Manually Awarding Financial Aid

Purpose: Use this document as a reference for how to manually enter an award in ctcLink.

Audience: FA Counselor/Technician.

You must have at least one of these local college managed security roles:

  • ZD FA Award Processing
  • ZD FA Director
  • ZZ FA Award Processing
  • ZZ FA Award Processor

If you need assistance with the above security roles, please contact your local college supervisor or IT Admin to request role access.

Manual Awarding Financial Aid

Navigation:  Financial Aid > Awards > Award Processing > Assign Awards to a Student

  1. The Assign Awards to a Student search page displays.
  2. Enter a Student ID.
  3. Enter the Academic Institution.
  4. Enter the Aid Year.
  5. Select the Search button.  
  6. The Assign Awards to a Student page displays.  
  7. The student's current awards display.
  8. Insert a new row by selecting the [+] button at the end of any existing row.  
  9. A new, nearly blank row is displayed.  The new row is automatically assigned a NUM value that is greater than the highest value of the existing awards; in this example, the new row gets a NUM value of 70.
  10. Update the NUM field to a value that will place the new award in the proper sequence of all awards, as required by your college's policy.  In this example, we want the new award to appear after Need Based entitlement aid (Pell & WCG, NUM = 30) and before loans (NUM = 40), so we assign the new award a NUM of 35.  Any NUM value greater than 30 and less than 40 will work.
  11. Update the Action field to 'O' if the new award is Offered, or to 'B' if the new award is both Offered and Accepted.  You can type the O or the B directly into the Action field, or you can use the lookup tool next to the Action field.  In this example we type 'B'.
An image of the Student Aid Package page with NUM 35 and Action B annotated with a red box. A red arrow points to the Item Type Lookup Tool

Note: If there is an error, do not choose ‘X’ to discard the award. Instead select the Reset button to restart the process.

  1. Use the lookup tool next to the Item Type field to choose the desired award.  
  2. The Look Up Item Type pagelet displays.  
  3. In this example we're awarding Opportunity Grant.  Select the link in the Item Type field to choose this item.
  4. The Student Aid Package tab displays with its Item Type and Description fields populated.
  5. Enter the dollar amount in the Offered field then press tab to automatically update the Accepted field with the same amount.
  6. The Disbursement Plan field will update with ‘10’ to show the disbursement plan is for Summer-Fall-Winter-Spring.  If this is not the desired Disbursement Plan, use the Disbursement Plan lookup tool to choose the correct plan.
  7. The Split Code field will update to 'AY'.  If this is not the desired Split Code, use the Split Code lookup to choose the correct split.
  8. Select the Validate button to verify that the new award meets your college's awarding requirements.
  9. A confirmation message displays.
  10. Select OK.
An image of the Student Aid Package page with red annotation boxes outlining the Validate button and the OK button
  1. The Student Aid Package tab displays.  
  2. Select Post to complete the process.
  3. The Award Posting completed message displays.
  4. Select OK after reading the confirmation message.  
  5. The Student Aid Package tab displays.
  6. To ensure that the new award was sequenced properly, select Return to Search.  
  7. The Award Entry search page displays.
  8. Select Search.  
  9. The Student Aid Package tab displays.
  10. The new award displays in the proper sequence.
An image of the Student Aid Package page with a red arrow pointing to the yellow highlighted NUM of 40
  1. Process complete.

Video Tutorial

The video below demonstrates the process actions described in steps listed above. There is no audio included with this video. Select the play button to start the video.

Video Tutorial Via Panopto

View the external link to Manually Awarding Financial Aid. This link will open in a new tab/window.

2 Comments

Erlinda Cruz

When awarding scholarship for students who has not submitted verification, what do we need to do to let the disbursement process - message reporting "verification not processed"

Kelly Forsberg

Erlinda, thanks for your question. If the scholarship you are disbursing is not restricted to financial need, then you can do a manual disbursement using the "Disburse Aid with Override" function. Please keep in mind, if you opt to disburse an unrestricted scholarship using "Disbursement Aid with Override", you are telling the system to bypass all other fail-safes in the system: (outstanding checklists, negative service indicators (bad debt holds), user edit messages, and other holds intended to stop disbursement). Please feel free to submit a ticket to the HelpDesk if you would like a walk through on this process. Thanks, Kelly Forsberg, ctcLink Trainer (Financial Aid)

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