Step six: set up aid year schedules

Aid Year Schedules let you schedule disbursements for all aid offers in upcoming academic terms. This lets you avoid having to schedule disbursements for each student's individual offers.

Here's a simple example of how aid year schedules work:

1. You create a 2020-2021 schedule for Pell Grants that disburses 50% of the offer on September 1, 2020 and 50% on January 20, 2021 (these two dates are within three days of the start of your Fall and Spring Terms, respectively).
2. You assign the schedule to a student; this student accepts a $2,000 Pell Grant.
3. Populi automatically schedules two disbursements for that student: $1,000 on September 1, 2020 and $1,000 on January 20, 2021.
4. When you originate the offer with COD, this information is automatically included in the origination data.

For U.S. schools, the Federal Aid Year runs from July 1 to June 30. We have hard-coded this into how Populi handles financial aid. If a student applies for the 2020-2021 aid year, he's applying for aid that he'd get between July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021. For Canadian schools, we can set up custom aid years if so desired.

How to add an aid year schedule

1. Click Add Schedule.
2. Give the schedule a name.
3. Select an aid year from the drop-down.
4. Check the terms you wish to include in this schedule. These terms are those whose start and/or end dates fall within the aid year. So, for 2020-2021, you can choose from terms that start or end between July 1, 2020 and June 30, 2021.

• Consult the Federal Student Aid Handbook and any applicable state/province aid regulations when setting up disbursements for government-sourced offers.
• When you check a term, enter the percentage of the total offer amount you wish to disburse.
• Enter the date on which you wish to disburse the aid to your students.
• You can also simply check Equal Disbursement Amounts to evenly divide offers across the disbursement dates you enter.
• Click / to add or remove a disbursement date.