Anticipated Aid

Dawn Alonso

Hello all,

I am writing to see if anyone has any experience with “Anticipated” Aid. We have a circumstance where all of our students receive a scholarship to cover their Tuition and Room & Board Expenses, but they have to pay “Shop Fees." Over the last couple of years, I was putting a credit on the student accounts for Pending Financial Aid, when then of course needs to be removed individually when the Aid is recieved, a time consuming and tedious process. Imagine my delight when I learned of the ability to upload “Anticipated” Aid and then subsequently upload “Awarded” Aid. Could this really be the answer to reducing human error in adding Awarded Financial Aid as well as giving our families an accurate picture of what they owe, without needing a calculator or abacus?

Well so I thought. We ran a really small test with a few students who went through verification and have aid that will be awarded for Fall in the Spring, it is “Anticipated.” All went well after we figured out the technicalities last week. Aid was on the student account as “Anticipated” thereby showing them their actual amount that they owed, in this case $0. ? When I ran a quick check of our AR balances in the GL in FENXT and Blackbaud I was off by the magical amount that I recognized as the “Anticipated” Aid. ? When I went into the student account, they “Anticipated” Aid had generated a credit after the fact (was not there when I first looked.) Now the student account is showing that they have a $2500 credit ?

Has anyone out there used “Anticipated” and then converted it to “Awarded” and have it behave the way I think it should behave? Upload anticipated aid-no credit generated, no GL entries generated, student sees an accurate reflection of outstanding balance due. Upload awarded aid-credit generated and GL entries generated.

**Yes, I did create a case, tech support is looking at it. I just wanted to see if anyone had experience with this.

Dawn Alonso

Recently we have been able to work with Anticipated Aid and convert it to Awarded, without the issue of Anticipated generating journal entries. We will be using the upload to award Financial Aid from now on, removing the human error factor.

Now….If I could just retrain everyone to look where anticipated aid is to see what they truly owe.