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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2026-07-10
Concept: Alternative Loans

Concept: Alternative Loans

Alternative loans are loans that students borrow from a bank or private lender, approved through third-party loan servicers. Workday delivers:
  • Tasks that help you process alternative loan applications.
  • Integrations that support the transmission of alternative loan information to and from your loan servicer.
Together these tasks and integrations enable you to process, certify, change, and disburse alternative loans.

Initial Alternative Loan Processing

This table outlines the general interactions between Workday and your loan servicer after a student applies for an alternative loan directly through a bank or private lender:
Workday Touchpoint
Action
Alternative Loan Application Send Response Inbound
 integration
The loan servicer transmits a file with initial certification requests for alternative loan applications.
Workday matches alternative loan application information from the loan servicer to the student's record based on this order of validations:
  1. Student's Social Security Number (SSN) + date of birth (DOB).
  2. Student's name + SSN.
  3. Student's name + DOB.
When there's a match, Workday creates an alternative loan application for the student.
When there isn’t a match, Workday retains the application with unmatched reason. You can later rematch the application to a student or permanently delete it.
Find Unmatched Alternative Loan Applications
 report
You want to run this report to view all unmatched alternative loan applications and the reason why Workday didn’t match them to a student.
On the report, you can use these mass actions:
  • Match Students
     to rematch applications to students.
  • Delete Unmatched Loans
    , secured to the
    Manage: Delete Student Loan Applications
     domain, to permanently delete obsolete unmatched applications.
When you use the
Match Students
 mass action, Workday runs the
Match Student Alternative Loan Applications
 job to attempt rematching applications with students based on SSN, first and last name, and date of birth. If the job is running when you use the
Delete Unmatched Loans
 mass action, Workday prioritizes the deletions over the job.
You can search for items in the report using the:
  • Lender ID
  • CommonLine Unique ID (CUID)
We recommend that you regularly run the report to keep your data up to date.
Certify Alternative Loan Application
 task
You want to certify alternative loan applications.
You can access this task from the related actions menu of a certifiable alternative loan application. Use the
Find Alternative Loan Applications
 report to filter and identify certifiable alternative loan applications.
Alternative Loan Application Send Outbound
 integration
You want to transmit information about certified alternative loan applications to the loan servicer.
Correct Transmitted Loan Application
 task
You want to correct a transmitted alternative loan application.
This action reverts the status of the alternative loan application to
Certified: Ready to Transmit
, which enables you to edit, cancel, decide not to certify, or retransmit the loan application.
Alternative Loan Application Send Response Inbound
 integration
The loan servicer transmits a response file with their decision regarding the certifications.
Based on the information from the response file, Workday updates:
  • Alternative loan applications.
  • Alternative loan awards in students' financial aid packages.
Workday automatically updates the
Alternative Loan Status
 field to
Lender Cancelled
 for some alternative loan applications when these conditions are met:
  • The loan servicer sends a response file wherein alternative loan applications have T (Terminated) or D (Denied) record status codes.
  • You use the
    Alternative Loan Application Send Response Inbound
     integration to load the applications into Workday before the lender disburses the loan applications.
Create Manual Response
 task
The loan servicer hasn't transmitted a response file with their decision regarding your certification of the loan application. You want to continue processing the student's alternative loan application so that they receive financial aid in a timely manner.
You can access this task from the related actions menu of any transmitted alternative loan application.
When you select the
Terminated
 option in the
Application/Loan Phase Code
 field, Workday updates the
Alternative Loan Status
 field to
Lender Cancelled
. We recommend that you use this option with caution and only when you are absolutely sure that you want to update the loan status of an application to
Lender Cancelled
.
When Workday receives a response file from the loan servicer, it:
  • Removes the information you manually entered.
  • Automatically updates the alternative loan application with information from the response file.
Alternative Loan Disbursement Roster Inbound
 integration
The loan servicer transmits a disbursement roster file, indicating which students can receive alternative loan disbursements.
Workday only disburses alternative loans to students on the disbursement roster.
To verify if a student is on the disbursement roster, access the
Disbursement
 report on the Financial Aid profile group of the student's profile. You can view disbursement roster information from the related actions menu of the alternative loan anticipated disbursement.

Alternative Loan Change Processing

You can edit an alternative loan application up until it has a status of
Certification: Transmitted
. Once you certify and transmit the alternative loan application, you must initiate changes for any pre- and post-disbursement updates to the alternative loan application.
This table outlines the general interactions between Workday and your loan servicer when making changes to certified alternative loan applications:
Workday Touchpoint
Action
Initiate Change
 task
You want to make changes to an alternative loan application you've already certified.
You can access this task from the related actions menu of alternative loans you can make changes to. Use the
Find Alternative Loan Applications
 report to filter and identify changeable alternative loans.
Alternative Loan Application Change Send Outbound
 integration
You want to transmit information about your changes to the loan servicer.
Workday doesn’t process or reflect changes to alternative loans until the servicer transmits a response to your change.
Alternative Loan Application Send Response Inbound
 integration
The loan servicer transmits a response file with their decision about the changes.
Workday updates packaging and anticipated disbursement information based on the response file from the loan servicer.
When the loan servicer doesn't transmit a response file with their decision about your changes, you can use the
Create Manual Response
 task to continue processing the alternative loan application.
Correct Transmitted Loan Application
 task
If your loan servicer rejects your alternative loan change, you can correct a transmitted loan application. This action reverts the status of the loan application to
Change: Ready to Transmit
, enabling you to initiate changes again and retransmit them to your loan servicer.
You can access this task from the related actions menu of alternative loans for which you've transmitted changes. See: Correct a Transmitted Alternative Loan Application.

Reporting

You can use these search reports to view all alternative loan applications and the unmatched ones respectively:
  • Find Alternative Loan Applications
  • Find Unmatched Alternative Loan Applications
You can create custom reports using report fields on the Student Alternative Loan Application business object and the
Student Alternative Loan Applications
 report data source. This table lists a few report fields that you can use in your custom reports:
Report Field
Security Domain
Application Status Last Updated
Student Alternative Loan Application
Requested Loan Amount
Student Alternative Loan Application
Alternative Loan Status
Student Alternative Loan Application
Unmatched Reason
Public Reporting Items
Unmatched Alternative Loan Application with Student’s First and Last Name
Manage: Student Loan Application
The processing of unmatched alternative loan applications allows institutions to store loan applications for prospective students who do not match a matriculated student in the tenant. These records contain personal data belonging to non-students (loan applicants).
Under global privacy regulations including GDPR (EU), CCPA (California), Canadian privacy law, and APAC requirements, individuals have a legal right to request deletion of their personal data, typically within 30 days.