Academic Years and Payment Periods

Academic Years

Academic years are a foundational element in the student-centric model. By allowing you to add multiple academic years to a single instance of the same student record, you can easily and quickly navigate to the academic year you need for that student, rather than recreating the student again and again within each award year.

In addition to ease of navigation, academic years also provide increased flexibility in awarding federal Title IV aid within nontraditional calendars. As the number of nontraditional programs has increased to provide more flexibility to students, academic years and award years can be two very different concepts, with academic calendars not always fitting neatly into the federal award year of July 1st to June 30th. By decoupling academic years from federal award years, PowerFAIDS simplifies this relationship. For each academic year you create in PowerFAIDS, you have the option to choose which award year it should be associated to by default, with even more granular control at the payment period level for each individual student, when needed.

The academic years feature in PowerFAIDS makes many aspects of the financial aid packaging process easier. Setting up accurate academic years in PowerFAIDS allows for:

• Automated BBAY packaging: With Borrower-Based Academic Year (BBAY) packaging, students have the flexibility to start classes and receive their disbursements at any time of the year, rather than having to wait until the start of the next traditional academic calendar. You can now account for this flexibility in PowerFAIDS by creating and defining academic years for BBAY students. This allows for ease of reporting and tracking nontraditional schedules, while also giving you the ability to specify which award year the student's academic year falls under if it crosses over into the next federal award year.

• Streamlined academic year reporting to COD: By storing the start and end dates of the academic year on the student record, those dates can be evaluated when reporting loans to the U.S. Department of Education's Common Origination and Disbursement (COD) instead of only evaluating the start and end dates of the payment period. This allows for accurate reporting of an academic year without having to perform manual adjustments when a student's payment period does not match the academic year (for example, in the case that a student starts or completes their program in the middle of an academic year).

Tip: When setting up an academic year, the start and end dates should not initially include optional summer semester dates. The academic year start or end date must be adjusted on the individual student when the student enrolls and receives the applicable federal award for an optional summer semester. Academic year start and end dates can be adjusted manually or via batch processing.

• Crossover years: If an academic year crosses over into the next federal award year, you can select which of the two award years to associate with that academic year. At the individual student level, you can also specify which award year to associate with payment periods that cross into the next award year, giving you the flexibility to choose the award year that will best benefit your students. For more information on setting up academic years that cross over multiple award years in PowerFAIDS, see Crossover Academic Years.

Payment Periods

Payment periods are individual terms of enrollment used to set up and disburse financial aid within each academic year. While academic years have a foundational role in the packaging process in PowerFAIDS, the ability to create payment periods within each academic year allows for more granular control over disbursement schedules and cost of attendance categories to accommodate every program and student at your institution.

Payment periods in PowerFAIDS make many aspects of the financial aid packaging process easier for both you and your students. Some of these advantages include:

• More control over distribution of awards: In PowerFAIDS, it is a requirement for students to have one or more payment periods assigned to their record before they can be packaged. This is because disbursing awards by payment periods rather than for the entire academic year at once helps students budget their resources and prevents them from overpaying should their enrollment status change during the academic year.

• Support for an unlimited number of payment periods. Depending on your institution's academic calendar, you may need very few payment periods for just fall, winter, and spring terms, or you may create dozens of payment periods to reflect multiple programs with their own calendars. Whatever your school's circumstances are, PowerFAIDS has the capacity and flexibility to accommodate them.

• Ability to handle crossover payment periods. If your institution has a payment period that includes both June 30th and July 1st, such as a summer term, you can specify which federal award year to associate with that payment period. While the default award year for crossover payment periods can be specified in the System Administration module, you also have the flexibility to change the award year on a case-by-case basis in the Student module based on what is most beneficial to an individual student. For more information on how crossover payment periods are handled in PowerFAIDS, see Crossover Payment Periods.