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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2023-12-15
Setup Considerations: Financial Aid Attendance Plans

Setup Considerations: Financial Aid Attendance Plans

You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of financial aid attendance plans. It explains:
  • Why to set them up.
  • How they fit 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 They Are

Financial aid attendance plans display the enrollment information required to award financial aid and calculate student charges. This information includes past, present, and possible future course enrollment for a student.

Business Benefits

Financial aid attendance plans enable you to:
  • Easily view enrollment details, course load statuses, and class standings that determine financial aid amounts.
  • Assess how students are progressing towards their program requirements, which impact financial aid.
  • Manually update any details that Workday calculates automatically.

Use Cases

You can use Workday attendance plans to:
  • Offer financial aid to eligible students with a declared program of study before they enroll.
  • Recalculate financial aid to account for changes in enrollment.

Questions to Consider

Questions
Considerations
How many units determine each load status?
You can decide and configure how many enrolled units are the equivalent of each load status. Example: A student enrolled in 12 units is a full-time student, and a student enrolled in 6 units is a half-time student.
Financial aid amounts vary each academic period, depending on the student load status.
How many earned units determine each class standing?
You can decide and configure how many units students must complete in order to achieve a certain class standing. Example: A student becomes a sophomore when they earn 60 units.
You can also configure separate class standing values for financial aid purposes. This configuration doesn’t reflect on the student academic record. Example: A student achieves a sophomore class standing after completing 60 units but only needs 45 units to receive financial aid as a sophomore.
What does enrollment typically look like for students?
You can configure typical attendance patterns for students that project their enrollment. Typical attendance patterns enable Workday to build projected attendance plans for students. Typical attendance patterns can vary by academic unit, academic level, or programs of study. You can assign a specific typical attendance pattern to each.
Which academic periods do you want Workday to populate on a student’s attendance plan?
Workday builds attendance plans from the start date of the student's program of study to the academic period of their expected completion date.
For Workday to continue populating the attendance plan, the student’s primary program of study must have any of these statuses:
  • In Progress
  • Pending Completion
  • Leave of Absence

Recommendations

To reduce configuration errors and build accurate attendance plans:
  • Specify a value that equals zero when creating load status rule sets and class standing policies for financial aid. A value of zero should equal
    Not enrolled
    for load statuses and
    1st year
    for class standings.
  • Configure these policies with the earliest effective date of the earliest academic record in your tenant:
    • Calendar policy.
    • Class standing policy.
    • Load status policy.

Requirements

For student attendance plans to populate correctly, configure:
  • Federal student aid (FSA) program policies for each program of study.
  • Load status rule sets. Load status rule sets determine how many enrolled course units amount to a certain load status.
  • Class standing policies. Class standing policies determine how many units a student must complete to achieve a certain class standing.
  • A calendar policy to define the summer period, which has different financial aid requirements. Calendar policies contain standard period dates and the number of weeks of instruction for each academic period. Workday displays these standard period dates and weeks of instruction on attendance plans.
  • Typical attendance patterns for Workday to anticipate typical student enrollment and calculate financial aid for students before they enroll.
  • Date controls. Configure the:
    • Actual Enrollment Usage Start
      date control to specify when Workday begins to use a student's actual enrollment, rather than their projected enrollment, for financial aid.
    • Pell Recalculation Date
      date control so that Workday can begin calculating students' Pell (POS) load statuses.

Limitations

No impact.

Tenant Setup

No impact.

Security

Domain
Considerations
Set Up: Financial Aid Rule Sets and Policies
in the Financial Aid functional area.
Enables you to create FSA program policies.
Set Up: Academic Policies
in the Academic Foundation functional area.
Enables you to create:
  • Load status rule sets.
  • Class standing policies.
Set Up: Academic Calendar
in the Academic Foundation functional area.
Enables you to:
  • Create academic calendars and specify academic period types.
  • Assign calendar policies to a specific academic unit or program of study.
Set Up: Typical Attendance Pattern
in the Academic Advising functional area.
Enables you to specify a student's typical enrollment activity in an academic period.

Business Processes

No impact.

Reporting

No impact.

Integrations

No impact.

Connections and Touchpoints

Features
Considerations
Financial Aid Packaging
Workday uses information from financial aid attendance plans to create and adjust financial aid packages.
Financial Aid Disbursements
Workday uses financial aid attendance plans to determine eligibility for disbursements and when students should receive them.
Sponsor Contracts and Waivers
Workday populates academic periods on financial aid attendance plans for students with a sponsor contract or waiver for the period, regardless of enrollment status.
Institutional Student Information Records (ISIRs)
Workday creates and populates academic periods on financial aid attendance plans for students with an ISIR transaction for the period, regardless of enrollment status.
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.