Tips from a Troubleshooter: Aiding (But Not Financially) with Financial Aid

I'm calling an emergency posting of Tips from a Troubleshooter, because I know a lot of you are awarding financial aid to students right now.  I'll return to my series on Student Billing 6 vs. Student Billing 7 soon, I promise.

The Financial Aid Billing Item describes the accounts the financial aid affects in the General Ledger, the schedule of financial aid credits, and a date range for the item.  Also, if the Financial Aid type has an awarded default amount, you define it on the Billing Item itself.

If you want to generate your financial aid credits alongside your Tuition charges, you can create separate financial aid items that mirror your tuition charge schedules.  For example, this screenshot shows a 10-pay Tuition item.  Of course, with an amount of $0.00, the student wouldn't be very grateful.

So how do we give each student the financial aid they deserve?  There's a few different ways of doing this, so pick the  best for your organization's structure.

• Financial Aid Applications tab - Use this tab if the Registrar's Office or Admissions Office determines the financial aid amount and recipient. This tab is visible from both Registrar's Office and Student Billing, so the Registrar's Office can determine the amount students receive for each financial aid type.
  Tip: Make sure to use a different financial aid type for each billing item.
• Add transactions to a group of records - If the financial aid amount is determined outside the software, use the Add Transactions to a Group of Records utility to add Financial Aid schedules to all of your students at the same time. Knowledgebase solution BB203392 guides you through the steps and you can use it for Financial Aid schedules as well!
• Import - Good with spreadsheets? Use Import to put all of the schedules on the students' records.

Have more questions or additional clarification about financial aid?  Leave a comment!

School's Out for Summer - What Do You Do?

Want to get a ahead on the 2009-2010 year? Take a moment to review this list. We’ll cover many of these in more detail down the road.

1. Take a good look at your Academic Year in Configuration. Ensure the correct marking column set is associated with your session, check the starting and ending dates on the terms, and enter your scheduling calendar so your attendance cycle days are correct for the whole year.
   
2. Ensure the first cycle day is correct on the academic year terms. If the starting cycle day is wrong, the cycle days in attendance will be off for the entire term.
   
3. Refresh yourself on drop, withdraw, and transfer (BB134926). Be sure to enter a withdraw date on the term so you can withdraw students from classes instead of dropping them.
   
4. Activate (BB386252) the new Academic Year and marking columns in Faculty Access for the Web. Your faculty can get started entering assignments.
   
5. Learn the Walk-In Scheduler (BB146715). Even if your students are scheduled, you may get some last-minute change requests or a few new students.

Do you have some other helpful tips that will help prepare for the new year? Leave a comment!

Printing GPAs on Report Cards

GPAs is a requirement on most schools' report cards. You can customize your report cards by printing GPAs in a variety of places. Please note although I'm referencing report cards in this post, everything is the same for transcripts.

• The Details tab: When you add a GPA section to the Details tab, the GPAs print under students' grades. The marking columns selected in the Courses section determine the marking columns for the GPAs.
  
  
• The Summary/Notes tab: When you add the GPA column to the Academic Summary section on the Summary/Notes tab, you can select to print GPAs on the right and bottom of the report card. The GPA is not dependent on the marking columns selected in the Course section on the Details tab.
  


• The Header: The report card header is a good place to quickly spot students' overall progress. You can print only the cumulative GPA in the header.

Missing GPA Troubleshooting Tips:

• Check the GPA in Grades, if it's not under the marking column selected in your report card parameter, run calculations for that marking column.
• Check the report card parameters to see if you've selected the appropriate GPA type and calculation. For example, if you run only Unweighted GPAs and have selected Weighted GPAs on the report card, you can't expect the Unweighted GPA to display.
• If you are printing the cumulative GPA in the header, try adjusting the header's label width in the Format section.
• Delete the GPA section on the report card and re-add it

If the GPA is printing, but is incorrect, check the GPA in Grades. If the GPA isn't correct in Grades, troubleshoot it.

Have any other tips for missing GPAs on report cards? Add a comment!

Student Billing State-of-Mind: Movin' on Up

Your students have worked hard this year and deserve to move to the next grade or graduate.  The process of promoting students varies based on whether or not Registrar’s Office is installed.  If you use RO, students are promoted using the End of Year Processing Wizard in RO Administration. If you do not have RO installed, students are promoted though SB Administration. Here's how:

1. In Administration, select Promote students.
2. On the General tab, select a Billing status to use for returning students.
3. On the General tab, mark the Update graduating students box to update the records of students who will graduate. In the fields below, select a billing status, enrollment status, graduation date, date enrolled to date, and reason left for the graduating students. To update the Grade left field to the grade of the student before graduating, mark Update grade left.
4. Mark the checkboxes to Create an exception query, an output query, and a control report if desired.
5. On the Filters tab and select any appropriate filters to filter the records included in the processing.
   Note: Bill codes selected must apply to the current date to be included.
6. Select the Attributes tab.
• In the Action column, you can select to add, update, or delete attributes for students when you promote them.
• In the Attribute Type column, select an attribute type.
• In the Description column, enter or select a description for the attribute type. If you selected a table type attribute that uses short descriptions, you select the attribute description in the Short Description column.
• In the Date column, enter the date you add the attribute or another date relevant to the attribute.
• If the attribute is required, the checkbox is marked in the Required column.
• In the Comments column, enter any additional information about the attribute.
7. On the Preview tab, verify that the students listed are correct and unmark the box for records that should not be included.
8. Click Preprocessing Report to review the changes in a report format before processing.
9. If the information is correct, click Process Now.
   Note: If the Preprocessing Report is not correct, open the Promotion Schedule in Configuration and make sure it is set up correctly.
10. Click Close to close the Promote Students Complete form and the control report appears

Happy promoting. Talk to you soon!

Track Next Year's New Students with Ease

This is a guest post by Chuck Hays. Chuck is a Senior Educational Consultant for Blackbaud.

During the Spring, you often need to verify new students' information and track them separately from your current students. To streamline the process, use a combination of statuses, queries, and dashboard panels to quickly view a current list at any time in one location. Once you set up the dashboard panels, you can access the list from a single click on a favorite! Here's how:

Step 1: Decide how you will use "interim" enrollment statuses.

In Student Billing, you can use two fields to track student statuses. Use the Enrollment status to track students who are or will be attending and Billing Status to track students eligible for billing.

Determine the interim enrollment status. What enrollment status do you use for students currently attending the school? Let's suppose you use "Current Student." For accepted students who will be attending next year consider a status such as "Accepted - Not Yet Attending." You could also have a status for students who will not be returning next year for reasons other than graduation, such as "Attending - Not Returning."  Once decided, add the enrollment statuses to the appropriate configuration table. next add the status to the student records.

• If you do not use The Education Edge, add the statuses to the Enrollment Status table in Configuration for future use. Then, when adding the new student, use the appropriate status in the Enrollment Status field on the Bio 2 tab.
• If you use The Education Edge, add the statuses to the Student/Applicant Status table in Configuration. Then, if you use Admissions Office, configure the Enroll Applications parameter file to update the status with the appropriate value when creating the student views from Applicant records. If you only use Registrar's Office, add the appropriate Current Status on the Bio 1 tab when adding the new student. The student's Current Status in The Education Edge will display in the Student Billing record's Enrollment Status field.

Decide how the Billing Status correlates to Enrollment Status. The Billing Status field is on the Bio 1 tab. Most likely you will use the same billing status that you use for all current students, such as "Active." In other words, their record is ready for use by the billing office. You can set a Business Rule to automatically use a billing status when creating new students in Student Billing or through The Education Edge.

Step 2: Create a query to group new students based on the enrollment status.

When creating a Record query, select the Enrollment Status field on the Criteria tab to group the new students. On the Output tab, select the fields you would like to use as columns on the Results tab (e.g. Last Name, First Name, Current Grade, Enrollment Status). Sort by Last Name, First Name, or by Grade. Use arrows in the lower right corner to rearrange fields.

Step 3: Display the query results in a dashboard panel as a list.

Dashboards offer an easy way to view and access record information. In addition to the specialized panels, you can display the results of a query. From Dashboard, click the New button to create a new Dashboard page. In the upper left input box, name the Dashboard. In the left panel, select the Student Billing query panel in the Student Billing section. Click the Add button in the middle to add the panel to the panel list on the right. Click the Edit button on the right to configure the panel. Select the query created in Step 3 and give the panel a description. After clicking through the OK buttons, the new dashboard will appear with the query results displayed. A row column will be added as the first column with hyperlinks allowing 1-click access to each listed record.

Step 4: Create a favorite link to the dashboard page.

You can easily access the new dashboard using a favorite. With the dashboard visible, select "Add page to Favorites" from the Favorites menu at the top of the shell. You can retitle the favorite to start with "Dashboard - " instead of "Go to" if you prefer. You can also place the favorite link in the Favorites menu, create a new folder within that menu, or place the favorite on the Student Billing home page.

Once you've completed all the steps, you can simply click the favorite link, refresh the dashboard, and have a current list of all new students at any time!

Student Billing State-of-Mind: Top Questions for May '09

Each month we keep track of the top Student Billing questions you ask.  Here are the top questions you asked in May and April.

May

• How to troubleshoot performance issues: BB8626
• Why are there duplicates in the query results: BB61118
• How to add new table entries: BB5313
• How to void a posted payment: BB113811
• How to reconcile to the General Ledger: BB3358
• How to add and use an advance deposit: BB210506
• How to copy Products and Billing Items: BB230265

April

• Why are there duplicates in the query results: BB61118
• How to troubleshoot performance issues: BB8626
• How to reconcile to the General Ledger: BB3358
• How to add and use an advance deposit: BB210506
• How to unvoid or reverse a voided check: BB6275
• How to void a posted payment: BB113811
• How to add new table entries: BB5313

Talk to you soon!

The Masters of the Scheduling Universe: Part 2 - Scheduling Students

Back at the Royal Palace Academy Registrar's Office, the master schedule is complete. Prince Adam is working on scheduling students based on the course requests entered online. The next step, according to the Scheduling Checklist, is to generate student schedules. Once again, Prince Adam shoves his desk chair aside, raises his sword aloft, and shouts, "By the power of Greyskull!" He-Man is ready to enroll students in classes.

It's a good thing He-Man uses Generate Student Schedules to automatically schedule students because Skeletor is up to his antics again. He clicks Scheduling to set up the Generate Student Schedule parameter. On the General 1 tab, he marks to save a copy of the scheduling scenario before and after processing and creates an output query of students with incomplete schedules. On the General 2 and Advanced tabs, he selects the restrictions to override and uses alternate course requests so that Generate Student Schedules will produce the best scheduling results. He filters on the Upper School so he can complete each school's schedule. After clicking Schedule Now, he know processing can take a while, so he leaves to defend Castle Greyskull.

After returning from battle, he realizes there are students with incomplete schedules, so he tweaks the Generate Student Schedule parameter and runs it again. On the General 2 tab, he marks the reschedule current enrollments checkbox, which changes scheduled enrollments to different sections in order to complete more student schedules. Once all the requests are filled, he can fill free periods with Study Hall or another course.

Just as student schedules complete, Man-E-Faces bursts in his office and wants to un-enroll from Shop class and take Ballet. He-Man sighs and opens Edit Student Schedules to adjust Man-E's courses. Saving Man-E's new schedule, he chuckles knowing he'll be changing more student schedules throughout the summer and at the beginning of next year.