This assessment provides your school with an opportunity to review procedures regarding  the reconciliation process.  Additional activities are provided in the chart below.

Why start with the Reconciliation Worksheets?

The reconciliation worksheets will help you review your fiscal operations. The Fiscal Year-End Reconciliation Worksheet is in a format that allows for institutional data to be easily compared. If the net expended amounts differ, those discrepancies must be noted and resolved (similar to reconciling outstanding checks in a personal bank account). Differences may be due to timing issues related to the reporting of disbursements by the financial aid office and the actual draw of cash by the business office.

The amounts listed for the financial aid office should be the monthly totals reported as disbursed to and adjusted from students by the financial aid office. The business office totals should be the monthly totals disbursed to and refunded from student accounts. The G5 (formerly GAPS) amounts should be the monthly totals advanced from and refunded to the institution from G5.

Additional Worksheets: The reconciliation exercise is designed as a comprehensive exercise for all programs for year-end reconciliation. It is also important for schools to ensure that they reconcile all accounts on a monthly basis. Monthly reconciliation also makes year-end reconciliation an easier process. With this in mind, there are monthly reconciliation worksheets available for your use. There are separate worksheets for each program. Instructions are included with each worksheet.

Federal Pell Grant Monthly Reconciliation 
ACG/National SMART Monthly Reconciliation 
TEACH Grant Monthly Reconciliation 
FWS Monthly Reconciliation
Federal Perkins Monthly Reconciliation
FSEOG Monthly Reconciliation
Direct Loan Monthly Reconciliation
FFEL Monthly Reconciliation (For schools receiving funds via EFT and Master Check)
FFEL Monthly Reconciliation (For schools receiving funds via individual checks for each borrower)

* Special notes for campus-based program (FSEOG, FWS, and Federal Perkins) as the financial aid office is not required to report student-level disbursement information to the Department for the campus-based programs, the financial aid office may not have monthly disbursement information for the FSEOG, FWS, and Federal Perkins programs. In that case, the financial aid office may only have award information to reconcile. The cash reconciliation will be between the business office student account records and the cash drawn from the Treasury. In addition, you will need to account for the match in the campus-based program. For example, if you match on an aggregate basis, the funds disbursed to students will be greater than the funds drawn from the Treasury. You will also need to account for any Administrative Cost Allowance claimed by the institution (There are activities to guide you through this process within the monthly reconciliation activities).

If your school maintains fiscal records in an electronic report, we recommend that you review the data provided on the reports to determine if your records reconcile. You may want to print the reports for each month of the academic year being reviewed and use our Fiscal Year-End Reconciliation Worksheet to determine if they reconcile.

If you identify areas requiring corrective action, we recommend that you complete the Management Enhancement Worksheet.

Activity Bar:
Fiscal Management Activity 1: Reconciliation Worksheets
Fiscal Management Activity 2: Program Records Requirement
Fiscal Management Activity 3: Excess Cash
Fiscal Management Activity 4: Disbursing Aid File Review Worksheet
Fiscal Management Activity 5: Financial Ratios
Fiscal Management Activity 6: Administrative Cost Allowance

Additional Links: 2008-09 FSA Handbook, School Eligibility & Operations, Chapter 11; 2008-09 FSA Handbook, Processing Aid & Managing Federal Student Aid Funds, Chapter 2 and 2008-09 FSA Handbook, Processing Aid & Managing Federal Student Aid Funds, Chapter 3