|
NOTICES
7/16/10 - Summer stipend disappearance issues
Some DA users have been experiencing a problem with disappearing stipends. We have figured out the problem and will begin today to re-award those stipends that were inadvertently cancelled to get the students’ accounts corrected before fall bills go out.
Please DO NOT change ANY awards for a student who already has these stipend item types listed on the award page until we notify you that it is okay to do so:
640000010630 - Stipends-June
640000010520 -Stipends-July
640000010530 - Stipends-August
640000010100 - Stipends-UGRD July Aug (Disb Plan of 31)
640000010500 – Stipends (with Disb Plan 20 or 21)
6/11/10 - Updated report with names and other information
Click here for a report of students we have identified who have imbalances between SIS and Oracle. Please note this is the same report we sent to you before, but we have run it as of June 9th, and it now includes names. Please do not attempt to correct any of these student awards, as we are working on them centrally. We are also working to finalize a report that will provide more information to you that you can run yourselves, so please stay tuned.
Also, FALL ONLY item types are now available in SIS. Please let us know if you have any difficulty using these.
We have also corrected the "replace" functionality on the PTAEO page, so if you processed accounting only changes using the replace functionality, and you had noticed they had not processed previously, they should process over the weekend. And any subsequent transactions should flow through properly.
Remember that if you have students you need to award for summer who are not enrolled, or are not degree seeking, and you are unable to enter an award, please send a message to 4Help@virginia.edu with the subject of SIS - Departmental Aid Summer FA term.
Sarah will be out of the office next week, but we will have folks reviewing and responding to your requests to 4Help. Please provide as much detail in your messages so that they can get back to you quickly.
6/10/10 - Updated version of your Departmental Aid report available in Discoverer: The report now has tabs that will provide the following information:
- Awards with Missing PTAEOs
- Awards where the Disbursed Amount is Greater than the amounts on the PTAEO page
- Undisbursed award past the disbursement date
- Awards entered for that department Waiver awards that are $1
Please note that some of the items you may see on your reports are also some of our problem students that we have identified in our reconciliation project. So please don't attempt to correct any of those. We will also be sending an updated list 6/10 or 6/11 with the students who we have identified as problems, and the new list will include the students' names.
USER GROUP MEETING NOTES
September 15, 2010
Attendees: Barbara Beverly, Brenda Kelly, Marty Doherty, Tracey Brookman, Cathy Fox, Jim Traub, Sue Amato, Janice Munson, Lloyd Banks, Diane Lahue, Denise Hubbard, Sarah Jordan, Erica Spangler
- Jim’s issues/opportunities spreadsheet:
- Updated handout per working group edits. There is another group that will look at the possibility of developing new tools for budgeting and awarding.
- Diane will work with a group for documentation and training gap analysis.
- Other groups will look at tuition model revisit
- Budget office is looking at ways to get more accurate budget data to schools earlier in the timeline.
- Splitting awards – Dave Wolcott is going to look at whether we can consolidate funding sources (except for grants)
- This group can look at things like:
- Reporting data and requirements for reporting (include Scott in the meeting)
- Calendar and timing of award entry, expanding window to get awards entered
- Reconciliation
- Students across careers (MEDS and GSAS, LAW and GSAS, etc.)
- For BIMS, they award for both careers, so it’s less of an issue for them.
Starting next week we can distribute materials prior to meeting to fuel discussions.
Priorities for this group:
- Award entry – MEDS centralizes award entry, so data entry is not done by PTAEO owner. ENG does it decentrally, so the PTAEO owner enters the award. What is the best practice here?
- Some students receive stipends and wages at the same time. If you spread the data entry out among depts., they won’t know who has done what.
- ENG – Joan does all reconciling, plus all entry of wages.
- CURRY uses GSAS database.
- One thing to change:
- BIMS Janice – item type structure, struggle with money use or lose july – june with exception of grants. Grants are all over the place for start and end dates. Can’t make a before the fact charge. Can’t make the june payment in the old fiscal year. The last 2 payments of fiscal year budget. Aid year activation issues – can’t have the multiple open at the same time. Why do we activate in Feb? Could we aid year rollover?
- Curry - Grant only how new awards are handled. If grant starts in October, expenditure date is in August, you can’t pay it. Oracle issue, not a source issue. Fed. Gov’t fiscal year starts in October 1. You have to use a different funding source for the fall. Clearing accounts can’t be used because of the expenditure date. How does Stanford do this? Handle grants that start at different times?
- Curry – Brenda Item types identified for GTA, GRA, GAA. Need Item type that pays only tuition and comp fees 100%, not school and activity fee. Why does Curry not pay school and activity fees? Policy question.
- Need additional item type for above (?)
- Are we supposed to be tracking how many students we pay as GTA, GRA and GAA. This was identified in ISIS by the 5 (GA),8 (tuition remission),9 (tuition adjustment).
- Janice – it depends on the funding source as to what you can fund for GA, GRA, etc. Tuition Remission is Tuition and Comprehensive Fees
- Remission only applies to GTA or GRA, tied to someone receiving wages. Should you have a stipend if you have remission?
- Remission is defined as the in-state portion of tuition and comp fees. For Research students. Grants are supposed to include the out of state portion of the comp fees.
- Stipend – if you answer ‘no’ to all questions on the fellowship form. Payment of living expenses, support while learning. Specifically not to work.
September 1, 2010 Meeting Notes
Attendees: Joan Wicks, Barbara Beverly, Sarah Jordan, Denise Hubbard, Denise Wood, Melissa Seal, Billie Jo Morris, Cathy Fox, Brenda Boyd, Howard Hoege, Naomi Perkins, Natalie Edwards, Tracey Brookman, Erica Spangler, Angie Turner, Marty Doherty, Brenda Kelly, Sue Amato, Janice Munson, Kyle Bowman, Jim Traub
- Oracle Down Time Reminder (Sarah Jordan):
- The Integrated System has a planned downtime from 9/4, 2am through 9/5, noon. and from 9/18, 2am through 9/20, 7am.
- If Oracle is down, the SIS validator on the PTAEO page will not work. This is a call to Oracle from SIS. Please refrain from entering awards in SIS during these times.
- Presentation/Discussion of As Is analysis (Jim Traub):
- Budgeting Process
- There is an information disconnect between people. Departments have difficulty getting comprehensive information due to the multiple sources they have to consult. Often, these sources are people. There should be an organization/people connection to the processes (i.e., budget office, OSP, etc.) The diagrams can be updated to show who does what to show the connection between orgs. This interaction among information sources is school dependent.
- Gift/Endowment money has restrictions on student type (B3)
- Could there be a way to look at criteria of certain awards and show who qualifies?
- This would depend on the criteria and whether it is stored in the SIS. SFS uses some reporting to determine eligibility of certain awards (regions).
- Reporting integration with Oracle
- ISDS is working to create an integrated Oracle/SIS reporting solution.
- SFS and departmental communication/integration
- ARCH has a best practice with SFS to meet and get aid information early in the process so that they can communicate to students earlier the entire aid package. MC has difficulty retaining accepted students because they have not been notified of full package before classes start in May. This problem can be addressed by a similar solution ARCH has with SFS.
- Set dollar based awards (i.e. grants only offer $500), but other awards cover the remainder % of tuition.
- BIMS is using exclusive limited item types to control funding for over enrollment. Results in more changes, but they think they can control it better.
- Payment Delay
- Can departments have access to place/remove a payment delay psi? Could it expire after a certain amount of time?
- Registration issues
- Drop Add dates are different in diff. schools. Can cause problems when students are charged even though they dropped by one school’s deadline
- Movement from topical to non-topical registration causes issues with award amount fluctuations.
- Security
- Could we grant view only access to the PTAEO page for administrators? Could use Discoverer, but these people do not use Discoverer often.
- Informational Training
- Training that addresses the “art” of departmental aid. Not just the hows but the whys. (Which item type do I use for xx?)
- Next Steps– how are going to get there?
- Use of committees – we may want to use the groups we already have instead of creating another committee.
- Would like advance notice of what’s on the agenda. ¾ committees were senior reps., but we needed more front line users (DAUG)
- Working group to prioritize issues,
- Meeting next week- 2pm to discuss issues/inhibitors outlined in document
- Is this the right group to look at issue?
- What can we get fixed by the end of the year?
July 7, 2010 Drop In Session Notes
- If students are in a non-degree program, notify SIS (4-HELP) to do setup each year for each student.
- Deposits – McIntire can put the charge on a student account for admission deposits. In a special case, a student from Canada wrote a check to McIntire. When the check was cashed, it was redeemed for less than the charge (due to exchange rates). McIntire wanted to change the charge amount. Contact Trudy Taylor about deposit problem. It would help to have the ability to make a change for deposits. Why can McIntire put a tuition deposit charge on account but not take it off? Somebody in the organization should be able to fix this, if they are able to put a charge on the account. Action Item – Denise to investigate the reasons for this setup and possibilities of change.
July 7, 2010 Meeting Notes
- Reviewed Disbursement Plan table for the GRAD career.
- 12 month stipends that are paid out beginning in August pose a unique problem, because they span 2 summers. The system will only allow 1 summer per aid year.
- Departments have requested the ability to enter an award at one time, not have to go back at the end of a year to add the next AY award.
- The next aid year is not active at the time of initial entry. Action Item – Denise to find out how early an aid year can be activated?
- How can we have 2 summers in one aid year? Can we have borrower based aid years for departmental aid?
- Can we create a plan for the 200 MEDS students that would allow for awards to cross aid years?
- Could the awards sit in a “holding tank” until the aid year is activated?
- GSAS requested 12 month disbursement plan that is August-July (12 students maximum). This plan is requested by a department. (Debra McDowell would be able to explain the reasons for requesting this)
- AY 09-10 award changes may have to be done centrally – stay tuned.
- PTAEO Requests
- If the PTAEO requests are for G and Z awards, we will ask you to contact your award manager.
- PTAEO requests for all other awards will be handled through 4-HELP by ISDS
- Can we add finances and financial aid – tabs to student services center role?
June 23, 2010 Meeting Notes
- Some departments report receiving an error message that the expenditure type code does not exist for that student . If expenditure type is blank on the PTAEO page, that is a clue that there is an issue. This is a PTAEO validator issue. To resolve, look at the student’s residency and citizenship status.
- If nothing is disbursed, you can just overwrite the award amount on main page.
- If monies have been disbursed, you need to replace and then add a line to start over.
- If your item type does not begin with 64 (i.e.63) you are not prompted to enter PTAEO because it is hard coded.
- If you search for a student in award processing and the student does not appear, you have to aid year activate the student.
- Returning students are automatically aid year activated for summer if they had aid last year, or have applied for federal aid.
- About 40 students in McIntire receive the outside scholarships. They would not be entered via departmental aid awarding. Angie has outside scholarships that need to be discussed with Scott Miller. She wants to know how to enter outside scholarships into SIS. ** Action item for Sarah to touch base with Scott to determine how to deal with outside scholarships.One solution could be to enter it as an anticipated aid. Depts. in this case won’t enter anything, student would self report it as anticipated outside aid.
- Process for Requesting New Item Type is TBD. For now, send an issue via 4-help to request the item type to be set up. **Action Item for Denise to ask Cheyrl what the item type setup process will be in the future.
** Action Item for Denise to look at all 63s and set up item types for fall, spring, academic year, summer (TBD) for McIntire Alumni Hall account.
** Action Item for Brenda Davis to send a list of students to be term activated.
- Brenda Davis needs access to LAW career or we make LAW enter their awards. Check with Jennifer Hulvey – psychology is asking Brenda to enter the awards. Brenda reports she can’t enter LAW awards. This is probably due to her security.
**Action Item for Sarah to ask Jennifer Hulvey about GSAS processing LAW awards.
** Action Item for Denise to look at EMPLID 2188438 – expenditure type
** Action Item for Denise to ask Cheyrl to look at citizenship mapping. Foreign nationals validating PTAEOS for tuition item types – need to look at citizenship mapping. It appears Alien Temp status is not in expenditure mapping.
- For expected graduation in the prior term, how do we get that changed? UREG? Or does student self report expected graduation date to push it out?
** Action Item- EMPLID 1212169 – why would they have no expected term beyond 1102?
- To determine if dept. award affected other aid, go back and look at all awards to see if activity was recorded on the same date that reduced the loan.
** Action Item Joan Wicks needs to log help case to ask reduction in Direct Loan unsubsidized loans to allow for departmental awarding.
- When you have a new grant, email 4-HELP and the grants administrator (or Vonda Durrer) if G or Z, then send to OSP and ISDS.
- To add a PTAEOs, if the PTAEOs disappeared – tab out of the field, change % to less than 100, tab out of field, tab back into field and change % back to 100.
- Waiver issue list and dept. award issue list were emailed to DAUG from Teresa Wimmer. Depts. should not try to fix this, but there is strange stuff going on. SIS will have meetings with depts. to determine intent of awards. SIS will then fix the awards appropriately.
- Health insurance item type descriptions have been changed. You will see academic year (one line), spring only, and summer health insurance item types.
- Changing PTAEOs – fiscal administrator wants the PTAEOs changed can change in SIS.
Gwen has 3 students not processed in SIS – 1467349 – 2k per semester has processed. Replace functionality went through now.
- EMPLID 1426418 – has PTAEOs but appears on missing PTAEO report. ** Action Item Denise to look into why.
- Grant account or SR accounts are the first priority for GA reconciliation.
- Item type – tuition and fees 100% (regardless of the type of student) and tuition and tuition remission and comp fees (instate portion of tuition and all comp fees).
- To find all dept. aid item types, use view all link in the upper right hand corner. Use the advanced search with “contains” in order to find item types more easily.
- GRAD students summer aid have to do FAFSA for next year; UGRD students summer aid have to do FAFSA for this year
- Lara Jacobsen does not have view customer accounts need to request role – lo3k ** Action Item for Diane. Complete
- Add to next DAUG agenda – view customer accounts functionality for trouble shooting.
- Remember to check the DAUG website for updated information.
- Charts for disbursement plans by career and item type information will be updated on the website ** Action Item for Denise
- Updated quick guide will be posted on website. ** Action Item for Diane
June 9, 2010 Meeting Notes
- Sarah is on vacation from June 14th – 21st. Please direct all questions/issues to 4-HELP.
- We will set up an email list with all departmental aid users on it for the purpose of sharing issues. You can opt out of receiving these emails, but we will initially put all DAUG members on the list.
- Drop in sessions will be held from 2-3pm Wednesdays, before the DAUG. Drop in sessions may be helpful to some people, but often questions need to be answered quickly. Hopefully the email list will allow users to share ideas and answer questions in a timely manner.
- Once something is disbursed, do not change the disbursement plan.
- Procedure to get credits carried forward will be communicated once we know what to do.
- The replace process is not working consistently, so you may wish to just process Cost transfers through Oracle to ensure the changes reflect in your accounts. (New as of 6/11: we have changed code to fix this, so you should be able to do these corrections in SIS now. Just make sure you check SIS to see if the processed box is checked, and check Oracle to ensure the changes took place.)
- Want to control reduction for loans, process will be better, refunds will be prevented.
- Look at current account activity via QuikPay through SIS to see what they owe.
- Trying to push back the GRAD billing and due dates to help dept. aid folks get more time to do award entry.
- Look at message when you validate, and get out, don’t click ok
- Is SCPS getting billed through SIS? If so, the award goes through SIS.
- You need to make sure you do not award more than the unmet need (Fed)
- As long as the student has no fed aid, you can overaward.
- FISCAL YEAR:
- The item type disbursement date determines which fiscal year the award is charged to.
- Summer 1 item types will hit this fiscal year
- Summer 2 item types will hit next fiscal year and will be paid in July
- If you enter an award using Summer 2, it will show up as anticipated aid, and disburse to Oracle account in July.
- Users can change the stipend item type disbursement plan and split codes.
- For Stipends Other 1 – 5, there is no default, users must choose a disbursement plan and split code.
- If there is no career, click on the lookup icon to pick a career. The student may have multiple careers. If there are no career options, you must aid year activate the student, and ask the student to enroll in classes. The FA term will be built automatically the night after the student enrolls. If the student will not be enrolling in classes, aid year activate the student and send an email to 4-HELP with “SIS FA departmental aid – Summer FA Term” in the subject line. Include the student name and EMPLID, term for which you are requesting activation, and career.
- SYSTEM MODIFICATIONS:
- New system modification prevents users from automatically adjusting Federal Aid.
- Tuition item types default to a disbursement plan and split code. Users cannot change them.
- If you don’t enter the action code for a tuition item type, you will receive an error message. You will not be able to save the award. Remember to always put a ‘B’ to enter an award or a ‘C’ to cancel an award.
- Replace functionality has been updated. Wait until Monday to use replace functionality.
- CALCULATED ITEM TYPES:
- If the award still says $1, you won’t see anything in accounting, but student still gets the money. It has not processed to Oracle. Dept. hasn’t been charged.
- If you went in and awarded a 1, then awarded an actual dollar amount, the system gets confused and creates erroneous entries. Do not add an actual dollar amount to try and fix the problem.
- STIPEND ITEM TYPES:
- You cannot award one award that spans multiple academic years. For a 12 month stipend that crosses academic years – you have to split up the award and put it in each academic year.
- GRANTS:
- Grants need to be flagged as SIS eligible
- There is a concern that grants have to get fixed – Brenda doesn’t know who has hit and who hasn’t. How do we identify those people? Award should give you the info.
- 4-HELP:
- When you log a case, with 4-HELP there is no notification that something was received. It would be good to get an email with the case number/title. Gwen Christmas does get a case email. The resolution email doesn’t say which issue was resolved, which is confusing to users who may have logged multiple issues.
- Put student last name in subject line so they know which student the request is dealing with for Remedy
- STUDENT HEALTH:
- International student health insurance process will be better this year.
- Is there a health insurance item type – for summer – how does summer pay out?
- Do you want a summer health insurance item type – for insurance not through AETNA. This is a Provost issue.
- Is there anything we should change for next year’s awarding?
- If you are going to pay everything, use 100% awards
- Combination of limited and 100% is tricky
- Fewer changes are better
- Screen shots are great for issue resolution. Press PRINT SCREEN, paste into an email. If you have dual monitors, click on the screen you wish to print and press ALT+PRINT SCREEN.
- Timeline Reminders:
- Bills will be posted mid July
- Bills due August 16th
- Departments should enter awards in SIS by July 10th
Action Items:
- Sue Amato logged an issue with 4-HELP we didn’t receive yet. We need to look into the issue resolution procedure.
- Lloyd has had an issue with 2011 for a June stipend that has already processed. When he increased the amount payment, the PATEO and awards got wiped out.
- Student last name of Almeter – why has this not updated through external awards 2211161. For waivers, it should already credit the account even though it was not sent to Oracle. Resolved: The account was credited on 6/11/10.
- Disbursement plan table needs to be distributed to DAUG.
- Is there a disbursement plan that allows for Jun, July, Aug disbursement? Z1 – in ugrad career for Brenda. – Action Item for Denise Resolved: Added Z1 as a disbursement plan in ugrad 2010.
BACK TO TOP
May 6, 2010 Meeting Notes
Billing and Due Dates
Fall/Spring
Start of class 8/24
Due date = Disb Date + 1 or 2
Financial Aid Disbursement = 8/24 – 10 days = 8/14
(Federal restriction requires loans to be disbursed 10 days prior to the start of classes)
Bill Date 30 days prior to due date
Summer 2010
Enrollment
Due Date = Enrollment Date +5
Holds = Placed when payment is 31 days past due
Communications
Past Due Emails: 1st Monday of the month (as long as Monday is not the 1st)
Current Account Activity: 1st Friday after Past Due
Tuition and Fees 2011: Sarah will post when they are available
Summer Stipends: hold off until green light from Sarah, it’s currently affecting Spring Financial Aid
New Disbursement Plans:
ETA 5-28, Sarah will communicate
BACK TO TOP
|
