Understanding Student Budgets Setup

To create budgets, you first create budget categories—budget components such as tuition, housing, books, transportation, and fees. Then you create individual budget items within each category. Budget items have different budget amounts to account for different student needs. For example, within the housing budget category, you might have budget items for students living with parents or relatives, living on campus, and living off campus. The amount for each item might differ depending on whether the student is enrolled part time or full time. After you define budget items, you define criteria for determining which budget item within a budget category a student is assigned using budget formulas and budget trees.

After defining budget components, you can create predefined budgets to suit groups of similar students, such as undergraduate freshmen or married graduate students. These predefined budgets are budget groups and they can be detailed or generic. Detailed budget groups permit you to assign budgets to students by using predefined budget categories, budget items, and budget amounts. Alternatively, generic budget groups permit you to have the system determine the student's budget by using predefined budget categories along with budget formulas and budget assignment controls. When you use generic budget groups, the system assigns budget amounts to the student by invoking budget formulas tied to budget categories and determining which criteria the student meets. You can use generic budget groups when creating students' budgets either in batch or online.

To create student budgets in batch or online for an individual student, the system can use either the same rules as in batch or the predefined budget groups. In the Assign Budgets component (BUDGET_ASSIGNMENT), establish the career and term of a budget, and then list the budget categories that should be assigned to students for each term. If you define generic budget groups, you can use a generic budget group to assign categories instead of adding budget categories individually. For background processing only, define the budget run control, which selects the careers and terms for which to assign budgets, as well as work table maintenance options.

Budget formulas and trees provide criteria for selecting which students receive a particular budget item. If you do not define a budget formula or tree for a budget item, students do not receive that budget item unless you assign it manually. Budget formula selection criteria are based on the values from selected database fields. Housing formulas, for example, could calculate various housing amounts for on-campus, off-campus, parent-supplied, and married housing.

Define a budget formula for all budget items that do not vary based on postal code (distance). To select budget items based on distance (such as transportation costs), use a budget tree.