Financial aid automatically applies to invoices if/when:
- The disbursement date falls in the same academic term as the invoice.
- The invoiced charges are aid-eligible. Aid-eligible charges include tuition and fees marked as "eligible for financial aid".
Troubleshooting
Some things that might interfere with the proper application of financial aid to invoices:
- The academic term (and, consequently, your academic year) isn't coterminous with the aid year. The Federal aid year (hard-coded into Populi Financial Aid) begins July 1 and ends June 30; aid disbursed in one year cannot apply to charges in another year. This is most likely to happen in a summer term... say you invoice charges on June 29 and disburse aid on July 2—because the disbursement occurs in a different aid year (even if it's the same term at your school), that aid cannot apply. If your school is heavily dependent on financial aid, it would be good to align your academic years and terms with the Federal aid year.
- If you're manually adding tuition and fees via the student's financial dashboard, there's no academic term information with which Populi can match an aid disbursement. Make sure you're using—to the extent possible at your school—the automated tuition schedules and fee rules, which trigger according to enrollment and other events that happen in specific academic terms.
- You've already recorded payments against those invoices that have paid down the aid-eligible charges. Make sure that you apply aid before you start applying regular payments/credits to invoices!
Would you rather manually apply financial aid to invoices?
There's a setting for that. Go to Financial > Settings and check "Yes" under Manually apply financial aid to invoices. Make sure you click Save Settings!
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