This Electronic Announcement provides an update about the timeline to launch batch institutional corrections via the Electronic Data Exchange (EDE) for the 2024–25 and 2025–26 FAFSA cycles.
Update on timeline for release of batch institutional corrections
The Department is preparing to begin processing batch corrections via the EDE, delivering on our commitment to make this functionality available to institutions in Q1 2025, as announced in an update to GENERAL-24-96 in November. We understand that the delay in batch processing has created challenges for our partners and we appreciate your patience as we work to release this functionality.
Over the next few weeks, we will work with a subset of institutions who participated in the fall beta and their vendors to submit batch corrections for testing. We will use this period to test a variety of scenarios and ensure that records are being processed successfully. We expect this beta period to last two to three weeks.
Based on the result of this beta period, we will make any needed adjustments before beginning to process batch corrections for all institutions for both 2024–25 and 2025–26 award years. We expect this general release date to occur before the end of February. We will issue an Electronic Announcement when we have an exact date.
IMPORTANT: To avoid processing conflicts, the Department will clear the queue of all batch corrections files for 2024–25 and 2025–26 that were transmitted, but not processed, prior to the general release date. This means that institutions that had submitted any 2024–25 or 2025–26 batch records prior to the general release will need to resubmit any records that still need to be processed. This does not include institutions participating in the beta period, whose records will be processed, reviewed, and verified with the institutions and vendors during the beta period.
As the community prepares to resume processing corrections via batch upload, the Department would like to remind partners of the following:
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Please make sure that any records sent for corrections after the general release date are not outdated. For example, if you submitted a 2024–25 batch correction to be processed and then made the same correction on a student’s record in the FAFSA Partner Portal, you should delete that record from any future batch correction sends. This will avoid adding an incorrect or unwanted transaction to the student’s record or creating a new transaction that overwrites previously corrected information.
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If corrections are made to a field that results in additional required information, please supply that information along with the initial field. For example, if a record’s High School Completion Status is being corrected from blank to “HS Diploma,” please provide all remaining information about the high school (High School Name, High School City, and High School State). If the remaining information is not provided, the correction will be rejected. Please consult the “Data Edits” portion of Volume 5 of the FAFSA Specifications Guide.
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If adjustments are made to a field that changes or overrides Federal Tax Information that has been pulled directly from the IRS (i.e., not manually entered financial information), the file must contain the professional judgment flag.
The Department encourages all institutions to talk with their vendors to make sure they have reviewed and assessed the status of any previously submitted records to prepare for the upcoming general release.