After the Enrollment File is Processed

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After the File is Processed PDF

Transcript
Welcome to part four of the Enrollment Reporting webinar series. Today we will review next steps and expectations after an enrollment file has been processed for your institution. We will cover after the enrollment file is processed, understanding and navigating the reject detail report, common rejected record error codes, correcting reject error 253 and 290, EDI reject reports followed by best practices the Clearinghouse was created to serve as a trusted agent to our participating institutions and our services are designed to facilitate compliance with FERPA, the Higher Education Act and other applicable laws. As your third-party servicer, we provide enrollment and deferment information to guarantee agencies, lenders, servicers and the Department of Education on your institution's behalf. The information loaded into our database can be used for other Clearinghouse services such as StudentTracker and verifications. It's important to keep your transmission schedule up to date and submit enrollment files in a timely manner because the Department of Education and the National Student Loan Data System requires institutions to certify all federal aid recipients at least every two months. Be sure to report enroll status changes to the Clearinghouse as swiftly as possible because the department of Ed requires status changes to be sent to NSLDS within 60 days of the date of determination. Because of these requirements, the Clearinghouse recommends making corrections to the enrollment reports promptly so that enrollment files can be processed in a timely manner. What happens after the file is processed? An email confirming that the file has been processed is sent to the submission data contacts at your institution. A reject detail report may be generated and will need to be reviewed. Further action may be required for the rejected records data is loaded into the Clearinghouse database and becomes available to be sent to NSLDS for compliance reporting to be sent to lenders, servicers and guarantors; on the Clearinghouse website via the student lookup tab and for other Clearinghouse services. Here is a sample of the autogenerated email that is sent to the submission data contacts after a file has processed. These emails not only inform you that the file has been processed but also provide step-by-step instructions to review the file's reject detail report. The reject detail report is a list of students that were rejected during the file review process. These records cannot be accepted into our database due to a discrepancy or error on their record. Though it is uncommon, there are various reasons a student record would not be accepted onto a file. We will review a couple of those reasons later in this presentation. Records on the reject detail report should be reviewed and corrected as needed as soon as possible after the enrollment file is processed. Typically, when a record is rejected, it will need to be corrected in your student information system and manually updated in our database to reflect the correct data. There are occasions when the error will self-resolve the next time a file is submitted. Please keep in mind that we recommend only working the most recently generated reject detail report. Previously rejected records may have since been resolved and making additional updates or changes may not be necessary. To access your reject detail, you will log onto our secure website and click on the student reporting tab, then click on the data reporting dashboard link. The Enrollment Reporting reject detail tile appears in the needs immediate attention box or can be access through the green menu options to the left. Unlike other reports that appear in the needs immediate attention box, the reject detail report does not currently offer the ability to update records directly through the report the reject detail report. It will continue to appear in the needs immediate attention box until a new enrollment file has been processed, even if the updates have been submitted for those students. When a file is processed and records have been rejected, the days outstanding count restarts. If a file is processed and no records have been rejected from the file, the reject detail report tile will not appear in the needs immediate attention box. If the reject detail report tile has been reviewed and any applicable updates have been submitted, this tile can be hidden. To hide the tile, click the box in the upper left corner of the tile and click hide in the upper right corner of the needs immediate attention box. Hiding a tile only hides it from your view on the dashboard, it does not hide the tile for other contacts at your Institution. To unhide a tile, click the unhide button. To review the reject detail report, click on the tile. When you click on the reject detail report tile, you'll be taken directly to the reject detail school review tab in the school transmission detail screen. These details are for the most recently processed enrollment file. The reject detail school review tab will show you the specific error that led to the student rejection from the file. The second tab is the reject detail all records. This tab will show you the specific error that led to the rejection as well as the other warning codes that were present on the student's record. These Warnings are not typically related to the error rejection so we recommend reviewing the school review tab to easily identify the error that needs to be corrected. However, you will find records on this tab that were rejected due to certain SSN and college student ID errors that are not found on the school review tab. The common error numbers for these records are 30, 211 and 212. So we would recommend reviewing this tab for those error codes. Updates should be made as necessary. The third tab is the file detail tab. This tab provides information about the enrollment file that was processed such as the term dates and record counts. Let's navigate back to our sample reject detail school review tab. As you can see, there is an export results button. We would recommend exporting the list to use as a reference when conducting research, making changes in your SIS and Performing manual corrections on the Clearinghouse website. Under the student lookup tab, the list consists of the rejected students' SSN, college student ID, first name, last name, the error ID, error description and the enrollment status that was submitted on the file for the student. If you click on the hyperlink for the error code code or click on the hyperlink for the explanation of error codes, a new browser window will open to the rejected error description guide. Two of the most common errors on the reject detail report are error numbers 253 and 290. These errors occur as a result of a name and SSN conflict from the data present on the file versus information we already have loaded in our database. A 253 occurs the first time a student is rejected as a result of this conflict and a 290 is when they have been rejected two or more times. Specifically, what happens is the SSN that is being presented on your enrollment file is already attached to a student in our database that we are not able to identify as being the same person present on your enrollment file. SSNs are unique to each person, we cannot allow the conflicting records into our database and so they are rejected from the file. The responsibility of confirming the SSN and submitting the online update falls to your institution so that we can correctly rebuild the student's enrollment history. The incoming student is typically actively enrolled while the conflicting student from the other institution may have been reported many years ago. When you see that a student has been rejected with a 253 or 290, you will want to confirm that the SSN present on the student record does in fact belong to the student. Typically, the error is result of a typographical error such as a mistyped digit or form being filled out incorrectly. We ask that you confirm the SSN using one of our acceptable forms of proof of SSN seen here. You can request a copy of the list of acceptable proof of SSN by emailing School Ops at studentclearinghouse.org. The best place to begin researching the SSN is typically with the financial aid department as they may have a copy of one of these documents on hand already. If your institution does not have any of these documents, you would then want to reach out to the student to see if they will provide you with this proof. We are aware that you cannot require a student to provide proof of SSN so it is up to the student if they want to provide that information or not. We would recommend maintaining any documentation of your outreach and their response just in case it is needed in the future. If you are unable to obtain adequate proof of SSN, the student will continue to be rejected from your files. You will want to advise the student that without confirmation we will not be able to load their record into our database and in turn unable to utilize any services that we help provide such as student self-service or reporting their enrollment to their lender. You do not have to provide the proof of SSN to us unless a further conflict is found. At that time, an analyst will reach out to you to request a copy of that proof to be sent to us via our secure fax line. We would recommend holding on to a copy of that proof until you see that we have processed the online update into our database. Once you have confirmed the correct SSN for the student, you will want to first ensure that the correct SSN has been updated in your student information system. Next, the student will need to be added to the Clearinghouse database using the correct SSN through an individual manual online update. Sending the SSN on the file again does not tell us that the research has been done to confirm the SSN. To add the students record, go to the student lookup tab on the secure website, type in the correct SSN for the record that is being rejected and click search. You should have a message pop up that advises the student record was not found at the bottom of the page. There will be a small image of a person holding a pencil that says add new student. Click this button to continue with updating the students's record. From there, you will need to enter the student's enrollment information. All fields with an asterisk are required. If you do not know the student's address, please enter UK this translates to unknown. Please note when you are adding a new student and the student has been enrolled for multiple terms, enter the enrollment information for the first term the student should have been reported as enrolled. In this example, the student is currently enrolled but should have been reported since August of 2021. Please be sure to include program level data if the student is in a program. If the student entered and left a program before July 1st of 2014, then you do not need to provide program level information for that specific program. Once we have received your request to add the student, a Clearinghouse analyst will review the request. We ask for you to provide the oldest set of enrollment information for the student so that we can manually rebuild their enrollment record for you. As mentioned before, if needed, the analyst may request to see the proof of SSN for the student and order to proceed with adding the record. The student record may need to be updated directly with the NSDLS as well. Please have someone with access to the NSLDS website confirm that the student's history is correct in the NSDLS database and update it as needed. While we are on the topic of submitting online updates, I just want to take a moment to mention a reminder about online updates. Most online updates cannot be submitted or processed when a file is in-house. If you attempt to update a student but the file in-house is preventing you from submitting the update, you will encounter an alert box like the one pictured here. The alert advises you to reach out to the Clearinghouse for assistance if the update is for a student that is being reported on the current enrollment file in-house. Reach out to the assigned analyst to determine if the information that needs to be updated is reflected on the file or to see if the change can be applied to the file before processing. Factors such as the certification date and type of update will determine if they can apply the change to the file. If the student is not being reported on the current enrollment file, the analyst assigned to your file will not be able to perform the update on your behalf so please avoid sending the information to them that needs to be updated. Instead, feel free to reach out to check on the status of the file. We often find that an error report is posted to the web for the school to review and we are not able to process the file until all warnings and errors are reviewed and corrected or confirmed. This slide is specifically for institutions with student information systems that utilize EDI mapping for their data extract. This is most commonly Banner but also some iterations of Jenzabar. If you do not use EDI mapping software, please be patient and sit tight as we will cover some best practices after this slide. Each student has an EDI map for their record and it must meet certain requirements in order for the record to be accepted on an enrollment file. Records will be rejected due to missing or invalid data within the EDI record layout. The rejected records will be placed in your institution's FTP account for review after the enrollment file is processed. Anyone on your institution's FTP email list will be notified that the list is available to retrieve and download. However, anyone with the FTP account's username and password can access the list. It is imperative to update the missing required data in your student information system so that the students can be captured on future files. Keep in mind EDI rejects are not the same as students on your reject detail report. Students on your reject detail were included with all required data in the EDI mapping record but were rejected from the file for other reasons. For example, a name conflict. As mentioned in previous slides, records appearing on the EDI reject list in your institution's FTP account are records that failed during the the files translation from EDI format to the Clearinghouse format. In some cases, the analyst assigned to your file may reach out to discuss the EDI rejected records. Based on what we covered today here are some reporting best practices. Submit on time and in sync with your submission schedule and file type. Identify and ensure students that should be reported are on enrollment files with the accurate SSNs and enrollment data. Save and process your error resolution on the web report in a timely manner. Review the reject detail report and if applicable EDI rejected record list and submit corrections as needed. Update your student information system with any corrections you make to avoid future errors and warnings and contact us at school Ops at studentclearinghouse.org or by calling 73742 4880 with any questions related to enrollment reporting. I hope you all enjoyed today's presentation. Please sign up for the remaining webinars in the Enrollment Reporting series. Part five will cover the importance of reporting separation statuses for students.