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(Grants) Subject: First Pell Grant Administrative Cost Allowance Payments for 2015-2016 Award Year

Posted Date:March 2, 2016

Author: Sue O'Flaherty, Service Director, Program Management, Federal Student Aid

Subject: First Pell Grant Administrative Cost Allowance Payments for 2015-2016 Award Year

The Federal Pell Grant (Pell Grant) regulations at 34 CFR 690.10 provide for an Administrative Cost Allowance (ACA) payment of $5.00 to each participating school for each student who receives a Pell Grant at that school for an award year. These funds may be used only to defray the costs of administering the Pell Grant, Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant, Federal Work-Study, and Federal Perkins Loan programs.

ACA payment amounts are not included in a school’s Current Funding Level (CFL) but are payments made to a school based on its unduplicated student recipient information. A school’s total number of Pell Grant unduplicated recipients, used in the calculation of the ACA payment, includes students with at least one reported accepted actual disbursement (Disbursement Release Indicator or DRI equals “True”) in the Common Origination and Disbursement (COD) System. A student will be included in the calculation even if there is a full recovery of the entire Pell Grant award.

A school’s total unduplicated recipient count excludes the following students:

  • Those who have been determined ineligible for a Pell Grant or rejected by the Central Processing System

  • Those for whom origination records were accepted in the COD System but for whom accepted actual disbursements (DRI equals “True”) have not been received

  • Those for whom all actual disbursements have been rejected

First Pell Grant Administrative Cost Allowance Payments for 2015-2016 Award Year

The first ACA payment for the 2015-2016 Award Year is based on records that the COD System has processed from the start of the Pell Grant 2015-2016 Award Year on July 1, 2015 up to the date that we process the first ACA payments for the 2015-2016 Award Year. We began processing the Pell Grant ACA payments for all schools on February 29, 2016.

As explained in a January 27, 2016 Electronic Announcement, beginning with this payment, a school’s calculated Pell Grant ACA payment will be posted in G5 as an Available Balance in the school’s ACA G5 Award Number, P063Q15####. Once posted, a school will sign in to the G5 Web site and process a drawdown transaction in G5 to receive the funds.

ACA payment amount notifications will be sent to reporting schools. Specifically, we will send an Electronic Statement of Account (ESOA) (Message Class PGAS16OP) that reflects the ACA payment amount to the reporting school’s Student Aid Internet Gateway (SAIG) mailbox. Additionally, an ACA payment amount and other ACA-related information will be displayed on the COD Web site’s School Funding Information screen. This information is as follows:

  • “Total Unduplicated Recipients” Field – Count of unduplicated recipients for the 2015-2016 Award Year for the school

  • “Total Unduplicated Recipients Paid” Field – Count of unduplicated recipients for the 2015-2016 Award Year for whom ACA has been paid

  • “Total ACA” Field – Dollar amount paid to the school to date for the 2015-2016 Award Year

  • “Last ACA Payment Date” Field – Most current date for which an ACA payment was made for the 2015-2016 Award Year

Contact Information

If your school has questions about the Pell Grant ACA payments, contact the COD School Relations Center at 800/474-7268. You may also e-mail CODSupport@ed.gov.

For questions related to G5, contact the G5 Hotline at 888/336-8930. You may also e-mail edcaps.user@ed.gov.