Student Financials went live in early May.

The new HUB has been the impetus for many policy changes and business process re-designs for the modules.  A significant change that will impact students is the financial aid disbursement policy.  Effective 2011-2012 academic year (summer 2011, fall 2011 spring 2012 and thereafter) loans will no longer be disbursed ten (10) days prior to the start of each semester.    Additional information about this change will be communicated extensively to students, faculty and staff beginning very soon.  The change in financial aid disbursement policy directly correlates to when a student’s refund from financial aid will first be available. 

The way refunds are calculated will also change.  Currently in legacy refunds are calculated using expected aid (known as pending credits) which is aid that will be received by the university at a later date.  In HUB, refunds will be calculated based on the actual aid that has been received by the campus and posted to the student’s account.  Expected aid (pending credits) will not be considered when determining the refund amount.  This straightforward way of calculating a refund presents a gain for students in that any refund will now be eligible for direct deposit, unlike now where only refunds due to financial aid are eligible.

As one can imagine, the nature of the work in Student Accounts revolves around the assessment and collection of tuition and fee revenue.  At the time of our “Go-Live” - we will have just concluded our billing cycle for the 2010-2011 academic year.  However, our work with collections is not done.  The fiscal year end is June 30 and we continue to work on collections well past that date.  In order to do so we have had to plan for tracking the student accounts that have unpaid balances as we move into the new system.  Considerable effort has gone into mapping out how we will do so utilizing the delivered “aging of accounts” functionality along with existing collection processes.  A system of identifying accounts in various stages of collections has been designed using service indicators (previously known as checkstops).  Those service indicators will enable the office to know if an account is ready to be sent to collections, either to the collection agency or to the Attorney Generals and if the account has been returned to the campus.  Those service indicators will carry negative consequences; just as the current Bursar checkstop does to prevent registration and other services until the account is fully satisfied.

Student Financials continues to meet with the other modules on a weekly basis in what is called Cross Modular meetings.  HUB functions as an integrated system, and each module team must be sensitive to how changes in our individual modules may impact other module functions in the HUB.