Updating Tuition Budgets to Actual Charges

Tags SFS COA FinAid

What:

  • When calculating the tuition budget, UD uses both formula based amounts and tuition based actual charges. Formula based budgets use a hard coded dollar amount, while tuition based budgets rely on actual student charges.

  • For undergraduates: a formula amount is used for the Fall and Spring terms, and a tuition based calculation is used for the Winter and Summer terms.

  • Graduate tuition budgeting is more complex. Tuition/Charge based tuition budgets are used for each term except at the beginning of the Fall and Spring setup, when students may not yet be fully enrolled. During this time, Fall and Spring budgets start as formula based amounts and later transition to actual charge based budgets midway through the process. This article walks through how to switch between projected to actual once charges become available. 

When: 

  • To transition a graduate projected tuition budget to actual charges, the Billing team must first run Tuition Calc. Once completed, budget settings can be updated.

  • This process is typically run twice per year: once at the beginning of the year for the graduate Spring semester and again midway through the year for the Fall semester.

  • For more details see: Ops Calendar

Where:

  • Menu > Set Up SACR > Product Related > Financial Aid > Budgets > Budget Assignment (Budget Settings)

  • Menu > Set Up SACR > Product Related > Financial Aid > Budgets > Budget Assignment Run Control (Budget Settings)

  • Menu > Set Up SACR > System Administration > Utilities > Population Update > Population Update Process (Force Budget Recalculation After Transition)

Why:

  • Tuition-based tuition budgets are used for each graduate semester because graduate tuition is frequently adjusted for waivers or other changes that are less common for undergraduates. Because of these varied tuition changes, solely relying on a hard-coded formula amount for graduate Fall and Spring was more likely to misrepresent a student’s cost of attendance. The actualization process ultimately tries to more accurately represent the COA.

  • Using the formula based temporary amount in Graduate budgeting allows awarding and other processes to proceed using projected amounts before actual tuition charges are available.

How:

  1. In PeopleSoft, navigate to menu item labeled "Budget Assignment" that is located in the Set Up SACR section.
     
  2. Enter the aid year and academic career GRAD
     
  3. Search and select the budget with the description "GRAD COA BUDGET"
     
  4. Switch to the Assign Budget Category tab.

     
  5. The page displays the settings by term. Use the second set of left and right arrows to navigate to the semester you wish to update.
     
  6. Scroll down until you reach the category labeled "TUIT". In the box labeled processing rule update the value from "F" to "T".
     
  7. Update the budget item code from "GRPROJ" to "TUCALC". 

     
  8. Save, then use the menu navigation to open the menu item labeled "Budget Assignment Run Control".
     
  9. If prompted enter the aid year. Then use the second set of arrow keys to navigate between the different careers and semesters.
     
  10. Once you have found the correct career & term, confirm that the check box labeled "Use Actual/Projected Tuition" is selected.

     
  11. After saving your changes, the budget settings for that term are updated. Any new budget run for the term will now use actual charges. You can test this by navigating to Menu > Financial Aid > Budgets > Create Student Budget and manually building a budget for a test student. The TUIT budget should now use the TUCALC budget item. You can compare the dollar amounts in the budget to the student’s charges in the Student Service Center.
     
  12. Typically after this process I will run a pop update process to force all active graduate students to have their budgets recalculated. To do so I navigate to the menu item labeled "Population Update Process"
     
  13. I use the run control UDSFS_POPUP_BUDGET_RECALC and the query UDSFS_POPUP_BUDGET_RECALC_QRY to update the STDNT_FA_TERM table for all active grad students who already have had a budget run for the term. In the Edit Prompts link I enter the term and the career "GRAD". 

     
  14. After running the pop update process all selected students will have their budgets re run through the traditional budget process that is run every workday under SA_SCHED.
     

Who:

  • The Billing Team is responsible for calculating charges (tuition calc) and will typically send an email once the first tuition calc has been run for the semester.

  • The System Analysts are responsible thereafter for switching the budget set-up as needed from projected to actual.

Other Notes:

  • In general, a budget is automatically recalculated for a student whenever their enrollment changes. However, when the Billing team applies tuition waivers or other adjustments, the system does not automatically flag the budget for recalculation. This creates a potential risk that the budget reflects a different amount than the student’s updated charges. To address this, we run daily or weekly processes that pop update the budget required flag on the FA Term record. This ensures budgets are periodically refreshed, even after census, to capture any changes.

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