How do I issue refunds to students?

Here's how you refund a student's credit balance. Before we get going, a few things:

• If you have enabled the Allow Student Billing users to refund aid credit balances setting in Financial Aid > Settings, you will be able to use this workflow to issue financial aid refunds.
• If enabled, your options here will further depend on what you have selected in the Credit balance refund policy setting in Financial Aid > Settings.
• If not enabled, then you must issue financial aid refunds using a refund batch in Financial Aid > Disbursement Batches.
• In either case, you may use this workflow to issue refunds for non-aid credit balances.
• If you've set up a check template, you can also print a batch of refund checks from Billing > Current > Student Balances.

Refunding an individual credit balance

You may issue a refund when the student has an unapplied payment or credit.

1. Go to the student's Profile > Financial view.
2. Select Refund Credit Balance. This option will only appear when there is a refundable amount on the student's account.
3. Enter the posted date.
4. Select the Refund Source. Your options here will depend on the settings mentioned above.
5. Enter the amount. You cannot refund more than what is shown in the Max: amount below this field.
6. Who will this be paid to? If you select other person or organization, begin typing a name and choose from the results.
7. Select the method and enter an optional reference #.
8. Select the Asset Account you want this payment to credit.
9. Click Save to finish recording the refund.

Depending on your selection for the Aid Refund Policy, these refunds will be given one of these transaction types:

• Aid Refund: This transaction type is applied to any aid refund regardless of source.
• Customer Refund: This transaction type is applied to any refunds of unapplied payments and credits, including those that combine aid refunds with non-aid refunds. If you refund $5000 of a Pell Grant and combine it with a $10 refund of an unapplied credit, it will be considered one, single Customer Refund!

Issuing bulk refunds from the Student Balances report

You can issue refunds to a group of students using this workflow. This method issues refunds for students who have a refundable amount of the Refund Source you choose (even if the report shows students without such an amount).

1. Go to Billing > Current > Student Balances.
2. Pare down the report by using the filter; you can also check/uncheck individual students to whom you wish to issue refunds. The Refund action will respect your filters and selections.
3. Click Actions and select Issue Refunds.
4. Enter the refund details—your options here are more or less identical to what you find on Profile > Financial (and are likewise determined by the settings mentioned at the beginning of this article).
5. To see who will receive a refund as a result of this operation, click Show Details.
6. To finish, click Issue.