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The Financial Aid Prioritized Packaging functionality provides unlimited packaging options which will nearly eliminate the need to access individual student Financial Aid records, because it is rule-based and designed for multiple student packaging. Once packages are assigned, awards can be automatically adjusted according to your business rules if the student’s load changes. A configuration option in the CAMS Manager module must be set in order for this to occur. Before any Prioritized Packages can be built, there are some setup tasks that must be completed; including defining awards in the Award Reference table, creating Academic and Financial Aid Years, and building Budgets for various Direct Cost Types to reflect total cost of attendance. Prioritized Packages are created and assigned in four easy steps.
Build Queries
The very flexible and easy to use Query Builder window allows you to build various queries based on unique business rules established by the Academic and Financial Aid Years. Queries are stored here and applied to Prioritized Packages, Awards, or Budgets. It's common to apply a query to packages, awards, and budgets concurrently. For example, a query built to determine in-state residents may be used in conjunction with packages, awards, and budgets. Creating a query has three (3) basic steps that need to occur in the following order:
Create Award Methodologies
The Award Methodology window designates how awards should be assigned, and defines how awards will be distributed. This is a two-part process. First, define the methodology and determine how the amount will be calculated. Next, build the disbursement based on the method used to determine the amount to award. Methodology for each disbursement period must be defined, which means that two methodologies may be created for the entire two-term cycle. For example, the state of Missouri gives an institution a grant of $500,000 annually to be disbursed equally over the two-term Financial Aid year. Two methodologies will be created, one for Fall, and one for Spring. These will be assigned simultaneously during the Prioritized Packaging process.
Define Budgets
The Budgets window is used to assign budgets to students based on rules you design. Prioritize, add, and process budgets for groups of students identified from queries defined in the Query Builder window. Prior to that, the Budgets must be created in Financial Aid >Setup >Yearly Setup. Budgets should reflect the total cost of attendance for the Financial Aid Year for each type of student attendance. For example, what is the cost of attendance for a student living on campus for two terms? Tuition, books, fees, room and board, incidentals, etc., must be included in cost of attendance.
Process Packages
In the Packaging window, put all the rules together and apply packages to a variety of students affected by different rules in the order you determine. First, award methodologies must be associated with packages, then identify which packages to process. Next, the students qualifying for the packages will display. Then the methodology is applied, and the awards for the students display. After this, print an edit list to verify, and then process the Prioritized Package. Finally, print an award letter for each student packaged.
Awards can be automatically adjusted according to your business rules if the student’s load changes.
Note: If Prioritized Packaging contains awards of the same Award Type AND TERM that are found in Financial Aid Maintenance and added by another process, the student will be put in the exception list and therefore will not be packaged. If the (manually entered) award’s Award Type in combination with the term is NOT found in any of the Award Methodologies for the package the student will be packaged as normal. The manually entered award will only affect the packaging process by bringing down remaining need if the Award Type affects need.