Finding Text
Finding 2024-001:
AL #84.063 Federal Pell Grant Program; AL #84.268 Federal Direct Student Loans
Criteria:
An institution must submit Pell Grant and Federal Direct Student Loans (FDL) disbursement records to Common Origination and Disbursement (COD), no later than 15 days after making the disbursement or becoming aware of the need to adjust a previously reported disbursement (34 CFR 668.164(a)).
Condition:
Out of a sample of twenty-eight FDL students and forty Pell Grant students, our audit procedures identified the University did not report four FDL and seven Pell Grant disbursements to COD within 15 days of crediting the student billing statements.
Cause:
Automated COD communication and reporting rules in the Student Information System (SIS) were not working properly during the 2023-2024 aid year and manual interventions were not performed in order to report disbursement to COD timely.
Effect:
The University did not complete the required reporting within the required time frames.
Questioned Costs:
None
Auditors’ Recommendation:
The University should update its procedures to include review of automated COD reporting to ensure automated breakdowns are identified and corrected and reporting to COD is done timely.
Views of Responsible Officials:
The University identified certain automated COD communication and reporting rules in the SIS that were not working properly during the 2023-2024 aid year. The breakdown of these automated rules required manual interventions to have all FDL and Pell Grant disbursements reported to COD. Due to significant staffing turnover in the financial aid department and the manual interventions needed, not all reporting was able to be completed within 15 days. In January 2025, the University hired an expert directly from the SIS company to evaluate and fix all malfunctioning rules so manual intervention is not required going forward.