Process - Create, Lock, or Delete a Batch of Disbursements

You can use the Process tab on the Approve Disbursements to Pay page to manually create a new batch of disbursements to work with. For example, you create batches with disbursements: 

• From multiple fund sources by using the Fund Type filter "All Fund Sources"

• That will eventually be exported to COD (such as a batch of disbursements for Pell Grants or Direct Loans) by selecting the individual fund type

You can also create a Hold/Release Change Transaction file that you can then export to CommonLine using the CommonLine V4 Export page in Processes > Financial Aid > CommonLine V4 Export.

For Anthology Student to ensure batch integrity, a manually created batch must be locked. When you lock a batch of disbursements: 

• The batch job cannot be deleted
• Disbursements cannot be removed

You can still queue the batch so that: 

• Disbursements can be evaluated and approved
• If you have permission, manually override approval statuses
• Approve the batch so that it can be posted to the students' ledgers in Student Accounts

You can delete an unposted batch. The deleted batch cannot be recovered. A new batch will need to be created. Approved and unapproved disbursements remain for the students and can be included and reapproved in subsequent batches.

Prerequisites

You must have:

• Common - Processes - View authorization

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

To create a batch of Hold/Release disbursements for CommonLine:

• Your user ID must be configured so that you are allowed to create or regenerate a CommonLine Hold/Release file.

• Your institution must have configured the path for CommonLine export and import files for the campus.

• At least one disbursement in the batch must have been approved.

To delete a batch, you must have Financial Aid – Processes – Approve Disbursements To Pay – Delete Batch authorization. The batch: 

• Must be unlocked (You cannot delete a batch that is locked.) 

• If it was created by an automated process in the legacy interface of Anthology Student, must not have a drawdown request or deposit record

You should 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 Create a Batch of Disbursements

For the selection criteria, you must select a value for Fund Source or Lender. You can also select both.

1. Select the Process tab.

2. Specify the Selection Criteria to filter the records. The fields will depend on the type of fund you select in the Fund Type list.

   Award Year The financial aid award year. Campus The campus or campuses to which a person or item is assigned. It is filtered to display the campuses to which you have access. In some cases, it is also used to filter a list to only those items for the campus. In some lists, you can select more than one campus or select All. In lists that display columns, if the column contains more than one campus, you cannot sort or filter on that column. Disbursement Date The date on which the disbursement is to be paid. For grants and Perkins loans, it must be before the end of the award year and academic year. For Direct loans, the date can be changed to a date outside both the loan period and academic year dates for non-term program versions. From and To Enforce Batch Integrity Select the check box if you want to create sub batches of disbursements. For example, select the check box if you want to post approved disbursements to Student Accounts as a separate batch, but need to keep track of the original parent disbursement batch. When batch integrity is enforced, Anthology Student maintains a record of the initial contents of disbursement batches created from importing a Global payment (C2PA) file. This functionality is also available for manually created disbursement batches. The record of the initial contents of disbursement batches is separate from the record of the posting batch number assigned to the disbursements posted to student ledger cards. If you select the check box, you should also lock the batch job. Exclude Released CL Disbursements When selected, excludes CommonLine disbursements that have been released. FA Hold Group If Yes was selected for Override FA Hold Group, specifies the name of one or more hold groups. Fund Source The source of the fund. They are configured by your institution. Anthology Student automatically selects all of the fund sources with disbursements for the type you selected in the Fund Type list. If there is only one fund source for the type, it is selected by default. If there is more than one fund source for a type, the default is to approve all fund sources of that type. A fund source must be active. For fund sources configured with the type of Other Outside Resources, the list only contains the fund sources that were also configured to reduce the remaining balance to schedule. Fund Type The type selected for the fund source when it was configured. When you select a value, Anthology Student automatically selects all of the fund sources of that type in the Fund Source list.   Read Note Anthology Student 25.0 introduces the Fund Type of All Direct Loans (Code=ALLDIR). Previously, when staff members gathered a batch for multiple Title IV loan fund sources using the Fund Type of All Fund Sources (Code=ALL) and selected “Include loans with accepted promissory notes only”, the Approve Disbursements to Pay process gathered loans without accepted MPNs. If you want the Approve Disbursements to Pay process to gather only student records with an MPN status of Accepted, select the following options: Fund Type = All Direct Loans Found Source = only Title IV loans Check boxes: Include originated loans only Accepted Batched Include loans with accepted promissory notes only The Fund Type of All Direct Loans retrieves only active Direct Loans in the subsequent fields.

   Include originated grants or loans only When selected, specifies that only disbursements for grants or loans that have been originated with statuses you select will be approved. The check box is displayed only for Pell Grants and Direct Loans. Informed Borrower When you select this check box, the system gathers disbursements for Direct Loan awards (Direct Sub, Direct Unsub, Direct PLUS, Direct Grad PLUS) where the student has Informed Borrower data saved in the system for award year 2021-2022 or higher. If this check box is cleared, Informed Borrower details for Direct Loans are not referenced when the system determines which disbursements to include in the batch. Last Name From and To In the Last Name: From and To fields, you can specify single alphabetical characters to use as a search filter. Examples: To search for last names starting with "A" and "B", specify a in the From field and b in the To field. To search for last names starting with "C", specify c in the From field and c in the To field. Lender The name of the lender. Lenders are configured by your institution. Override FA Hold Group If your user ID has been configured so that it allows you to override a Financial Aid hold group and approve disbursements, the list is displayed. If you select the names of the groups in the FA Hold Group list, you can approve disbursements for students in those groups. Anthology Student overrides the hold, but still evaluates the disbursement against the other disbursement approval criteria. FA Holds apply to Title IV and non-Title IV funds. Status Category The category for the status. It can include more than one student status. They are defined by the system and selected for the student statuses configured by your institution. Subsequent Disb If your institution has configured multiple disbursements, indicates a subsequent disbursement.

   Tip: If you notice disbursements that are not available for selection when creating a disbursement batch, review the following items:

   • The Direct Loan Origination status is not "Accepted".

   • The Direct Loan Prom Note status is not "Accepted".

   • There are pending Direct Loan origination changes that have not been exported to COD and/or the response file from COD has not been imported yet.

   If either item is true, correct it.

3. Select the Next button. The Results grid displays a list of student records.

4. Review the list of students.

   Amount The amount of the disbursements reported to COD by that school code. 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.

5. To save the batch, select the Save Batch button.

   If there are no disbursements in the batch, Anthology Student automatically deletes the batch.

6. If you are creating a batch of Hold/Release disbursements for CommonLine, work with the batch to prepare it for export. For example, review, approve, and post the disbursements. When the batch is ready, select the Create Hold/Release button.

   If there are disbursements that cannot be released, Anthology Student displays a message and you can review the reason in the CommonLine Reason column on the right.

Depending on the type of batch, you can:

• Process - Evaluate and Approve Disbursements

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

• Eligibility Review

• Process - Review Status and Approve to Post

You can also work with the batch later. All unposted batches can be accessed on the Unposted Batches tab (refer to Unposted Batches).

When you initially gather a batch, all student records in the Results grid are selected and the Approval Status is set to View.

• If you select Approve All, the Approval Status for all records is set to Approved.

• If you select Unapprove All, the Approval Status column for all records is set to View.

Essentially, the check box next to the student record does not indicate approved or unapproved status. The value in the Approval Status column indicates whether a record is approved or unapproved.

Once you exit the page after creating the batch, you cannot modify the selection criteria used to create the batch. You must delete and recreate the batch instead.

Procedure to Lock a Batch of Disbursements

1. Select the Process tab.

2. Select the Lock button.

Anthology Student locks the batch and disables the buttons for the action you can no longer take for the batch.

You cannot unlock a batch once it has been locked.

Procedure to Delete a Batch

If you have jkust created the batch and you are still on the Process tab, select the Delete Batch button.

Anthology Student displays a dialog with information about the batch you are deleting so that you can confirm you are deleting the right batch.

A deleted batch cannot be recovered. A new batch will need to be created.