Background for Approve Disbursements to Pay

The Financial Aid Office approves disbursements for payment based on factors such as:

  • Disbursement schedules of individual students
  • Satisfactory academic progress (SAP)
  • Receipt of funds from the fund sources

Anthology Student provides an Approve Disbursements process to aid in the disbursement approval. Once the disbursements are approved, Anthology Student prepares a Disbursement Batch File for processing in the Student Accounts module. In Student Accounts, the Approved Disbursements are posted to the student ledger cards. See Post Financial Aid Disbursements for more on the posting procedure.

Corporate offices can approve all Pell and Direct Loan Disbursement batches before exporting to the Department of Education (ED). These batches are created by the schools. The corporate office then gathers these disbursements to export to the ED. Once the acknowledgment file is received, rejected disbursements are manually removed from the batch, and the batch is approved and saved for posting by Student Accounts at the corporate office. This allows for each transfer of funds into the corporate office bank account from ED as a result of an acknowledged disbursement batch equal to the amount represented by the selected FA disbursement batch.  

The Approve Disbursements process gathers disbursement information from the disbursement schedules for your review and approval. Only the disbursements you approve are processed. Refer to Third-Party/Agency Invoice Approvals to approve agency disbursements.

When you approve Pell disbursements or they are paid, Anthology Student updates the Pell disbursement records as Ready to Send to COD.

Note: If you receive an error while trying to approve Pell disbursements, you may need to Merge Duplicate Pell Records.

If a student is enrolled as a non-term or clock hour student, Anthology Student uses different criteria for approvals and auto-approvals of financial aid disbursements. Non-term and clock hour students are not eligible to receive financial aid until they have completed the credit hours/weeks attempted during the previous payment period. Anthology Student checks if students have completed these credit hours/weeks before allowing financial aid to approve financial aid disbursements and evaluates each payment period individually. This is an automated function in Anthology Student.

For information regarding the updated clock to credit hour conversion rules effective as of July 1, 2011, see Impact of Clock to Credit Conversion Rate on Disbursement Approval. 

Disbursements for non-Title IV awards can have a disbursement approval criteria (DAC) policy configured to check for prior payment period completion or exclude the criteria check for prior payment period completion. See Disbursement Approval Criteria. This will allow the “Approve Disbursements to Pay” process to check for prior payment period completion before auto-approving a non-Title IV disbursement that is associated with a payment period. If this setting is not enabled, non-Title IV disbursements associated with a payment period will not check for prior payment period completion.

In compliance with the regulations specified in the student FSA handbook, if a student is enrolled as a non-term or clock hour student and has a stub loan period (see Packaging Overlapping Loans), Anthology Student does not use completed credits/hours and weeks as criteria when approving direct loan disbursements associated with the stub loan period. Disbursements for direct loans associated with a stub loan period are automatically approved regardless of how many clock/credit hours or weeks of instructional time have been completed (provided that all other criteria have passed validation). This rule does not apply to direct loan disbursements associated with subsequent loan periods. In other words, the student still needs to complete the required clock/credit hours or instructional weeks to receive the disbursements in subsequent loan periods.

Enrollment Intensity Calculation for Pell Grants

Institutions often package Pell grants before students are registered into courses. For this reason, Anthology Student uses a default (“estimated”) Enrollment Intensity (EI) value of 100% during initial packaging. When registration/un-registration events occur, the system recalculates the actual Enrollment Intensity and it is displayed in the Term Summary. Since the Packaged Enrollment Intensity defaults to 100%, the Actual Enrollment Intensity could be different.

Pell calculations for award years 2024-25 and later can use the Approve Disbursements to Pay process to validate Pell disbursement amounts for Enrollment Intensity. The calculations compare the Packaged Enrollment Intensity value (FaSched table) with the Actual Enrollment Intensity (AdEnrollTerm table) when the connected Disbursement Approval Criteria policy is selected for the Pell fund source. To enable this calculation, the field Pell Enrollment Intensity - Packaged = ActualClosed Select this check box if you want the Disbursement Approval Criteria policy to compare the Enrollment Intensity (EI) used to calculate the disbursement amount against the actual EI calculated for the term. Since the Anthology Student defaults to 100% during initial packaging, the actual EI could be different by the time disbursement posting occurs. This evaluation is specific to Pell grants for term-based program versions and is used by the Approve Disbursements to Pay and Eligibility Review processes. must be selected in the Disbursement Approval Criteria policy under Configuration > Financial Aid > Disbursement Approval Criteria and the Disbursement Approval Criteria policy must be associated with the Pell fund source.

The Approve Disbursements to Pay process functions as follows:

  • When the Packaged Enrollment Intensity = Actual Enrollment Intensity, the disbursement is set to approved. The Reason field will be set to "Approved" and the History tab Job Result for the disbursement will be "Eligible".

  • When the Packaged Enrollment Intensity <> Actual Enrollment Intensity, the Approve Disbursements to Pay process sets the disbursement as "Not Approved" with the exception "Packaged EI does not equal Actual EI". The History tab will show the Job Result as "Not Approved" and will display the exception in the Reason field.

When a disbursement is Not Approved for EI in the Approve Disbursements to Pay process, users can select "Recalculate the Pell Eligibility" on the student's Pell Award and then requeue the batch for the Approve Disbursements to Pay process.

Academic calendars 5 and 6 have the Enrollment Intensity column but it will be empty and will not be used the validate the Enrollment Intensity. This accommodates institutions that offer non-term programs along with term-based programs and use the same Disbursement Approval Criteria policy for Pell grants. Pell grants packaged for a non-term student will not consider this Disbursement Approval Criteria configuration point.

Miscellaneous Information About Approving Disbursements to Pay

  • You can change campuses between batches.

  • A batch statistics message is displayed when you select Delete Batch. You can view the batch creation date, the user who last modified the batch, the date last modified, the disbursement quantity, and the amount approved in the batch. You must confirm batch deletions.

  • Anthology Student makes the "Paid" column available to update on the Financial Aid Disbursement Batch Detail form immediately after the check box is selected. This saves the data while you are working on the batch rather than waiting until the entire list has been resolved.

  • You can open only one of these forms at a time.

  • Anthology Student prevents multiple users from editing the same batch simultaneously and prevents the entire batch from being inadvertently deleted. For example, if there are no "approved" disbursements, Anthology Student will not clear the unapproved disbursements.

  • If your campus uses a servicer, this procedure prevents you from modifying a servicer disbursement batch (the file import type is S–Servicer). In other words, the flag at Configure Servicer Settings for Campuses labeled "Prevent Users from Modifying Title IV Aid?" is set to Yes.

  • Anthology Student prevents the creation of a new batch of Title IV disbursements if the Prevent flag is Yes. Title IV fund sources will be excluded from the selection list.

  • The CommonLine import disbursements procedure sets the batch amount to be the total on the file and sets the Approve Disbursements to Pay column to NOT APPROVED. When the user approves the disbursements, the amount approved for the batch is updated.

  • The "Approve Disbursements to Pay" form checks each student selected for a financial aid hold before disbursing financial aid. After populating the grid, when an "on-hold" student is selected in the grid, Anthology Student indicates that the student is on "FA Hold". Anthology Student will not allow the Approved check box to be selected.

  • A student's financial aid packaging cannot be modified if the student is on a scheduled financial aid hold. The scheduled financial aid hold locks all financial aid for the student. If the student's award already has disbursements, a disbursement hold will be indicated. With a disbursement hold, you can view or cancel the student's award.

  • Anthology Student does not allow the amount to be edited when the fund source type is Direct Loan. Verification of the total amount packaged is "turned off" when the type is Direct Loan. Anthology Student also does not allow editing the amount of an approved FA disbursement when the fund source type is a Direct Loan.

  • The Disbursements process uses logic that compares the student's current enrollment status with the student's "Packaged To" enrollment status stored in the student's Academic Year. If the two statuses are not equal, an exception occurs preventing a disbursement for the student. For setup information, see Disbursement Approval Criteria.

  • The Disbursements process uses Enrollment Status Credits or Enrollment Status Hours from the student's schedule to determine a student's enrollment status for financial aid purposes. In some cases, these credits or hours may be different than the academic credits or hours that a student has registered for. Additionally, credits associated with a second course retake are not used to determine the student's enrollment status; therefore, the student is not allowed to be paid for a second retake of a previously passed course.

    Example:

    A student is enrolled in 3 courses for the term associated with a Full-Time Payment Disbursement that is being evaluated for payment.

    The student is taking 3 courses in that term. Each course is 4 credits.

    The student previously took 1 one of the courses and was given credit for passing the course.

    The student took the course a second time in a prior term (1st retake) and is taking the course a third time for the term associated with the disbursement being evaluated for payment.

    Since the enrollment status of Full-Time associated with the Pell disbursement is being compared to only the credits associated with the 2 courses and the credits associated with the second retake are not considered, the disbursement fails the evaluation, i.e., the scheduled disbursement is based on a Full-Time status; however, the student’s actual enrollment status is ½ time for Title IV aid because the student’s actual enrollment status is based on only the 8 credits associated with the other 2 courses and not the retake. 

  • When a student is dropped from school, Anthology Student does not set a disbursement to canceled status if it is included in an open batch. Anthology Student flags a batch as having dropped students and provides the following warning message when the batch is edited, "This message is for informational purposes only. Students included in this batch have been changed to a Dropped status. You may continue to approve and pay these students in this process. Disbursements that are not paid must be manually changed to a Canceled status in the Financial Aid packaging screen."

  • Enrollment status is recalculated when a course gets dropped so that the dropped course is no longer included in the calculation. This is not done by changing the enroll status credits to 0, it is done based on the course status.

  • Only students who have met the Financial Aid Document requirements where the document status is set to "approved" (see Add or Edit a Document or Document List for a Student) can receive Financial Aid disbursements. All Financial Aid documents that are required can be established by assigning the documents to the Financial Aid (FA) module. See Documents for setup instructions. If the school has received all required documents (approved document status), Anthology Student determines that the student has met the Financial Aid Document requirements and the student can receive disbursements.

  • When you create new disbursement batches, you can select Direct Loans based on different origination statuses and promissory note statuses. You can select or clear the following options: 

    • Include originated loans only
    • Accepted / Batched
    • Include loans with accepted promissory notes

    These options are displayed for the Direct Loan Fund Type only.

  • In the Student Web App of Anthology Student, if a disbursement needs to be increased or decreased, you must update the award. This ensures that the disbursement in the batch reflects the change.

    In the legacy interface, it was possible to update a disbursement in the batch before approving the batch to post; however, this did not update the disbursement on the award and would cause a mismatch after posting.

  • Users must have permission to work with the fund sources. See Fund Source Security.

  • Users must have the required batch permissions. See Configure General Settings for Financial Aid.

Course Retake Logic and Non-Term Payment Periods

The Approve Disbursements to Pay logic ensures that credit associated with a course is only counted once for determining whether a student has completed previous non-term payment periods and is therefore eligible to receive the next disbursement.

Example:

A student must complete 12 credits to advance to the subsequent payment period and takes 3 courses at 4 credits each.

If the student earns credit for the first 2 courses, but the 3rd course is a retake of one of those courses, the student is considered to have completed 8 (not 12) credits for Title IV purposes.

The Approve Disbursements to Pay logic does not allow a student to receive a disbursement for the next (13-24 credit) payment period until the student completes another 4 required credits (in courses for which the student has not previously earned credit) and the weeks defined for the current payment period.

The Approve Disbursements to Pay logic also ensures that attendance associated with a retake course in which credit was previously earned is not used for determining whether a student has attendance in the non-term payment period and is eligible to receive the next disbursement.

If a student is enrolled as a non-term or clock hour student and has a stub loan period, Anthology Student does not use completed credits/hours and weeks as criteria when approving direct loan disbursements associated with the stub loan period.

Course Retake Logic and Term Payment Periods

The Approve Disbursements to Pay logic ensures that credit associated with a course is only counted once for determining whether a student has completed previous term payment periods and is therefore eligible to receive the next disbursement.

Credits associated with a second course retake are not used to determine the student's enrollment status. Therefore, the student is not allowed to be paid for a second retake of a previously passed course.

An institution may pay for unlimited retakes of failed classes in term-based programs of study, but may not pay for courses for which a student has previously been given credit. An institution may pay for one retake of any previously passed course (except not if due to the student failing previous courses).

Override FA Hold Groups

Designated financial aid officers can override FA Hold Groups to process disbursements for previous or future terms for students who may be failing disbursements. If this function has been enabled, the designated financial aid officers will see the option to override FA Hold groups.

To approve disbursements without overriding Financial Aid holds, select No.

To approve disbursements for students in designated Financial Aid hold groups, select Yes, and select the hold groups to override. Anthology Student's Approve Disbursements for Pay logic evaluates students in those groups to determine whether their financial aid disbursements should be approved or disapproved for other reasons.

Note: If you choose to work on a batch in progress, the Override FA Hold Groups option will not automatically appear. The Override FA Hold Groups option is displayed only if you enter a Y in the FA Hold Override column when you select an unposted batch.

FA Holds apply to Title IV and non-Title IV funds.