Converting Student Financials Data

Student Financials receives data from many of the other Campus Solutions applications. For this reason, you must set up parts of other applications before you can convert the student financials information.

You must convert personal data tables and external organizations data before you convert student financials data.

This list presents information about populating the tables related to Student Financials:

• General Ledger (GL).

  Make sure that the GL information is set up on the Item Type table. You can convert the data and run a GL interface to set the GL fields, or you can convert the fields as having already been sent to the GL.

• Financial Aid.

  Another important consideration in the sequencing of the student financials conversion is processing financial aid. If you are thinking about going live with financial aid and its disbursements at mid-year, consider the effect on the coordination of disbursing financial aid and the balance of the student's account for the year. For example, the disbursed fields in Financial Aid should be in sync with the amounts in Student Financials, if automated disbursement is to take place for that particular term. In addition, anticipated aid is used in numerous processes in Student Financials. Therefore, an important consideration is the conversion of anticipated aid for current processing cycles, as conversion or lack of conversion affects student financials processes. You should ensure that conversion is for fall term, rather than for mid-year, for these reasons.

• Payment Plans.

  Third-party processing and payment plans are also an important conversion issue for student financials. To take advantage of Student Financials processing for payment plans and third-party processing, ensure that the conversion of this data occurs and that separate accounts are created for the various contracts that you have established for student sponsorship or extended payment options.

• Posting.

  The major focus of the conversion effort for student financials is getting all of the old account and transaction information into the new system. The primary vehicle for converting the information is posting. It is possible to directly update the processing tables with data from the legacy system. However, it is much safer and cleaner to use the posting process to convert the legacy data. This is not to say that you do not need to update the information after posting. Using the posting process gives you cleaner data and provides a base upon which you can edit the information.

  Create groups and use the group posting process to get the information on the system. Update other information as needed. The group posting process enables you to break down and track student populations and time categories into meaningful groups that you can edit and correct. Possible group scenarios might be academic—that is, for example, convert all medical school students, dental students, veterinary students. Another possible categorization is using time-based groups. You may want to break the student population into groups by term.

  However you break down the groups, plan the data mapping carefully between the group posting tables and the current legacy data. Run several trials of posting groups and test the system to see if it processes correctly from adjusting tuition, adjusting financial aid disbursements, and producing a bill.

• Tuition Charges.

  If you are planning to use the tuition calculation process to convert tuition charges for prior terms, you have two options. You can either convert and post all the information from prior terms, or you can skip the tuition charges and use the tuition calculation process for prior terms as the method for converting the data. The former option does not require the conversion of academic data from prior terms; the latter does require that correct academic data be converted prior to the student financial data.