has been received, and the student was ineligible for disbursement in PowerFAIDS. |
NO |
Once the record is determined to be actionable, the process then looks for the POE ID. The PowerFAIDS CommonLine Loan Disbursement Authorization File contains Award Year, Total Number of Disbursements, and Disbursement Number. It does not contain the POE ID for J1 to map to the billing period. It is necessary to look at each student's distribution for the loan award to tally the number of scheduled disbursements and to compare this count to the Total Number of Disbursements in the roster. Each scheduled disbursement is ordered sequentially, and the Disbursement Number from the roster is matched to the order sequence to determine the POE associated. If the Total Number of Disbursements and the count of scheduled disbursements are not equal, no POE ID is assigned and the transaction will fail validation.
Once the POE ID is assigned, then all other validation checks are performed.
· SSN must match a single SSN in the Biograph Master table.
· The matched Biograph Master record must have an ID_NUM link to the Student Master table.
· The fund ledger number must match a J1 fund code.
· The matched J1 fund code must not be flagged as a No Transfer fund.
· A valid subsidiary code must be set.
· The POE ID must match a POE ID in the POE Definition table.
· The POE ID must be cross-referenced to the AR module in the POE Cross Reference table.
· The POE ID must have a financial aid period defined in the POE Definition table.
· If allocating aid to charges from a fund associated with a subsidiary flagged to allocate financial aid to eligible charges, a Charge/Fee Code Priority list must be assigned to J1 Fund Code in Fund Master.
· Additional checks are done if you are using Open Items processing for Accounts Receivable.
The CommonLine Loan Disbursements Not Processed window is used for troubleshooting loan disbursements that failed validation and did not process successfully to the Business Office. This window allows you to view specific loan disbursement transactions and their associated error conditions. It also provides a view of all pertinent data from the loan disbursement authorization roster and allows manual update of several key data elements.
The setup required for CommonLine Loan Disbursements is shared by most of the Disbursement Processing task group.
CommonLine Loan Disbursement is Process Schedule enabled. This means that this task may be scheduled as a recurring job, therefore automating the task. The frequency cycle can be set in minutes, hours, days, weeks, or months to meet each institution's needs. See Automating Disbursement Processing for guidance on when and why to automate this process.