Financial Aid Process Budgets

Use the Budgets window to prioritize, add, and process budgets for groups of students. Prior to that, the Budgets must be created in Financial Aid >Setup >Yearly Setup. The students are identified by attaching the appropriate query defined in the Packaging Query Builder window.

To Add a Budget:

From the CAMS Enterprise Home page click Financial Aid >Packaging >Prioritized >Budgets. The Budgets window displays.
Select the appropriate Academic Year and Financial Aid Year, and then click Find to display any budgets already associated with the selected Academic and Financial Aid year. You MUST click Find first to add a new record.
Right-click in the data grid to add a budget, or double-click an existing budget to modify it. The Budget detail window displays.
Provide a Budget Description.
Click the search icon next to the Student Selection Criteria field to open the Student Selection Criteria window. Double-click the query to associate with this budget.
Enter the Priority (zero (0) is the highest). This indicates the order in which the budget will be applied if students qualify for multiple budgets. The highest priority budget would be applied.
Select the Direct Cost Type. The Cost Items associated with that Direct Cost Type display in the data grid.
Click Add to add the Budget, or Cancel to exit without saving.

To Process a Budget:

After the budget has been added, click the Initiate tab.
Right-click in the Selected Budgets to Run data grid. The Available Budgets list displays.
Double-click a single budget to run, or click Select All to add all available budgets to the Selected Budgets to Run data grid. If you wish to remove a budget from the list of those that are to be run, highlight that budget and then click Delete.
Click Only Show Students Without Budgets check box if you do not wish to display students that already have budgets defined, otherwise students that already have budgets assigned will display. In this case, budgets are applied according to the highest Priority.
Click Initiate to display a list of students who should have the budgets applied. The Effected Students tab opens.
By default, the list of students displayed are those with Last Names From "A" to Last Name To "M". This default exists to ensure the window renders the list quickly. To see all students that qualify for this budget, change the Last Name To "Z" and then click Find. If there are any students that should not receive the budget, highlight that record and then click Delete.
Click the Process tab. If the Only Show Students Without Budgets check box was NOT checked, you can click the Overwrite Existing Budgets check box to ensure that this budget will take precedence.
Click Process. A confirmation message displays upon completion.
The Process button will be disabled (grayed out) until initiated again from the Initiate tab. This process populates the Direct Cost Type field in Financial Aid >Maintenance >Financial Aid Status Detail window.

Copy Budgets

Because budgets are attached to a specific Academic and Financial Aid Year, it is necessary to create them for each Academic and Financial Aid year. This can be done manually, or to save time, use the Copy button to copy all budgets associated with one particular Academic and Financial Aid year to another Academic and Financial Aid year. Individual methodologies can also be copied in order to facilitate creating Award Methodologies for multiple-term Financial Aid Years.

Note: Copy Budgets should NOT be done here when using the Copy Package. When using the Copy Package function, Package Criteria queries, Award Methodologies, and Budgets associated with the Package are copied automatically. You should ONLY copy budgets here if you will NOT be copying packages. Copying the budgets will also copy the associated Package Criteria queries.

To Copy Budgets:

From the CAMS Enterprise Home page click Financial Aid >Packaging >Prioritized >Budgets. The Budgets window displays.
Select the appropriate Academic Year and Financial Aid Year, and then click Find to display any budgets already associated with the selected Academic Year and Financial Year. You must click Find first to display the budgets.
Click the Copy button. The Copy Budgets detail window opens with the Academic Year From and Financial Aid Year From displayed.
Select the Academic Year To and Financial Aid Year To.
Click Copy to copy the budgets to the new Academic and Financial Aid years or click Cancel to exit without copying.

Note: Be sure that all budgets for the Copy From Academic and Financial Aid years have been added prior to copying. If the Copy process occurs more than once, duplicate budgets will be created in the Copy To Academic and Financial Aid years. If duplication occurs, highlight the unwanted budget in the data grid and click Delete to remove