Setup Considerations: Financial Aid Packaging
You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of financial aid packaging. It explains:
- Why to set it up.
- How it fits into the rest of Workday.
- Downstream impacts and cross-product interactions.
- Security requirements and business process configurations.
- Questions and limitations to consider before implementation.
Refer to detailed task instructions for full configuration details.
What It Is
Financial aid packaging is the process of assigning award items to students. Workday bases packaging on a packaging period, a collection of 1 or more academic periods packaged together.
Business Benefits
Packaging in Workday Student helps you to:
- Maintain regulatory compliance when awarding financial aid to students.
- Save time by creating award packaging strategies to assign awards to students automatically.
Use Cases
You can use financial aid packaging to:
- Assign merit-based awards early in the admissions cycle without requiring students to complete the FAFSA.
- Assign need-based awards such as federal loans without any impact to a student’s merit-based awards.
- Calculate award amounts based on data specific to each academic period you package.
- Assign awards for Borrower-Based Academic Year (BBAY1 and BBAY3) programs of study.
- React to changes that affect a student’s financial aid eligibility for a specific academic period. Examples: A student attends full time in fall, and drops to part time in spring.
- Repackage a student for all of the packaging periods within the award year if their ISIR updates; or repackage them only for certain packaging periods if their residency changes.
Questions to Consider
Questions | Considerations |
|---|---|
What type of calendar does your institution use? | You have several choices of calendar structures for flexibility. Examples: Standard terms, nonstandard terms, clock hour programs. The rules and calculations for processing vary by the type of award and your calendar structure. More complex calendar structures add complexity to automatic financial aid packaging and may increase the need for manual intervention. |
How might students' financial aid vary by academic period? | When factors such as students' cost of attendance, Student Aid Index (SAI), and unmet need differ across academic periods, award amounts may vary. This may require you to explain the discrepancies to students. |
Recommendations
- You should process students for packaging in the same order as the Nightly Orchestration:
- Cost of attendance
- Merit packaging
- Need packaging
- Use the reactions framework to automatically evaluate what students to package and repackage, instead of manually running packaging.
Requirements
Set up your configurations for processes such as ISIR evaluation, packaging, and disbursement. See Steps: Set Up Student Financial Aid.
Limitations
- You can only use packaging to assign student award items. You can’t assign waivers or sponsor contracts to students through the packaging process.
- Workday doesn’t award alternative loans or external awards through the packaging process. Workday requires additional integrations and processes to award these award types to students.
Tenant Setup
No impact
Security
These domains in the Financial Aid functional area:
Domain | Description |
|---|---|
Manage: Financial Aid Awards
| Enables you to view and report on financial aid awards. |
Manage: Loan Processing
| Enables you to override information for awards processed by Common Origination and Disbursement (COD). |
Manage: NSLDS - USA
| Enables you to override the National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS) aggregate loan amounts that Workday uses in packaging. |
Reports: Financial Aid Period Records
| Enables you to manually package financial aid for students. |
Reports: Financial Aid Packages
| Enables you to report on financial aid packaging data. |
Set Up: Merit Packaging
| Enables you to set up packaging for merit-based awards. |
Set Up: Need Packaging
| Enables you to set up packaging for need-based awards. |
Business Processes
No impact.
Reporting
Reports | Considerations |
|---|---|
Find Financial Aid Job Runs
| Enables you to view details of packaging job runs from the last 30 days. |
Total Financial Assistance
| Enables you to:
|
Packaging Configuration Tool
| For an academic period, this report enables you to view the data that Workday uses to:
You can access the report through the Financial Aid Configuration Tool report. |
Integrations
No impact.
Connections and Touchpoints
Features | Considerations |
|---|---|
Student Award Items | Represent the individual awards given to students in a financial aid package. |
Action Items | Students must complete federal verification action items before you can package their financial aid. |
Typical Attendance Patterns | Drive the periods that appear on a student’s Attendance Plan and the Projected Financial Aid Load Status according to which Workday will package a student. Typically Enrolled Units have a direct impact on the projected load status for attendance plans, therefore impacting packaging. A load status of Not Enrolled will result in a student not receiving a package for that period. |
Academic Period Date Controls | The Actual Enrollment Usage Start Date (AEUSD) is the date Workday stops using the student’s projected load status and begins using their actual enrollment load status for packaging. When you don't set this date, Workday uses the standard start date on the academic period as the actual enrollment usage start date. Workday automatically repackages students on this date to update awards according to students’ actual enrollment. |
Class Standing Policies | Each class standing has an associated Federal Student Aid Grade Level which helps determine financial aid eligibility when packaging. |
Workday offers a Touchpoints Kit with resources to help you understand configuration relationships in your tenant. Learn more about the Workday Touchpoints Kit on Workday Community.