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Disbursing ACG and SMART Grants

This section provides an overview of disbursement processing and discusses how validate ACG and SMART grants.

The disbursement authorization process complies with Federal regulations for disbursing ACG and SMART grant funds to students:

  • The disbursement authorization process verifies for ACG and SMART grant item types that eligibility has been established in the ACG/SMART Grant Eligibility component. The current status for the same grant type and term must be Eligible. Any other value results in an authorization error.

  • The authorization process verifies that the academic level in the eligibility record matches the level assigned to the item type, which is a new field in the Financial Aid Item Type component. If the values do not match, the award fails authorization.

  • Item type disbursement authorization rules for ACG and SMART grants. Institutions are required to create item type disbursement rules for every ACG and SMART item type regardless of whether they use any of the new disbursement rules.

ACG and SMART grants are authorized for disbursement with the following validations:

  • Validations of awards not yet authorized.

    The item type academic level and eligibility status validations are run. If the validation fails, the log indicates an error and the process moves to the next award.

  • Validation of canceled awards.

    If an ACG or SMART award was authorized or disbursed, the authorization process bypasses the item type academic level and eligibility status validations.

  • Validation of awards already disbursed.

    If an ACG or SMART award was disbursed before and is being reauthorized, then only the item type academic level validation is performed. If the validation fails, the log indicates an error and the process moves to the next award.

  • Validation of prior authorized award that was not a cancellation.

    If the award has was authorized, but not canceled, then item type academic level and eligibility status validations are enforced. If the validation fails, the log indicates an error and the process continues to the user-defined validation rules. If the core validation rule fails, then the authorization amount is reset to zero.