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.

Before Creating a Payment Period

To prepare to create your first payment period in PowerFAIDS, it is helpful to first take the following steps:

• Identify every type of enrollment period at your institution. You will need to create individual payment periods for every term, semester, quarter, or other period in which a student might register for courses and receive a financial aid award. For each of these payment periods, you will need to define the length, start date, and end date.

• Determine when and how funds should be disbursed for those payment periods. For each enrollment period you have identified, you will then need to decide on which dates funds will be disbursed and what percentage of the funds will be disbursed on those dates.

• Create your school's cost of attendance categories and academic years. Before creating a payment period in the System Administration module, you will need to have cost of attendance categories built in PowerFAIDS Cloud to associate with those payment periods. Additionally, before adding a payment period to the student record, you will need to first have the academic year added to that student record.

Once you've taken the steps above, you're ready to create your first payment period in the System Administration module and begin assigning it to student records.