4.9.0.0 - Release FAQs

Can anyone take Release 4.9.0.0?  

All Regent Award clients are expected to take Release 4.8.0.0. for UAT and ultimately production upgrade.  Production Upgrades are coordinated with Account Managers.  Regent Access and Regent Review clients may also take the 4.9 Release.

What is included in Release 4.9.0.0?

This release includes enhancements and new features such as:

• 2020-2021 Regulatory Updates to EFC calculations, ISIR import, Verification, ISIR Corrections, and SAR comment codes.
• 2020-2021 Verification Worksheet
• Treatment of Marital Status Changes
• R2T4 Automation for Refunds
  
• Crossover Awarding for Direct Loans
• Passive vs Active Acceptance Options

What is different for the 2020-2021 FAFSA and ISIR?

In previous years, if an applicant answered “Yes” that a 1040A or 1040EZ could have been filed, the applicant could be considered for the Simplified Needs Test (SNT) and AutoZero EFC.  With the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act effective for 2018 taxes, the question has been changed to ask if the applicant filed a Schedule 1 with the 2018 tax return.  A “No” response will make the applicant eligible for possible SNT and AutoZero.  Regent has been updated to accommodate this change in both text and EFC determination. 

The 2020-2021 ISIR now has a combined field for reported IRA and pension distributions for the student, and separately for the parent.  Document setup accommodates this change for 2020-2021 forward. Additionally, FAFSA no longer asks applicants for the number of exemptions on their tax returns, and the ISIR reflects this change as well.

What changes are in the 2020-2021 Verification Worksheet (VWS)?

In addition to standard annual incremental updates, the 4.9.0.0 verification worksheet provides two new features related to marital status. 

• First, since the FAFSA doesn't provide a means for the filer to indicate the filing status of a spouse, this typically ends up requiring staff to follow up with the student.  The 2020-2021 VWS now asks a married student whether they filed jointly, and if not asks for the spouse's filing status and persists the required document requirements. 
• Second, a new option will provide Verification Worksheet support for those institutions who do allow student marital status changes. Newly married students selected for verification are guided to update their FAFSAs accordingly, and to provide proof of marital status documentation.  The resulting ISIR will have a Reject 21. We recommend use of an Office Use Only document in the queue to alert the user about the Reject 21 so the provided documentation can be reviewed and a decision made about whether or not too override the Reject 21. (The Office Use Only document will also alert users to non-verified students who receive Reject 21).

How will users be able to control which aspects of R2T4 automation are implemented in their systems?

All of the various R2T4-related configuration items have been assembled on a separate tab in a previous release for both Institutional and Campus-level configuration.  Users start by activating a review of potential R2T4s to automatically close any that are not required for reasons such as no student attendance or no Title IV during the R2T4 period but prefer to review and complete the remaining R2T4s.  An additional configuration option gives the user the options to fully automate only those R2T4s resulting in fully earned/fully disbursed awards, those resulting in PWDs, and/or those resulting in Refunds.  

Will we be able to take advantage of automation for R2T4s resulting in refunds if we have not included institutional costs in the Student Batch Load (SBL)?

The process for R2T4s resulting in refunds will not be fully automated unless the institutional costs are included in the SBL. However, if you activate Refund automation without providing institutional costs in the SBL, you will still benefit from the automation.  On the offset date you have configured for auto-finalization, Regent Award will attempt to complete the R2T4, identify that the institutional costs have not been provided, and trigger a task to alert you it is time to enter the costs and click "Finalize".  If you configure accordingly, in addition to automatically returning standard refunds due from your institution, Regent Award will also automatically return grant overpayments due from the student.  You will be notified via a configured task in cases when the student owes a grant overpayment, whether or not you have elected the automatic return option.

How does "crossover awarding for Direct Loans" help students?

Typically, Regent will package a student for loans during a crossover academic year based on whether or not the academic year begins before or on/after the configured Default Academic Year Crossover date.  The new optional "Auto-Assign Loan Crossover FAY Based on ISIR Availability" feature will detect when a student for which the configuration requires a "prior" year ISIR for crossover packaging does not have that ISIR, but does indeed have an actionable ISIR from the "next" year.  Regent will automatically use the "next" year's ISIR to package the student.  For example, current configuration requires crossover academic years beginning before May 1, 2020 to be packaged from the 2019-2020 Federal Award Year (FAY).  A student will start an academic year on 4/15/2020, but has trouble locating 2017 tax information and is not eligible for DRT for that year.  The student cannot provide a 2019-2020 ISIR.  However, the student does have the 2018 tax information and has successfully completed the 2020-2021 FAFSA. With this option, Regent will automatically package the student with the 2020-2021 FAFSA for the crossover academic year.  The loans for this period will not be marked "manual", and Regent automation will continue to manage them. 

How are Passive vs Active offer acceptance flows assigned to students?

In Regent Award, students in "passive" acceptance flow have all of their awards created in Accepted status, and those in an "active" flow have certain funds (typically Direct Loans) created in Offered status.  Active flow students then accept their offered awards through the student portal to update them to Accepted, or they indicate acceptance via another means whereby a financial aid user manually updates the award status to "Accepted".  In cases where an institution may wish to have some students on a passive flow and others on an active flow, users may now specify a fund's initial creation status for specific programs and/or sites as part of Fund configuration.  The default "Initial Award Status" is still on the main Fund configuration page, but there is also a new Override Award Status tab in Fund configuration where users can indicate which programs and/or sites should offer the fund in the other or "override" status.   Examples of this may be when an institution chooses to use passive flow at one campus and active flow at another campus.  Or, an institution may elect to have undergraduate student Direct Loans created in Offered status to require active acceptance, while graduate program student Direct Loans are created using the override Accepted status for a passive acceptance flow.