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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2026-02-20
Concept: Master Promissory Notes

Concept: Master Promissory Notes

A Master Promissory Note (MPN) is a legal document required to be signed by the loan borrower on the Department of Education (ED) website that promises repayment to the federal student loan lender. Before disbursing funds for a federal loan, the student must complete the MPN requirement

MPN Action Items

Creating an MPN action item in Workday enables you to notify, track, and engage students to complete the loan requirement. Workday provides delivered logic to auto-complete MPN action items based on the type of loan (Direct Loan or PLUS Loan). When MPN response files are loaded into Workday, the student’s action item will be auto-completed.
You can assign the MPN action item to individual students manually for the student award item or mass assign to specific students at once. When creating a student award item, you can configure Workday to automatically assign action items exclusively when the student accepts the award, as opposed to when the award is initially packaged as offered.
The MPN auto-complete criteria updates the action item to complete if any of the following occur:
  • An accepted or pending MPN exists for the designated borrower at the time the MPN action item is assigned to the student. This streamlines the process and eliminates the need for manual intervention when the MPN requirement is already satisfied.
  • An MPN response file is loaded with a status of
    Accepted
    ,
    Pending
    , or
    Endorsed
    .
  • A loan origination response file containing MPN data is loaded into Workday.
Workday automatically reassigns MPN action items to students if a borrower’s existing MPN is due to expire on or before the time of award disbursement. Example: Borrower 1 on a student’s Parent PLUS loan has an expired MPN. During financial aid packaging, Workday reassigns an MPN action item to the student for Borrower 1 only.

MPN Integration

Integration supports the transmission of MPN information through Common Origination and Disbursement (COD) interchanges. You import MPN data from ED through the
COD MPN Inbound Integrations
, and Workday uses the information to find matching borrowers. See Concept: COD Counseling and MPN Import Records.
Workday only links an MPN to an award if the imported file meets both of these conditions:
  • The imported file has the
    Link Indicator
     field with a value of
    True
    .
  • The
    Created Timestamp
     of the imported file is on or after the timestamp on the MPN linked to the award.
Workday automatically completes the MPN action item for the linked borrower if the MPN status is
Accepted
 or
Pending
 for Direct Loan Plus and Direct Loan Stafford.
We release disbursements to students for borrowers whose MPN status is
Accepted
. See Reference: Disbursement Eligibility Conditions

Endorsed MPNs

An endorser is someone who agrees to repay a federal loan if the borrower is unable to do so. Once an endorser is linked to a loan, the MPN linked to that loan can’t be linked to any other loans. We display endorsed MPNs only on awards to which they are linked.

Expired MPNs

You can view the expiration date of an MPN in the
COD Information
 section of a student’s federal loan award.
Workday compares the linked MPN’s expiration date with the loan period start date.
These scenarios illustrate how disbursements work if a student accepts a loan for multiple academic periods and the accepted MPN expires after the initial disbursement:
Scenario 1:
 John, a student, accepts an unsubsidized loan for these academic periods that fall under a single disbursement sequence (sequence 1):
  • 2025 Fall semester
  • 2026 Spring semester
  • 2026 Summer semester
John’s accepted MPN expires after the initial academic period disbursement, but Workday continues to disburse funds for the remaining periods in the sequence.
Scenario 2:
 John accepts an additional unsubsidized loan for the 2026 Spring semester (sequence 2), but the accepted MPN expires before the disbursement date. Because the existing MPN has expired, Workday won’t disburse funds on this loan until John fulfills the MPN requirement. Workday continues to disburse funds for the academic periods in sequence 1.
Scenario 3
: The COD system accepts an award that originated on 2025-07-17 and links to an MPN with the expiration date of 2025-07-23. In Workday, you have the same linked MPN as in the COD system. When the first disbursement for this award occurs in Workday on any date after 2025-07-23, such as 2025-08-13, the disbursement is successful. This is because we compare the linked MPN’s expiration date, 2025-07-23 with the loan period start date for disbursement.