All of the tasks under the Disbursement Processing suite can be set for Tasklist security to allow only specific individuals in the Financial Aid Office to access, if desired. (See the Tasklist module online Help for details on setting Tasklist security settings.)

Anticipated Aid, Disbursements & Adjustments, and CommonLine Loan Disbursement all require direct PowerFAIDS database access via an ODBC. See Connecting to PowerFAIDS from J1 for detailed instructions.

In the Fund Master window, add any fund for the award year to be processed that does not already exist. Assign a maximum 5-digit Fund Code that will be used to map to the ledger number of the fund in PowerFAIDS.

Update any funds for the award year to be processed. Confirm that all fund attributes are appropriate for the new award year. This is important because the same Fund Codes are now used by all award years instead of adding new codes. The Financial Aid Office should consult with the Business Office when they initially set up for a new year in PowerFAIDS and again immediately before anticipated aid or disbursements begin for the new award year. Any changes made to the fund code attributes will affect all newly generated anticipated aid or disbursement transactions. All existing transactions will continue to reflect the prior values.

In the Fund Master window, set the Payment Type to the appropriate type for the fund.

Schools will need to set the Fund Payment Type in Fund Master for their Direct Loan funds to Direct Loan (D). The Direct Loan Fund Payment Type calculates the net amount of loans differently than funds defined as Loan, which are CommonLine loans. Direct Loans truncate the cents of the calculated fee and then subtract the fee from the scheduled award amount. Anticipated Aid and Disbursements and Adjustments tasks use this Fund Payment Type.

A $1585 Stafford Direct loan award would yield a $7.925 fee (1/2%), the cents are truncated, and $7 is deducted, resulting in a award of $1578. CommonLine loans will include cents rounded to the nearest one-hundredth of a decimal. A $1585 alternative loan award would have a $47.55 fee (3%) deducted, resulting in an award of $1537.45.

In the Fund Master window, set the Acct/Check column to Account for most funds. This simply instructs the disbursement processing tasks to generate a transaction on the student's receivable account.

Set the Acct/Check column to No Transfer when Payment Type is also Job. This prevents the transaction from being processed in Disbursements & Adjustments but allows it to be sent to the Student Awards table via Anticipated Aid.

Set the Acct/Check column to By Check if Payment Type is In-House Loan, which requires a license. Also, set an AP account in the AP Subsidiary column.

a.    For Direct Loan funds, set the resulting percentage of the origination fee minus the interest rebate fee.

b.    For Subsidized Direct loans in the 2010-2011 award year, set .005 (.010 - .005).

c.     For CommonLine (Alternative) Loan funds, set the percentage used by the majority of your lenders.

The Anticipated Aid task uses the Maximum Loan Fee Percentages to determine if any outstanding aid remains for any loan fund that should be reported as anticipated. The calculated net amount of the outstanding loan aid and the disbursement transaction amount should be equal; if not equal, the difference should fall within the maximum loan fee amount and considered fully disbursed and no preliminary transaction is generated in J1. If it is higher than the maximum loan fee, then Anticipated Aid takes the calculated net amount minus the disbursement transaction amount and generates preliminary transactions for the resulting balance.

Anticipated Aid uses different maximum fees for each loan category. The FDSLP is for the William D. Ford Direct Loan Program, and the FFELP is now for alternative loan programs processed through CommonLine.

Determine the highest possible fee that may be taken for any loans offered students, and set that as the maximum loan fee for each program type.

The Disbursements and Adjustments task selects the location set under PowerFAIDS Disbursement Roster as the default folder when opened (see red circle).

The CommonLine Loan Disbursement task selects the location set under PowerFAIDS Loan Disbursement Authorization Roster as the default folder when opened (see blue circle).

The Direct Loan Monthly Reconciliation Report selects the location set under PowerFAIDS Direct Loan Disbursement Authorization Roster as the default folder when opened (see green circle).

This definition impacts all Disbursement Processing tasks. Each new award year in PowerFAIDS generates new POE ID values for each financial aid enrollment period. Create new rows as needed. However, note that this may have been done automatically by the Match Records task. See Defining the Periods of Enrollment (POE) for full details.

This mapping impacts all Disbursement Processing tasks. Each new award year in PowerFAIDS generates new POE ID values for each financial aid enrollment period. These new POE ID values need to be mapped appropriately to a single proper Accounts Receivable year and term. This is used to set the Charging Year and Term in the Transaction History table. Create new rows as needed. See Linking POEs to Terms in J1 Modules for full details.

The Disbursement Processing tasks depend upon the ability to find PowerFAIDS records in J1 via SSN. The Match Records task is designed to alert users to exact and potential J1 matches based on SSN and other identifying factors. Using the Match Records task routinely will increase the number of records your institution can process for Anticipated Aid, Disbursements and Adjustments, and CommonLine Loan Disbursements.

All Disbursement Processing tasks require a direct connection to the PowerFAIDS database in order to determine what records in PowerFAIDS to select for processing based on the selected POE. This will require that a database connection be established in the Financial Aid Configuration table. See Connecting to PowerFAIDS from J1 for full details.

a.    Launch PowerFAIDS for the award year for which your institution plans to run Anticipated Aid.

b.    Open the Administration module.

c.     Select View | Awarding | Funds.

d.    For funds to be processed by the Anticipated Aid task, select the Include in Anticipated checkbox at the bottom of the Packaging Attributes panel on the Fund Details tab.

Tasks requiring this setup include Anticipated Aid, Disbursements and Adjustments, CommonLine Loan Disbursements, Work Study to and from Payroll, and Create Student Awards Update.

i.      Launch PowerFAIDS for the award year for which your institution plans to run Anticipated Aid.

ii.    Open the Administration module.

iii.  Select View | Awarding | Funds.

iv.  Set the Ledger Number to the appropriate J1 Fund Code on the Data Integration Mapping panel on the More Fund Details tab.




Schools are free to establish their own 5-digit coding convention for the J1 Fund Code. For example, assign all federal funds to values between 1000 and 1999, state funds to values between 2000 and 2999, and institutional funds to values between 3000 and 3999. However, many schools simply assign the current award year Fund ID as the Ledger #. Remember that the Fund ID changes annually whereas the Ledger # will remain the same.

The following script should ONLY be executed from Query Analyzer logged in as the sa user and ONLY if the school elects to set the Ledger # to the value of the Fund ID initially. It must only be run one time.

update funds
set fund_ledger_number = fund_token
where award_year_token = the current award year token (for example, 2010)

Once executed in the current year, the Fund Ledger Number will roll forward to the new year just like your Fund Short Name. If your school wants to set their own 5-digit coding convention for the J1 Fund Code, this script should not be used. See Assigning the PowerFAIDS Fund Ledger Number for guidance.

FAM requires Direct Loan funds to be net disbursed from PowerFAIDS starting with the 2010-11 award year. As of PowerFAIDS 15.3, the net disbursement is calculated for both initial disbursements and adjusted disbursements accurately.

i.      Launch PowerFAIDS for the award year for which your institution is processing disbursements.

ii.    Open the Administration module.

iii.  Select View | Awarding | Funds.

iv.  For Direct Loan funds, select the More Fund Details tab and select Net as the Disbursements Type under the Loan Type panel.

FAM requires Disbursement Rosters, both the Direct Loan Disbursement Authorization rosters and the disbursement rosters for grants, to be in the Expanded format (999 characters in length) and set as Fixed Format. The Disbursement Roster must not be Right-Justified. The expanded, fixed format includes additional information on each disbursement transaction that facilitates reconciliation reporting. This is especially true for Direct Loan funds.