Background for COD Processing

A student's financial aid must be packaged before the institution can submit fund requests to the Common Origination and Disbursement (COD) system. The COD funds include Pell Grants, TEACH Grants, and Direct Loans. The packaged awards must be set to the status of “Ready to Send” before they can be exported for submission to COD.

In general, the COD process involves three phases:

  • First, the institution sends origination records to the COD system. Origination records indicate the amounts and dates of funds to be awarded to students.

  • The COD system processes the origination records and returns a response indicating the status of the records, including any rejected data elements and the reason for the rejection. The institution works with the student to resolve any rejects.

  • The institution submits a request for disbursements to the COD system and disburses the funds to the students.

The COD export process allows you to gather export files from Anthology Student and prepare them for transmission to the COD system. The export files include flat files (data requests) and XML files (originations and disbursements). Data validation is performed on all records.

Once the XML or flat file is created via the COD export process, institutions use EDconnect to submit the file to COD. COD processes the file and sends back receipts and responses to the institution’s SAIG (Student Aid Internet Gateway) mailbox, where the institution again uses EDconnect to pick them up. The response data is imported through the COD Import process. Based on the import data, the students’ awards are updated with the appropriate information.

The file naming convention for export and import files is as follows:

  • Export file names end in "IN".

  • Import file names end in "OP".

For COD processing, the academic year (AY) start and end dates and loan period start and end dates for each Direct Loan are updated on the individual loan instead of the loan period dates and the academic year dates set in Anthology Student:

  • The AY Start Date will equal the Loan Academic Year Begin Date (“Ac Yr Start”)

  • The AY End Date will equal the Loan Academic Year End Date (“Ac Yr End”)

  • The AY Begin Date will equal the new Award Year Start Date

  • The AY End Date will equal the new Award Year End Date

When you process any COD export, Anthology Student ensures that it is pulling the four dates from the loan record. This feature works across COD exports: Originations, Disbursements, and Origination Changes.

Note: If the "Round all Disbursements to whole dollars" check box on the Fund Source configuration form is cleared and the registry key to allow Pell Cents is enabled, the exact amount of cents is displayed and saved for the Pell origination amount. The Pell origination amount is processed and saved with the properly calculated amount of cents in regards to Year-Round Pell Additional Eligibility Indicator.

Setting the Enrollment Status to be Exported on Originations

Regulatory 10.1. and later provides a registry key setting that allows users to configure their choice of Enrollment Status to be exported on originations and origination changes when DRI = False. The Enrollment Status can be updated for all award years for all COD Fund Sources by updating the “RegValue” column in RegKey “CODEnrollmentStatusDefault” to “Q” or “H” in the SyRegistry table.

By default the RegValue fields will be populated with “F” to replicate the existing behavior. When "Q" or "H" is configured, all disbursements including the first disbursement will contain the configured enrollment status in the COD export file.

Valid values for the RegValue field are:

  • F = Full Time (default)
  • Q = Three Quarters Time
  • H = Half Time.

We strongly recommend that users consult their Technical Account Managers or Client Services when updating this field.

Synchronize COD Award Information

In some cases, student records cannot be exported to COD because of data inconsistencies. Using the Override COD Originations process, you can change awards so that the information matches the information at COD. For example, student records cannot be exported to COD if the Master Promissory Note (MPN) for a loan is in an Inactive (I) status. You can adjust the MPN status.

Informed Borrower

Beginning with the 2020-21 award year, Anthology Student supports the Informed Borrowing Requirement for student borrowers (DIRSUB, DIRUNSUB, DIR Grad Plus loans) and parent borrowers (DIR Parent Plus loans). After the borrowers acknowledge that they have reviewed their outstanding loan balance at https://StudentAid.gov (Annual Student Loan Acknowledgement), COD returns a new system generated response file (CRIByyOP) that contains the information populated on the screen below.

Use the Informed Borrower tab on the Loan Information form (see View Loan Information) to check if borrowers have reviewed their outstanding loan balance at https://StudentAid.gov.

Note: For Award Year 2021-22 and higher, Regulatory does not prevent the export of Direct Loan awards with Paid or Released disbursements (DRI= true) until an Informed Borrowing/Annual Student Loan Acknowledgement record can be found for the borrower. The export validation was not implemented because the Department of Education delayed its enforcement.