COA Budget Fundamentals

This article contains background information and other helpful reminders regarding the COA budget process.

What:

• Cost of attendance budgeting in PeopleSoft is the process of estimating the total amount it will cost a student to attend UD during a specific period (typically looked at by term/aid year). This includes budgeting for items like tuition, fees, housing, transportation, and other categories.   

When: 

• Budgets are typically required before full awarding can take place. Subsequent budget updates may be needed when students make changes to their enrollment.
• For more details see: Ops Calendar

Where:

• Menu > Set Up SACR > Product Related > Financial Aid > Budgets (Set-up)
• Menu > Financial Aid > Budgets > Assign Budgets (Running budgets in batch)
• Menu > Financial Aid > Budgets > Maintain Term Budgets (Viewing a student's current budget)
• Menu > Financial Aid > Budgets > Create Student Budget (Manually recalculate a student's budget)

Why:

• Budgeting is required to help determine financial need by creating a cost of attendance. From a broad perspective financial need is cost of attendance - the student aid index. Budgeting is also used to determine the maximum a student may receive in financial aid. Generally, if a student's total aid exceeds their budgeted cost of attendance it would trigger an over award process to reduce the student's aid. 

How:

• Manually using Create Student Budget.
• Automatically through Assign Budget run controls.

Who:

• Updates to estimated budget amounts are typically a collaboration between UD and SFS leadership. 
• System Analysts assist with adjusting the PeopleSoft run control programming and coordinating with IT. 
• Budgets are currently run in batch by IT under the SA_SCHED account.

Other Notes:

• N/A