Blogs

November’s Financial Aid Coffee Hour focused:

• Highlighting some upcoming new functionality with budgets
• Best practices for handling some of the new budget requirements
• 2024 ISIRS, which comes with all of the POC, PRPs, and bugs.

New Functionality with Budgets coming in PUM 28

This new functionality allows you to utilize the current budget formula functionality in conjunction with equation engine functionality to build budgets.  You can adopt this at your own pace!

The target delivery date for PUM 28 is February 7, 2023.    Once this gets delivered in February, we plan on having a webinar or FA Coffee Break!   

Compliance Corner for Budgets /Cost of Attendance

See (GEN-22-15) FAFSA® Simplification Act Changes for Implementation in 2023-24 for changes, which take effect in the 2023/2024 aid years; here are some of the major changes that you may not already be doing:     

• The ‘Room and Board’ category is now to be called ‘Living expenses’ (naming change)
  • If enrolled in at least ½ time, the food allowance must include the equivalent of 3 meals per day for all students (even if the student is not enrolled in a meal plan or enrolled in a meal plan that doesn’t serve 3 meals a day).
  • For housing allowance for on-campus students, there must be 2 ways to calculate the cost (1) on campus with dependents and (2) on-campus without dependents and then you must take the higher of the median or the average and use that in the cost of attendance allowance.    
  • One-time cost of obtaining professional licensure MUST be included for affected students.
• Note: Some of these components you will not know until after you have already built budgets, so you could use an equation to update the COA when the information is known, and/or utilize packaging variables or student groups.   
• Regarding loan fees, some don’t add the loan fees until the loan is accepted and others include the loan fees at the time is offered and then remove the loan fee is the loan is declined or canceled.   

Check out OTC AskRegs Experts: A Blizzard of New Regulations, FAFSA Simplification Guidance, and a Quick Debrief on Midterm Elections where they cover updates to the FAFSA simplification rollout and details how financial aid offices will be impacted by changes to cost of attendance.  (Cost of attendance conversations starts around the 20 min mark). 

Changes to the PUM Delivery Release Schedule

Please note that there are changes to the PUM Image Delivery Schedule beginning 2023! For more information, see Image and Release Updates Blog.    We will continue to receive the PRP for regulatory updates and critical issues. 

For the 2023 release schedule, (PeopleSoft Enterprise Campus Solutions Financial Aid Regulatory Release Schedule for Release 9.2 - 2022 and 2023)

ISIR Processing:

• Patch 34644566-> UPDATED 2024 FEDERAL METHODOLOGY (FM) JAR FILE (don’t let the description fool you, this is more than just the JAR file) was released on 11/11/2022.
  • An earlier POC did contain early versions of the fixes for Bugs 34672227, 34695133, 34676590, and the final versions of those fixes did not change.
  • See Document 2908918.1 (Peoplesoft Release Patchset (PRP) 34644566 - UPDATED 2024 FEDERAL METHODOLOGY (FM) JAR FILE.) which can be found at: https://support.oracle.com/epmos/faces/DocumentDisplay?id=2908918.1
  • Bug 34447648 - FM TESTER UTILITY - This will allow you to upload a text file that Oracle can import.  This is only used when submitting an SR for an issue related to 2024.  
• In general, it is a best practice is to migrate the patch as soon as possible when it contains updates the JAR file /calculations.
  • Head-ups: there is expected to be another PRP released mid-December.
• For 2024, the Auto-Zero flag is not showing up on the EFC/DB Matches tab after an ISIR data element changes and Calc EFC is run. To follow this issue:
  • Document 2906971.1 (Auto-Zero EFC Flag is Not Populating on the 2023-2024 ISIR Corrections After Either Making a Correction or by Calculating the EFC by Clicking the Calc EFC Button.) can be found at: https://support.oracle.com/epmos/faces/DocumentDisplay?id=2906971.1
  • Release 9.2: Bug 34760706 - Auto Zero EFC Flag IS NOT POPULATING ON 2024 ISIR CORRECTION. A fix has not been targeted yet.  
• If you send out rejected ISIR emails, check before you send, because the table has changed. Ashley has filed a case.   
• You will not see negative EFCs with 2023/2024. You will start seeing these when the Student Aid Index (SAI) is implemented with 2045/2025

For More Information: 

• Check out the Follow-up from November FA Coffee Break thread for some more great information being shared by the community.
• Recording to  FINANCIAL AID COFFEE HOUR- November Recording
• Document 2811380.1 (Update on Support for INAS Federal Methodology (FM) and Institutional Methodology (IM) Beginning Aid Year 2023-2024) can be found at: https://support.oracle.com/epmos/faces/DocumentDisplay?id=2811380.1