Why are my students missing from my budget?

Derek Nichols

Missing students on your freshly generated budget ahead of creating Award Letter templates? Curious to know what's going on? Read on to find out what's going on.You have meticulously created your budget. All your family applications have been reviewed. Maybe you used Enrollment verification to assign Enrollment statuses to your students. You are finally ready to press that magic button to lock your budget and begin creating your Award Letter template. However, when you go through the results after running your budget, some students are missing that you know should be listed. Why are your students missing?

There are a few things that might be happening here. The first is that just like SmartAid reports, SmartAid budgets are generated in real-time. That means if a family’s data was changed since the last time the budget was run or the family has recently finished the application process, they may not be listed in the budget. To fix this, you will simply want to rerun your budget by selecting the blue gear/cog button in the action column of the budget. This will regenerate the budget and hopefully, your student is listed.

If not, if your school uses the Enrollment verification tool, you need to check the student’s enrollment status. At this time, the only students that will be listed in a budget will have a status of Prospect, Accepted, or Wait listed. You can view a student’s enrollment status from Families then select Enrollment verification. From here, you can search for the student’s name or filter by the Enrollment status column. To assign an Enrollment status, use the Select box to select students and then use the Update selected statuses drop down to select the Enrollment status for the selected students.

Finally, your last option is the student most likely does not meet the eligibility criteria for the budget. Double check your settings on your budget. Make note of your settings and compare it against the student. Is the student in the right grade? Do they have the correct Application status? Check out the codes associated with the student or their family. There is a chance one of those eligibility criteria is keeping your student off your budget.

These are the most common reasons why students are missing from a budget. If you’ve walked through all of these and your student still isn’t appearing on your budget, reach out to SmartAid customer support and they’ll be happy to take a look at your budget with you!