Identifying Number: Item 2026-001 - Cash Management Finding During late April of 2026, the University requested and received approximately 508,000 of Federal Direct Loan funds in excess of the funds disbursed to eligible students. The excess funds were identified by the University during reconciliation procedures in May and were returned to the DOE in June of 2026, which was beyond the seven-day tolerance period. Management's Response The University agrees with the above referenced findings and is committed to maintaining compliance with the cash management requirements. Corrective Action Plan Management agrees with the recommendation that the University should improve the process utilized to generate the Financial Aid Feed Report (Feed Report). The corrective action will include two additional controls, one in the Financial Aid Office focused on generating accurate reports, and one in the Finance Department focused on ensuring the information contained in the Feed Report is accurate prior to submitting the reimbursement request to the U.S. Department of Education. Both of these additional controls are considered "prevent" controls as both are designed to prevent errors prior to seeking cash/reimbursement from the U.S. Department of Education. The added "prevent" controls are summarized as follows: 1. Financial Aid Department - To help prevent inaccurate information from being generated on the Feed Report, the Financial Aid Office has partnered with the University's Information Technology Department to automate the creation and distribution of the following reports to designated Financial Aid and Finance personnel on a regular basis. This automation will improve cash flow by providing Feed Reports in a more timely manner and will reduce reliance on manual processes previously utilized to generate and distribute the below referenced reports. · Weekly financial aid feed reports identifying Pell Grant, Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant (FSEOG), and Direct Loan disbursements posted to student accounts. · Monthly "year-to-date" feed reports for these same federal aid programs. The above automations are scheduled to begin following the University's upcoming Banner Cloud system go-live date on October 15, 2026. Prior to implementation of these automated processes, Financial Aid and Finance personnel are performing additional review and reconciliation procedures prior to the submission of the Feed Reports to the U.S. Department of Education to double check and confirm the accuracy of the information included in the Feed Reports. 2. Finance Department - The Finance Department will reconcile the information included on the Feed Reports with the University's general ledger thereby verifying the information received on the feed reports from Financial Aid matches the amount that has been posted to the general ledger prior to requesting the reimbursement from the U.S. Department of Education. Neal Stenzel, Chief Financial Officer, is responsible for the corrective action plan and the anticipated completion date is October 2026.