(EDESUITE-23-03) Availability of EDExpress for Windows 2023–2024, Release 2.0

We are pleased to announce the posting of EDExpress for Windows 2023–2024, Release 2.0 on the Software and Other Tools page of Federal Student Aid’s Knowledge Center website (https://Knowledge Center.ed.gov/software-and-other-tools). Release 2.0 adds full Federal Pell Grant (Pell Grant), William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan (Direct Loan), and Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education (TEACH) Grant functionality for the 2023–24 award cycle.

In addition to the software, the following EDExpress 2023–24 documents are available for download from the Knowledge Center website:

Note: Volume III of the 2023–2024 COD Technical Reference, which provides technical guidance and record layouts for use with the EDExpress 2023–2024 Pell Grant, Direct Loan, and TEACH Grant modules, will be available in mid-May 2023 on the Knowledge Center website.

We are retiring the DL Tools for Windows software, beginning with the 2023–24 cycle. All functionality previously available in DL Tools has been merged into the Direct Loan module of EDExpress 2023–2024, Release 2.0, including Direct Loan School Account Statement (SAS) and Rebuild imports, Cash Management, SAS comparison reports, and external imports of cash, loan, and disbursement detail records for reconciliation. See the EDExpress 2023–2024, Release 2.0 Cover Letter and the EDExpress 2023–2024, Release 2.0 Desk Reference for more information.

Federal Student Aid announced the 2023–2024 Pell Grant Payment and Disbursement schedules in Dear Colleague Letter 23-02, published on January 26, 2023. Dear Colleague Letter 23-02 establishes the maximum 2023–2024 Pell Grant award as $7,395 and the maximum Pell-eligible EFC as 6656.

The Central Processing System (CPS) began processing 2023–24 application and correction records according to the revised Pell schedules on April 23, 2023. The CPS also reprocessed 2023–24 Institutional Student Information Records (ISIRs) on April 25, 2023, for students who applied or submitted corrections before April 23, 2023 and, under earlier formulas, were designated as not being Pell-eligible, but who are now eligible for a 2023–24 Pell Grant under the new formulas due to their EFC.

For more information and a complete description of the changes for the 2023–24 award year, see Dear Colleague Letter GEN-23-02 and the March 7, 2023 electronic announcement regarding operational implementation of the 2023–24 Pell Grant schedules.

EDExpress 2023–2024, Release 2.0 incorporates the 2023–24 Pell Grant schedules into the following functionality (listed by module):

If you create Packaging records by importing ISIR data, you should import any new ISIR transactions you received for student records impacted by the April 25, 2023 reprocessing into the Packaging module. This helps ensure the Pell Eligibility field on the Packaging record is set correctly. You must unpackage existing Packaging records at a Packaging Status of P (Packaged), M (Manually Adjusted), or H (Hand Packaged) before you can import new ISIR transactions. Before unpackaging these records, you may want to print the Packaging Record report for each student so you have a record of the funds you originally awarded to them (in case you need to recreate the awards).

After you import all reprocessed ISIR data into the Release 2.0 Packaging module, run the Repackage process for all Pell-eligible Packaging records, unless you already adjusted Pell Grant awards on these records prior to installing Release 2.0 to match the scheduled award amounts in Dear Colleague Letter GEN-23-02. The Repackage process will update the Pell Grant awards for your Packaging records to follow the 2023–24 Pell Grant payment and disbursement schedules.

Note the following guidance during the installation of EDExpress 2023–2024, Release 2.0:

For more information on installing EDExpress 2023–2024, see the EDExpress for Windows 2023–2024 Installation Guide.

If you upgrade from EDExpress 2023–2024, Release 1.0 to Release 2.0, your User IDs, passwords, and other security settings are carried forward to Release 2.0 and do not need to be recreated.

If you have not installed EDExpress 2023–2024 prior to Release 2.0, when you first access the software after installation, the default User ID is SYSADMIN and the default password is $y$tem Adm1n. Be sure to include the space between $y$tem and Adm1n (the two parts of the default password).

After you enter the default user ID and password, EDExpress 2023–2024 requires that you immediately define a new password for the SYSADMIN. New passwords must be a minimum of 12 characters and must include at least one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, one number, and one keyboard character that is not a letter or number (such as an exclamation mark or other punctuation symbol). You can adjust the minimum password length and other requirements in the Password Setup dialog box (Tools, Setup, Global, Password Setup).

The SYSADMIN user ID only provides access to critical administrative functions in order to limit its use for routine software tasks and improve your ability to trace actions taken in the software to specific users. EDExpress administrators at your school should create unique user IDs in Security Users setup with the necessary access (based on the associated Security Group) and log into the software under those IDs for most software tasks they perform.

For more information on security setup, see EDExpress Help in the software and the EDExpress for Windows 2023–2024, Release 2.0 Desk Reference.

If you have any questions regarding downloading, installing, or using EDExpress 2023–2024, Release 2.0, contact CPS/SAIG Technical Support at 1-800-330-5947 or by email at CPSSAIG@ed.gov.

You can also post questions regarding EDExpress on FSATech. FSATech is an electronic mailing list for technical questions about Federal Student Aid systems, software, and mainframe products. For more information on subscribing to FSATech, go to https://listserv.ed.gov/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=FSATECH&A=1.

If you have any questions about the COD System, contact the FSA Partner and School Relations Center at 1-800-848-0978. You may also email CODSupport@ed.gov.