Maintained for Historical Purposes

This resource is being maintained for historical purposes only and is not currently applicable.

Creating Pell Disbursements

PublicationDate: 7/30/99
Summary: Creating Pell Disbursements
Author: CPS - Central Processing System (CPS)

Posted on July 30, 1999

TO: All Destination Points
FROM: CPS Customer Service
RE: Tip of the Week: Creating Pell Disbursements

This week's tip highlights a new feature in 1999-2000 EDExpress: Creating
Pell Disbursements

Many EDExpress users have now installed Version 5.3, and are beginning to create and submit Pell disbursement records to RFMS. Disbursement records can be created in EDExpress via manual entry on the disbursement tab, by using multiple entry, or by creating and importing an external disbursement add file from another software system or mainframe.

Users can create either regular or special disbursements in Version 5.3. Regular disbursement schools are required to submit only the Disbursement Date and Amount Submitted information, whereas special disbursement schools must submit additional information with each disbursement on how the Pell award was calculated.

Here are some key tips and facts to remember during the Pell disbursement process:

1) Remember: RFMS must have processed an accepted Origination record for a student before it will accept disbursement records on that student.

2) Institutional Disbursement Option is a new field for 1999-2000, which you define on the Pell institution setup screen. Schools participating in the Advanced funding option can report a Disbursement Date up to 30 days in advance of the date you actually intend to pay the student. Schools participating in the Just-In-Time funding option can report a Disbursement Date up to 5 days in advance of the date you actually intend to pay the student. EDExpress edits will prevent you from entering dates out of the valid range, depending on the funding option you select.

3) If you plan to create your disbursement records by importing external disbursement add files, you must follow the record layouts provided in the EDExpress software (via File- External Disbursement Add Record). There are also detailed record layouts with valid field content notes provided on the Department's IFAP web page in the Bookshelf area, via www.ifap.ed.gov

Please note in the external disbursement add record layout, you only need to provide information in positions 56-102 if you are required by the Department to submit special disbursement records. If you are adding regular disbursements, you can populate positions 56-102 with filler --- your total record length must still equal 102 bytes, as dictated by the record layouts.

4) Regular and special disbursement records have separate export options and message classes. If you import special disbursement information by mistake in an external disbursement add file, you will need to run the special disbursement export to pick up the records you added, instead of the regular disbursement export.

If you have any questions regarding Pell functionality in EDExpress, please contact CPS Customer Service at 800-330-5947, option 4, or via email at CPS@NCS.COM.

If you have questions regarding Pell processing or policy (including valid field content in the record layouts on IFAP, whether you should perform regular or special disbursements, or which Institutional Disbursement Option you are participating in), please contact Pell User Support at 800-474-7268.