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Things to Consider as you Prepare for Prior-Prior Year Processing

By Jessica Holler posted 09-13-2016 07:22 AM

  

Your FA-PAG has started this blog to gather the community’s thoughts, plans, and suggestions as we all progress into this first year of the FAFSAs use of Prior-Prior Year tax and income information.  Please contribute to this discussion.  We will collate this information into a PowerPoint presentation and will deliver this as a webinar in October.

Below you will find a number of topics for consideration along with a few items to think about.  When you add your thoughts and suggestions, please include the topic name IN ALL CAPS as you see below.  If/When you add a new topic, please set that off in ALL CAPS as well.  This will help us collate the information.

Thank you in advance for your enthusiastic participation!

Please note:  This is a discussion and discussions are better when there are differing opinions.

 

SETUP STRUCTURE:         Does your institution use an Even and Odd year structure for 3C and/or Run Control IDs?  This SETUP STRUCTURE may need to change.  If you find this to be true, here are a couple of suggestions:

If your SETUP STRUCTURE naming convention uses just the “E” or the “O,” replace that with the last digit of the aid year.  This would mean setting up new 3Cs and Run Control IDs every year for the next 10 years, but after that your work will get easier as you start to recycle that setup.

If your SETUP STRUCTURE naming convention uses the “EY” or “OY,” replace that with the last two digits of the aid year.  This would mean setting up new 3Cs and Run Control IDs every year.

What are some additional SETUP STRUCTURE suggestions?

 

AID YEAR ROLLOVER:      Does your institution run the AID YEAR ROLLOVER for “everything-all-at-once”?  Does your institution run the AID YEAR ROLLOVER in pieces that correspond to the items delivered with each Bundle/PUM Image?  Do you want to continue in that same manner?

What are the pros and cons of both methods of running the AID YEAR ROLLOVER?

 

PROCESSING SCHEDULE:              Are there processes that will have to run for three aid years at a time?  Given the start and end date for each career’s academic year, some processing may need to run for more than the current maximum of two aid years at a time. Your PROCESSING SCHEDULE may need to shift accordingly.  Here are some processes to think about:

ISIR Load – will we have received the last 2015-16 ISIR file before you start loading 2017-18 ISIRS?  If not, the ISIR Load may need to run for three aid years and the PROCESSING SCHEDULE may need to shift accordingly.  Are there 3CEngine or other processes to assign checklists, comments, and communications based on newly loaded ISIR Data that may need to run for three years?

FA Term Build – will the latest academic year end date of 2015-16 for the latest ending career have finished before you need to start building FA Terms for 2017-18?  If not, the FA Term Build processes may need to run for three aid years and the PROCESSING SCHEDULE may need to shift accordingly.

Loan Processing – Currently there are no plans for COD to start loan processing for 2017-18 any earlier.  As a results, the PROCESSING SCHEDULE for Federal Direct Loans should continue to include only a maximum of two years.

What are some additional PROCESSING SCHEDULE concerns?

 

PROFESSIONAL JUDGEMENT:     Do Professional Judgement EFC Adjustments approved for 2016-17 still apply to 2017-18?

Loss of Income – if a supporting family member lost their job in 2016, what are the documents you want to collect to re-evaluate this PROFESSIONAL JUDGEMENT adjustment?  Did the family member land a job more quickly than expected?  Or was the loss of income greater than expected?  Do you want to collect 2016 tax and income information?  Something else?  Something in addition?

Unusual Medical Expenses – because these are generally one-time expenses will you require documentation of 2016 medical expenses in order to re-evaluate this PROFESSIONAL JUDGEMENT adjustment?

Will you communicate with these families now or wait for an additional appeal?

What are some additional PROFESSIONAL JUDGEMENT scenarios that might need some advance planning?

 

CONFLICTING INFORMATION:   How will you resolve ISIRs with comment 399 indicating there is CONFLICTING INFORMATION on the student’s 2017-18 ISIR as compared to the 2016-17?  How will you identify the students you must resolve and those that you are not required to resolve?  Are there queries you have already written to compare the information?  …to identify the students?

You must resolve CONFLICTING INFORMATION when: 1) you have received and loaded both FAFSAs, 2) when you have received and loaded the 2017-18 FAFSA and have received 2016-17 FAFSA – even you did not load that earlier year’s FAFSA and even if the student did not attend your institution during that aid year.

You are not required to resolve CONFLICTING INFORMATION if your institution was never listed on the Student's 2016-17 ISIR.

What is your understanding of the CONFLICTING INFORMATION regulations?

 

COMMUNICATION:        Has your institution developed a COMMUNICATION strategy for returning students to let them know about the change?  What about incoming students?

Will you mount a COMMUNICATION campaign to encourage your students and families to complete the IRS Data Retrieval, when possible, before they complete their 2017-18 FAFSA?

Do you want to provide guidance to families regarding IRA Rollover distributions that appears on their 2015-16 FAFSA?  If you removed this amount from a family’s income for 2015-16 processing, you might want to send a COMMUNICATION letting them know how you prefer they account for that same IRA Rollover amount as they complete their 2017-18 FAFSA.

What are some additional COMMUNICATION items to be considered?

 

COA BUDGETS: Will your institution be able to set the 2017-18 COA BUDGET early enough so that you are able to build “real” COA BUDGETS?  If yes, what a luxury!  If no, you will have to send awards out with estimated COA BUDGETS and then update them later.

Will you be able to coordinate this with the receipt/load of the 2017-18 Federal Pell Grant Charts so that you only need to repackage once?

What are some additional concerns surrounding COA BUDGETS?

 

PACKAGING:     When does your institution plan to start PACKAGING new students for 2017-18?  How will this affect other processing?  Here are some things to think about:

Do you know when your competitor institutions will start PACKAGING for 2017-18?  How many staff will be on hand between November 15 and December 31 to answer PACKAGING calls from new students?

What are some additional PACKAGING concerns?

 

IMPLEMENTATION:        How quickly will your IT Department be able to download and apply the various Bundles/PUM Images and Critical Fixes/PRPs?  Here are some things to think about:

What other updates (like federal tax updates) does your IT Department need to manage at the same time as the PPY IMPLEMENTATION?

How quickly will you be able to test these so that the IMPLEMENTATION of PPY supports your plans for sending award letters?

Do you have specific testing procedures and queries for comparing the EFC and intermediate calculation values against the INAS Calculated values in Campus Solutions?

What additional items could affect your IMPLEMENTATION date?

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Tara O'Neil
10-05-2016 03:58 PM

COMMUNICATION

We send this every 21 days:

 

Here is our text (we have parent versions and student versions)

 

ACTION NEEDED NOW:

Update your 2016 – 2017 FAFSA using the IRS Data Retrieval Tool:

Because the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 FAFSAs will both use your 2015 tax data, it is important that the information on your 2016-2017 FAFSA matches your tax information.  FAFSAs that have different tax data for the above mentioned years will be flagged for discrepancies and cause delays and possible loss of financial aid for the 2017-2018 year.  We strongly encourage all students to make sure that they have used the IRS Data Retrieval Tool (DRT) to report their 2015 tax data.

 

WHY?

The application process for financial aid is changing for the 2017-2018 award year. You can begin filing the 2017-2018 FAFSA as early as October 1, 2016 and you will use your 2015 tax data when completing the FAFSA.  This will be the same tax data that you used on the 2016-2017 FAFSA application.  These are significant changes from prior year's financial aid application.

 

Do you need help? 

If you have questions regarding the use of the IRS Data Retrieval Tool (DRT) or are having trouble using the DRT, please visit our website.  If you have questions regarding the changes to the FAFSA process, please visit our FAFSA Changes web page.

 

Sincerely,

Office of Student Financial Aid

 

Tara O'Neil
10-05-2016 03:12 PM

CONFLICTING INFORMATION

399 Compare ISIRs.sql

Tara O'Neil
10-05-2016 03:04 PM

CONFLICTING INFORMATION

Don't forget you need to develop a way now to prevent any 1617 aid from paying when they have comment code 399.

SELECT distinct

c.emplid

FROM

PS_ISIR_00_2_EC A

, PS_ISIR_00_1_EC B

,ps_fa_nid_vw c

 

WHERE

A.IWD_COMMENT_CDS LIKE '%399%'

AND A.ECTRANSID = B.ECTRANSID

AND A.ECQUEUEINSTANCE = B.ECQUEUEINSTANCE

AND A.ECTRANSINOUTSW = B.ECTRANSINOUTSW

AND A.ISIR_SEQ_NO = B.ISIR_SEQ_NO

AND B.IWD_BATCH_YR = '8'

and c.national_id = b.ssn

Tara O'Neil
10-05-2016 03:03 PM

CONFLICTING INFORMATION

Here is a query that will compare all the data elements from one year to the next, that have comment 399.

 

SELECT DISTINCT

ISIR_COMMENT18.EMPLID

--Tax Return Information

--ISIR_PARENT17.TAX_RETURN_FILED --Tax Return Filed • Tax return completion status

, case when ISIR_PARENT17.tax_return_filed = ' ' THEN 'Blank'

when ISIR_PARENT17.tax_return_filed = '2' THEN 'Will'

when ISIR_PARENT17.tax_return_filed = '1' THEN 'Complete'

when ISIR_PARENT17.tax_return_filed = '3' THEN 'Wont'

end as par_status17

--ISIR_PARENT18.TAX_RETURN_FILED -- Tax Return Filed • Tax return completion status

, case when ISIR_PARENT18.tax_return_filed = ' ' THEN 'Blank'

when ISIR_PARENT18.tax_return_filed = '2' THEN 'Will'

when ISIR_PARENT18.tax_return_filed = '1' THEN 'Complete'

when ISIR_PARENT18.tax_return_filed = '3' THEN 'Wont'

end as par_status18

--ISIR_PARENT17.TAX_FORM_FILED --Tax Form Filed • Tax return form filed

, case when ISIR_PARENT17.tax_form_filed =' ' THEN 'Blank'

when ISIR_PARENT17.tax_form_filed ='1' THEN 'IRS 1040'

when ISIR_PARENT17.tax_form_filed ='2' THEN '1040 A/EZ'

when ISIR_PARENT17.tax_form_filed ='3' THEN 'Foreign Tax'

when ISIR_PARENT17.tax_form_filed ='4' THEN 'US Territory'

end as par_type17

--ISIR_PARENT18.TAX_FORM_FILED -- Tax Form Filed • Tax return form filed

, case when ISIR_PARENT18.tax_form_filed =' ' THEN 'Blank'

when ISIR_PARENT18.tax_form_filed ='1' THEN 'IRS 1040'

when ISIR_PARENT18.tax_form_filed ='2' THEN '1040 A/EZ'

when ISIR_PARENT18.tax_form_filed ='3' THEN 'Foreign Tax'

when ISIR_PARENT18.tax_form_filed ='4' THEN 'US Territory'

end as par_type18

--ISIR_PARENT17.SFA_PAR_TAX_RET --Tax Status • Tax return file status

, case when ISIR_PARENT17.sfa_par_tax_ret=' ' THEN 'Blank'

when ISIR_PARENT17.sfa_par_tax_ret ='1' THEN 'Single'

when ISIR_PARENT17.sfa_par_tax_ret ='2' THEN 'MarJoint'

when ISIR_PARENT17.sfa_par_tax_ret ='3' THEN 'MarSep'

when ISIR_PARENT17.sfa_par_tax_ret ='4' THEN 'HOH'

when ISIR_PARENT17.sfa_par_tax_ret ='5' THEN 'Widower'

when ISIR_PARENT17.sfa_par_tax_ret ='6' THEN 'DontKnow'

end as par_file17

 

--ISIR_PARENT18.SFA_PAR_TAX_RET -- Tax Status • Tax return file status

, case when ISIR_PARENT18.sfa_par_tax_ret=' ' THEN 'Blank'

when ISIR_PARENT18.sfa_par_tax_ret ='1' THEN 'Single'

when ISIR_PARENT18.sfa_par_tax_ret ='2' THEN 'MarJoint'

when ISIR_PARENT18.sfa_par_tax_ret ='3' THEN 'MarSep'

when ISIR_PARENT18.sfa_par_tax_ret ='4' THEN 'HOH'

when ISIR_PARENT18.sfa_par_tax_ret ='5' THEN 'Widower'

when ISIR_PARENT18.sfa_par_tax_ret ='6' THEN 'DontKnow'

end as par_file18

--ISIR_PARENT17.ELIG_FOR_1040A_EZ --Elig for 1040A/EZ • Elig for 1040A/EZ

, case when ISIR_PARENT17.elig_for_1040a_ez =' ' THEN 'Blank'

when ISIR_PARENT17.elig_for_1040a_ez ='1' THEN 'Yes'

when ISIR_PARENT17.elig_for_1040a_ez ='2' THEN 'No'

when ISIR_PARENT17.elig_for_1040a_ez ='3' THEN 'DontKnow'

end as par_eligez17

--ISIR_PARENT18.ELIG_FOR_1040A_EZ -- Elig for 1040A/EZ • Elig for 1040A/EZ

, case when ISIR_PARENT18.elig_for_1040a_ez =' ' THEN 'Blank'

when ISIR_PARENT18.elig_for_1040a_ez ='1' THEN 'Yes'

when ISIR_PARENT18

Val Patten
10-05-2016 11:28 AM

SETUP STRUCTURE

We use an A, B, C construct for our run controls.  Each letter corresponds to a different aid year and we cycle through them every 3 years.  So A might be 2015, B is 2016 and C is 2017.  When we start building out 2018, we would re-use A.  The only "gotcha" is making sure that what you built three years ago is still applicable for the newest year....sometimes things change so you have to re-work the run control (i.e. different/new query names for pop select).

Ujwala Swaminathan
10-04-2016 10:04 AM

SETUP STRUCTURE

At our institution, we will be able to continue using Odd/Even setup

Daniel Labrecque
09-19-2016 02:33 PM

SETUP STRUCTURE

I think that for some school (maybe most), one aid year is over before the new ISIRs will come in whether it be even year or odd year.  I won't speak for everyone, but the even and odd year set up will still work for us.  It just means that we need to work in a more timely fashion in getting everything set up for that new aid year coming in.