Financial Aid

To add an aid year record, select Add. On the next page, the School Year dropdown menu will display all years that are active in Jenzabar SONIS for which the student or applicant does not currently have a financial aid record.

Select the desired School Year and click Add to create the selected year's financial aid record.

To complete the addition of the school year to the record, a piece of financial information must be entered. A quick way to do this is to add the EFC/SAI, Housing Status, or Residency Status. In this example, the EFC has been added. Each of these fields will be covered in more detail later in this article. After adding a piece of information, scroll to the bottom of the page and click Submit. This will complete the addition of the year record to the user's account.

To add a budget to an existing School Year, click the desired School Year.

The next page is populated with the values and data points that were displayed in summary on the previous page. To add or edit the budget, click on Budget.

To add a new budget, select it from the Please Select Budget dropdown and click Create Budget. If the needed budget doesn't display, it must be created in Fin Aid: Budgets.

On the next page, the budget and it's elements display. The individual elements can be edited by clicking in the field and typing the updated value. To confirm the addition of the budget, click Submit.

If a budget has already been added, the currently assigned budget and its corresponding values are displayed. Each of the budget element fields can be edited by clicking on Budget and then in each field to edit the field's values.

Click Submit to save any edits, Reset to return to the default value of the budget element, or Delete to remove the budget from the record.

To view a student's ISIR record, navigate to their Financial Aid record and click on the school year to be viewed. Then click ISIR Information at the bottom of the page.

If more than one ISIR file has been imported for the user, a dropdown menu is available to view each set of data.

If the latest batch to be imported was not marked to be used in packaging, a note appears at the top of the page suggesting that administrators review the data. Click the Set as Packaging ISIR to change which ISIR import is being used for packaging.

The following image displays all of the fields that are imported from ISIR to SONIS:

If no ISIR information is available, an ISIR record can be imported using the Import ISIR utility.

When you first enter the Financial Aid screen, the Loans section will display any loans the student currently has. If they have none, There are not any Loans for this student displays. Select Add to create a loan.

The next page will default to the most recent processing year. If loan start, end, and disbursement dates have not been set up for the year, red text will display notifying the user of the need to set up the details on the Fin Aid: Dates by School Year Systems menu page. If they have been set up, the associated dates will auto-populate.

Add the Disbursement Amount for each disbursement date that displays. If a disbursement should be held, check the Hold 1 or Hold 2 box, as appropriate.

Choose the Loan Type from the dropdown. Driver License and DL State will populate from Biographic if they are available on the record. Enter the Lender ID and current or expected Enrollment Status.

School ID and Level will populate automatically. Select the correct Guarantor ID from the menu. Anticipated Graduation Date will auto-populate with the anticipated graduation date from Biographic. The field can be updated as part of the loan creation, if necessary.

If the student will receive Subsidized or Unsubsidized loans for the first time that year, enter the total for each in the corresponding field. If they have previously received Subsidized or Unsubsidized loans, aggregate amounts can be entered in these fields.

On the Serial Loan Code menu, indicate if the loan is New or Serial (continuing). Select how the promissory note will be delivered on the PNote Delivery menu. In the Process Type dropdown, select the type of processing necessary to complete the loan, as determined by the loan type and institutional processes and procedures.

If the loan is being certified at the time the record is added or was previously certified, enter the applicable date in the Certification Date field. If it will be certified in the future, the field cannot be left blank, but a future date may be entered. If the funds will be delivered by EFT to the institution, select Yes from the Request EFT dropdown. If they will be sent by paper check, select No.

If all items associated with creating the loan are complete, check the Completed box. Click Submit to save the entered values.

After selecting Submit, the user is taken to the Assign Award screen. On this multipurpose screen, any additional information can be entered regarding the loan, such as default details, entrance and exit counseling status, and/or forbearance details. If no details need to be added or changed, click Assign Award.

Select the Semester(s) the loan will be packaged for, select the Award Name, and click Submit.

Enter the Amount for each disbursement of the loan. Click Preview. If all the details on the preview screen are correct, select Post. The award will be added to the Award Transactions summary, and be considered in the need calculation, as well as displaying on the Loans section of the initial Financial Aid screen.

If the SONIS member institution participates in skip tracing, the Last Contact date, date Skip Trace Started, and Skip Trace Confirmed date can all be recorded in the fields provided in the Loans section.