Review and Approve Disbursements

Once you have created or selected a batch of disbursements, you can have Anthology Student evaluate all of the disbursements in the batch using the disbursement approval criteria (DAC) that you have configured for the fund source for a campus and automatically approve all the disbursements that meet the criteria. Refer to Disbursement Approval Criteria.

Once Anthology Student has evaluated the disbursements, you can also review the approval status and reasons why a disbursement was not approved.

Best Practice: Always run the Queue Approval process on the batch to determine if each student passes eligibility as defined by the DAC. To remove students who have not passed the DAC, select Remove All Unapproved and those disbursements will be removed.

Prerequisites

You must have:

• Common - Processes - View authorization

• Financial Aid – Processes – Approve Disbursements To Pay – Approve Batch authorization

If financial aid has been configured to limit who can approve a batch of disbursements, you must also be in the staff group that has permission.

To have Anthology Student evaluate and automatically approve disbursements, your institution must have configured the campus to use automated disbursement approval.

If your institution is using a servicer (such as Global Financial Services), you can approve disbursements for Title IV awards if the servicer has been configured so that it allows staff members to modify Title IV awards. If it prevents users from modifying Title IV awards, you can only select fund sources and approve disbursements for awards that are not Title IV. 

The batch must not have been created by the automated process in Anthology Student. (If it was created by the automated process, it must also be approved by the automated process.)

You must also have either: 

• Created a batch of disbursements. Refer to Create a Batch of Disbursements.

• Selected an existing batch of disbursements. Refer to Select Unposted Batches of Disbursements.

You should also be familiar with the Background for Approve Disbursements to Pay.

Access Method

Select the Processes tile > expand Financial Aid > select Approve Disbursements to Pay.

Procedure to Have Anthology Student Evaluate and Approve

1. Select the Process tab.

2. Select the Queue Approval button.

Anthology Student: 

• Evaluates the disbursements using the DAC

• Approves the disbursements that meet the criteria

• Re-displays the Results list on the page so that you can review the disbursements, their approval status, and the reasons why a disbursement was not approved

Note About Validation of Degree Levels

Procedure to Review the Approval Status and Reasons

1. Review the list of students.

   Amount The amount of the disbursement. If you are adding disbursements using Anthology Student, the total of the amounts should equal the amount of the award. Approval Status The approval status for the disbursement. If it is approved, it displays Approved. If it was not approved, it displays either View or Failed. Click the link to display the reason why it was not approved. For View, review the information at the top of the dialog. For Failed, review the reasons under DAC Failure Reasons. If there are missing documents, the number of documents is shown. Click the 'i' icon next to the number to display the names of the documents. If the disbursement approval criteria are not configured to check for missing documents, it displays the number of award year specific documents that are not approved, but does not prevent the disbursement from being approved. If the disbursement approval criteria are configured to check for missing documents and some are missing, it will not be approved. Course Code If the fund source is configured to associate a course with payments, displays the name of the course selected when the payment was made. If a term is also displayed in the Term column, then the course is for that term. Date Certified The date the loan was certified. Disbursement Date The date the disbursement was paid. Fund Source The source of this fund. If your institution is using fund source security, you must have permission to work with the fund source.

   Invoice Number If there was an invoice, the number on the invoice. Payment Period The payment period for the disbursement. The column is only displayed if the program version for the student has an academic calendar that uses non-standard terms or clock hours or credit hours without terms that have been configured to use payment periods. Student The last and first name of the student. In some lists, the name of the student is highlighted. If it is highlighted, you can select the link and it will display the Student Profile or a page available from the profile (such as their Documents list in Contact Manager). To display the Student Profile, you must have Common - Student - View authorization. If the link takes you to a page available from the profile, you must have authorization for that page. For example, if it displays the Documents list, you must have Contact Manager - Student Document - View authorization. Student Number If your institution assigns student numbers, the number your institution uses to identify the student. How the number is assigned is specified by your institution. For example, Anthology Student can be configured to assign the number, or your institution can use another method to assign it. Student Status Specifies the status of the prospect or student at your institution. Statuses vary by institution. They are configured by your institution. If you change the status for a student, a dialog is displayed so that you can confirm the change. If there are also tasks associated with the previous status, Anthology Student displays a dialog that you can use to select the tasks to keep and the tasks to close with the result of canceled. Term Select a term from the list of available terms.

2. If the Approval Status column contains View, Hold, or Failed, select the link in the column.

3. In the dialog, review the values.

   Disbursement Details	% Attended The percentage of attendance achieved by the student. It should be greater than or equal to the minimum value defined in the criteria. When specified as criteria for disbursement approval, in most cases, you will specify either Min Hours Attended or Min Pct Attended. If you specify both, the disbursement must meet both criteria. Cred Comp If the program was configured to use an academic calendar that uses credit hours without terms, the number of credits the student is expected to complete in this academic year. Degree The academic degree. Disbursement The sequence number for the disbursement. For Pell grants, if there are disbursements from other enrollments, the numbering scheme picks up where the previous disbursements left off. DL Origination Status Origination status of the award. The values are Accepted (A), Batched to Send (B), Error/Rejected (E), Not Ready to Send or Not Ready to Send, No ISIR (N), Ready to Send (R), and Blank (not on file). This field cannot always be edited. EFC/SAI The dollar amount in the Expected Family Contribution (EFC) field is based on a formula to determine the financial strength of a student's family and the student's need for Title IV assistance. For award years 2024-25 and later, the EFC is replaced with the Student Aid Index (SAI). Enrollment Status The enrollment status included in the student's Enrollment record. For example, Full Time. FA Interview Date The date of the financial aid/loan entrance interview counseling. If the field contains a value, the source of this date depends on your institution. The date can be the date from the Direct Loan Entrance Counseling (CRECMYOP) or Direct Loan Plus Application Acknowledgment (CRSPyyOP) files imported from COD. If your institution has configured an entrance interview document, the date from the document can be used when the document has an approved and on file status. You can also specify the date. Anthology Student will use the date for all the student's enrollments. First Time Borrower The First Time Borrower flag is automatically selected when a student is enrolled and the Grade Level set during enrollment is "1st year, never attended college". Otherwise, the flag is not automatically selected. When selected, specifies that the student is a first time borrower and that you want to delay the first loan disbursement by xx number of days from the start date of the academic year that your institution has configured for financial aid packaging. GPA The grade point average (GPA) for the student. Grade Level The grade level for the student. Grade levels are configured by your institution and do not have to correspond to the option on the FAFSA or Stafford loan forms. The grade level is assigned to a student under Academic Records > Enrollment > Progress section. For a student to qualify for federal financial aid, a college grade level (1st year, 2nd year, etc.) must be assigned. For a Graduate PLUS loan, the grade level must be configured with the Department of Education ID 7 (Graduate/Professional or beyond). Graduate Program Indicates whether the student is in a graduate program. Hours Scheduled The total number of credits or hours that are in a scheduled or current for the payment period. Hours must be posted or these fields are blank. The column is only displayed if the program version was configured in Academic Records to use scheduled hours.	ISIR Received The Date ISIR Received field indicates the date the ISIR was imported into the school’s EDExpress software. LDA The student's last date of attendance. LP End Date The end date of the loan. The default is the end date of the academic year. For other loans, the date must be before the graduation date. For Direct loans, it must be before the end date of the academic year. Missing Docs Shows the number of required documents that are missing. Numeric Average The numeric average. It should be greater than or equal to the minimum value defined in the criteria. Orig Extract Sent The date when the transaction was sent to COD. Pell Origination Status Origination status of the award. The values are Accepted (A), Batched to Send (B), Error/Rejected (E), Not Ready to Send or Not Ready to Send, No ISIR (N), Ready to Send (R), and Blank (not on file). This field cannot always be edited. Resident Date The date when the student or person became a resident of the state. Resident State If within the United States, the name of the state. SAP The status assigned to the student during the SAP evaluation process. Transaction ID The transaction code. Verification Status Select Enrollment Specific if you want a document considered on file if no Enrollment ID is specified on the document or an Enrollment ID is specified and it matches the Enrollment ID on the disbursement being evaluated. Select Student Specific if you want a document considered on file if the Student ID matches the Student ID on the disbursement being evaluated. When documents are configured as student specific, Anthology Student ignores any enrollment associated with the award. For example, documents like Proof of Graduation only need to be collected by an institution one time, while other documents may be enrollment specific. The documents that Anthology Student evaluates when automatically approved disbursements to pay are specific to the enrollment of the student. This means that the document is associated with the enrollment for which the disbursement is scheduled.
   DAC Failure Reasons	Lists the reasons why a student did not meet the disbursement approval criteria configured by your institution. For example, missing documents can prevent an award from being approved. A disbursement will not be approved by default if there are no approval criteria specified. Refer to Disbursement Approval Criteria.
   Term Summary	Credits Earned The number of credits earned by the student during the payment period or term. Credits Scheduled The number of credits scheduled during the payment period or term. Hours Attended The number of hours attended by the student during the evaluation period.	Start Date The start date of the term. Term Code The code for the term.

4. When you are done reviewing the information in the dialog, select the Cancel button.

If you need additional information about the DAC and the values used in the evaluation, use the History tab (refer to Review Batches for Approving Disbursements).

If you receive the message "Disbursement approval criteria is not configured for the campus.", check the Disbursement Approval Criteria section on the Fund Source configuration and ensure that the Fund Source, Campus, and Approval Criteria Name fields are populated correctly (refer to Fund Sources).

If the Batch Contains Students That Dropped

When a disbursement is approved, Anthology Student checks the student status and displays a message if any of the students have dropped. Anthology Student does not cancel the disbursements for dropped students in an unposted batch. You can continue to approve and pay the students. If you do not want to pay the disbursements, you should change the status of the disbursements to canceled using the Awarding page (Select the Students tile > select the name in the Students list > expand Financial Aid > select the Awarding tile.).

Anthology Student 23.0 introduces changes to the logic for the cancellation of disbursements on enrollments with 'Drop' status and 'Active not attending' status. For more information, refer to Background for Disbursement Cancellation on Dropped Enrollments.