Close Out Dates

SAL Windows Update

Stop Code Window Changes

• Auto Agency Turnover
• Clearinghouse

These new codes can be set for a number of temporary months (1-9), or can be set to permanent stop by checking the ‘permanent’ box.

Loan Type Information Enhancement (INFO Button)

On the Primary Window in SAL we have added a new button, (INFO). This button is located below our help button. The window consists of 4 different list boxes, eligible deferments, eligible partial cancellations/postponements, eligible 100% cancellations and other parameters. All of this information is pulled in from our Fund Parameters area. The information on this window is associated with the highlighted loan on the primary window. The other parameters area lists some of the most important parameters associated with the highlighted loan type; minimum fixed payment, original grace period months, interest rate, accrue penalty/late charges and if so how much for the first month or there after, plan type, small balance payoff and when to turnover the loan to the credit bureau and if so at what months delinquency. If the penalty/late charges are set to “no”, then the “charges first month” and “charges there after” lines will not be displayed. Also, if the credit bureau is set to “no”, then the “turn over months” line will not be displayed.

Changes to Name and Address

The Name and Address window has been modified to allow the user to enter up to ten (10) characters for the address change source. This allows unlimited flexibility when adding a new source for each address change. This replaces the single character method originally previewed in our window's project.

Cohort Months Delinquent

ECSI has added a new field to the Primary Window in the months delinquent area. When you access an account that is in "this years" cohort population, the description will display COHORT MONTH DEL instead of MONTH DEL. The first field represents the number of months an account is delinquent for cohort reporting purposes. The second field identifies months delinquent that are used for credit bureau and aging reports.

Why would there be a difference between the two? Section 8 in the Federal Student Financial Aid Handbook provides the reason. The "Rules For Calculating The Number Of Days In Default" example reveals we must reduce months delinquent for each full installment that was paid for cohort reporting. This means if a check is received for $400 on a past due account and the entire amount was applied to interest and fees, the cohort months delinquent must be reduced by 10 months. ECSI disagrees with this aging method and will continue to discuss with DOE. We have asked several schools, competitors and auditors about this process and every one agrees with our standard calculation.

A new field was required because when a payment is made, months delinquent is reduced based on the number of principal installments that were paid. As you can see in the example above, if we reduced months delinquent based solely on the number of fixed payments that were made you could easily have a situation where monies appear in 15-, 45-, 75-, etc., days past due and months delinquent could be zero. A new field was needed in order to keep the integrity of the aging fields intact and provide you with the advantages of a lower cohort default rate.

Pictured on this page is an example of the COHORT MONTH DEL field which shows a value of 5 for cohort and 7 for months delinquent. Prior to the last payment the borrower was past due 8 installments. When a payment of $120 was made, $80 was applied to interest and $40 to principal. As you can see, months delinquent was reduced by 1 (from 8 to 7) and cohort months delinquent was reduced by three (from 8 to 5) because three full installments were paid.

Document Writer - Common Problems

• “Record 1 contains too many fields” - This problem is caused by the letter being converted to Word 2000 from an earlier version such as Word 97.

Solution:

1. As soon as the letter is opened, this message box will appear. Click on ‘Ok’ in this message window to remove it. (It may display twice).
2. Click on the ‘Edit Data Source’ button on the Mail Merge toolbar.

   

3. The ‘Edit Data Source’ window will now display.

   

4. Click on the ‘Ok’ button on this window. Word will now convert the file into the correct format.
5. Save the letter before continuing.

This problem will only occur the first time you open a letter with Word 2000 that was previously opened with Word 97.

• “let_xyz.doc is a mail merge main document. Word cannot find its data source, MERGE.DOC” - The file that is created by Sal and passed to Word that contains the information for the letter is missing or not created.

Solution:

1. Did you generate the letters from within Sal?

   

• No - Repeat all steps of the letter creation process.
• Yes – The Merge file is not setup correctly for this letter.
  • Click on ‘Find Data Source’ from the message window.

    

  • Enter ‘C:\SAL-TEMP\MERGE.DOC’ in the filename box.

• “Word could not merge the main document with the data source because the data records were empty or no data records matched your query options”- There is a code at the top of each letter that must correspond with the three digit letter code from Sal. If this code does not match Sal, this letter will not be created.

Solution –

1. Click on the‘Ok’ button to close this message window. This will bring you back to the letter document.
2. Right-Click on the field {Skip Record If} at the top of the letter and click on ‘Toggle Field Codes’ from the pop-up menu.

   

3. The {Skip Record If} should now change to a line that looks like the following:
   { SKIPIF RH0 <> "RH9" }
   

   The value at the end of the line,“RH9”, is the code that should be an exact match to what is within Sal and the Word document name. In this case it does not match since the code says “RH9” and the letter is“RH0”. Place your cursor in this field and correct the value so that it would match. { SKIPIF RH0 <> "RH9" }

   1. This field must be three (3) characters (spaces are ok at the end. Ex“RH “)
   2. The values in this field must be in all caps. (“rh0” is not valid)
4. Save the letter before continuing.

• “The same info/data/junk prints on all of my letters” – The document template that is used to merge all of the letters has been modified and saved.

Solution:

1. Open the document, and remove the incorrect information from this template.
2. Save the letter before exiting.

• “As soon as I open the letter in Word, it looks like it’s already been merged” – There is a button on the Mail Merge Toolbar that allows you to view what the letter will look like after the merge has been completed.

Solution:

1. Check to see if this button is clicked on by mistake.

   

   • Click the {ABC} button off if it is activated.
2. If this button is not turned on, have you over-written this template document with a previous merge that they might have run? If so, the letter will need to be recreated since it is no longer a mail merge file. (If you ran a ‘Merge to New Document, and saved the results as the original document.)

• “Cannot launch MS Word at this time” – The Word document that the user is attempting to open cannot be found in their SAL-SYS\LETTERS directory. If the user is trying to open their letter XYZ, there should be a Word file called LET_XYZ in the SAL-SYS\LETTERS directory.

Solution:

1. Click on"Open Letters Window” to view all of the Word documents the users has saved on their system.
2. You should now see the window listing all of these documents. Browse thru the list to verify that the letter is in this area and is named correctly.
   • If the letter is not located in this folder, you do not have this letter and would need to have it created before continuing.
   • If the letter is there, but the name is not in the correct format:
   • Right click on the icon representing the document and select ‘Rename’.
   • Enter the correct name and press enter (Format is LET_XYZ.DOC)

   

• “File Conversion Box displays when attempting to open the letter or exit interview” – This is another issued caused by Word 2000.

Solution:

1. Click on ‘Plain text’ and press ‘OK’

Automatic loan balance payoff

Several months ago it was brought to our attention that we didn’t need to “offset” monies when creating a low balance payoff. We researched this and agree. Therefore, in the future all low balance payoffs will be one-sided entries. In other words, Principal will be the only general ledger entry in all future low balance payoffs. This adjustment will continue to generate a “positive” credit bureau status.

Education Budget Initiatives

On February 27, 2001, President George W. Bush provided some details of his education budget initiatives.

While many of the funding increases were directed to primary or secondary education programs, there were a few items targeted to higher education. Bush proposed an additional $1 billion to increase the maximum Pell Grants awards. An additional $64 million is proposed to increase teacher loan forgiveness limits to $17,500, up from the current $5,000.

In total, the president's proposal would add $4.6 billion for fiscal year 2002 over fiscal year 2001. Although education received the largest increase of any cabinet agency, many have expressed disappointment. Democrats in congress were anticipating approximately $10 billion in increased appropriations.

Privacy Initiatives

Privacy initiatives have received the serious attention of both houses of the 107th congress.

The Republican Main Street Partnership, headed by House Energy and Commerce Telecommunications and Internet Subcommittee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI), announced that its priorities will include privacy as one of their top issues.

Their belief is that all privacy bills should include provisions requiring websites that collect and use personal information to provide a clear and conspicuous privacy notice to site users.

The partnership strongly encourages industry to embrace self-regulation and address consumer privacy concerns through third party seals and enforcement.

In addition to partnership, there has been much activity in Washington regarding privacy. In February, two privacy bills (S.290 and S.324) were introduced in the U.S. Senate. The Privacy Coalition, whose members include the ACLU have issued congress a challenge to meet "The Privacy Pledge", a standard for the future protection of privacy.

Finally, President Bush has postponed the enactment of the Patient Privacy Regulations.

Up to the minute coverage of this very dynamic issue can be found on our web site in either the "Headlines" or "Legislation" sections.

Plan to Boost Pell Grants

CEF Unveils Five-Year Plan to Boost Pell Grants to $10,000.

Last week, the Committee for Education Funding (CEF) unveiled its plan to raise the maximum Pell Grant award to $10,000 over the next five years, a substantial increase over the current $3,750 maximum award. In total, CEF’s proposal seeks to raise federal education spending from $39.3 billion this year to $109.6 billion by fiscal year 2006. At current funding levels, two cents of every dollar are spent on education. CEF’s plan, dubbed “Five Cents Makes Sense for Education,” calls for education spending to reach five cents of every federal dollar spent.

1098-T Reporting

This year ECSI provided 1098-T service to 7 schools. We used this year as a beta test for next year. Our processing went very well and we will actively pursue all of our current clients for this business. Similar to our 1098-E program, we provided the following:

• send file in the format prescribed by the IRS
• send each student, provided by the school, a Form 1098-T. Our form included instructions for filing and the website for the entire IRS publication on both the Hope and Lifetime Learning Credits
• creates a student database that allows changes/updates to the student information originally provided. This database can be accessed by SSN# and name.
• creates a report of all borrowers reported to the IRS (and also received 1098-T forms)
• allowed borrower access (via their unique PIN number) to the 1098-T information on our website.
• Provided a CD-ROM of all 1098-T’s and the report.

Help Desk

ECSI has recently implemented our new HelpDesk System. The goal of our HelpDesk is to better serve you, our customers. The HelpDesk works as follows:

1. You will continue to call our account representatives. They will attempt to answer all processing- type questions.
2. If the issue is system or program related, we will log this into our HelpDesk.
3. The HelpDesk coordinator will assign each task to one of the following: Administration, Programming or Operations. Each issue logged is tracked daily and reported by the category of completion: Assigned, Pending, Waiting on School or, Completed.
4. Once the issue has been resolved, the HelpDesk Coordinator will contact you with the resolution and close the item from the "live" HelpDesk application.
5. All of your enhancement requests will also be logged into our HelpDesk. Each week, we meet with our Programmers to discuss your ideas. You will be kept abreast of the status of your requests.

ECSI will now be able to track the following:

• Calls from a specific school.
• Calls logged for any given time period.
• Calls for repeated issues.

This new system is our attempt to provide better service, in a timelier manner. Each day we review the HelpDesk report and attempt to limit the amount of time any issue remains "open". If the issue will take time, our goal is to respond by phone or e-mail, and give a projected date of completion. Once resolved, we will call and advise you that the issue is complete and confirm that you are satisfied with the results. Please feel free to offer your input, this is your tool!

2001 User's Conference

It's that time again... Time to make your plans to attend ECSI's 2001 User's Conference. This year promises to be better than any ECSI conference to date. We have prepared a list of presentations and sessions that will satisfy the most voracious appetite for knowledge. This year we will be inviting several guest speakers from various sectors to address important issues. Of course we will cover everything you need to know about SAL for Windows and our Internet technologies.

The conference will be held at the Pittsburgh Sheraton, Station Square from April 23rd to April 25th.

Internet News

For all the latest additions and changes to our web site, make sure you sign up for the "Web Site Update Notification". You will receive an email every time we make noteworthy changes to the site. You can sign up by going to the "Clients" page (more details in a minute). Alternatively, you can review the changes at any time by following the "Site Changes" link on our main table of contents.

The response has been unbelievable. We have hundreds of people signing up to use this new service. No other web feature has drawn this much attention so quickly.

We have received over fifty suggestions from borrowers for changes to the system. The overwhelming majority have requested more frequent withdraws as their most important request. If that many people took the time to comment, it must be important!

Starting March 9th, we will begin drawing monies every Friday. When a borrower signs up for DirectPay, they will be shown their school's anticipated draw date (either the 1st or the 20th). If they do nothing, this will be their payment date.

Immediately below the anticipated draw date, they will be presented with a choice of the next four Fridays. They can select any of those Fridays as their payment date.

1. Borrowers can make 'last minute' payments.
2. It allows borrowers to schedule payments that are convenient for them, based on their other bills or pay days.
3. Borrowers can make multiple payments in a month to better manage their cash flow.

If the address is correct but we are missing a phone number or date of birth, we display a somewhat less obnoxious 'Yield' icon along with a request for the borrower to update their information. We're hoping to get the same level of response from the yield icon as we have received from the stop icon.

Borrower Forms:

• PDF forms are by far the most accurate to reproduce on a printer. They also offer the ability to fill-in portions of the form prior to printing. For all their advantages though, some versions of the Acrobat plugin have problems with different versions of Windows or even different versions of the same browser.
  
  
• Plain HTML is the most basic form and is readable by every version of every browser. Unfortunately, it produces the least accurate output to a printer. The forms simply do not look very professional.
  
  
• HTML CSS and HTML Layers are in between Plain HTML and PDF. CSS is supported by both Internet Explorer and Netscape (version 4.0 or later). Layers are supported only by Netscape. Either CSS or Layers gives a reasonably close representation of the form without requiring downloads or plugins. These forms will soon be integrated into the borrower's on-line application, allowing a portion of the information to be filled in prior to printing.
  
  
• GIF/JPG are images of the forms. These are the largest in size but have a wide range of support for browsers and printers. These forms generally produce quality similar to a PDF. The downside is they may be four to twelve times larger than the other formats. When all else fails, the GIF/JPG forms will almost always display correctly.

You can sign up for the update notices directly on the Client page. Under On-line Services, look for "Notify Me!".

You may remember the "Client Application" which we labeled "your gateway to ECSI's interactive services". Previously, that was where you could look up a borrower's web account or sign up for email notifications. Sadly, the "Client Application" is no more. While the application served us well for the last 18 months (an eternity in 'Internet Time'), it had fallen far behind in technology and extendibility. Not only that, it was incompatible with our new borrower application and I'm surprised how many of you noticed the day I broke it!!

We have replaced each of the functions in the Client Application with equivalent functions under the On-Line Services portion of the Client page (see picture). Now you will find an improved version of the "View Borrower Account" page. There is now a new function to "View Borrower's Tax Forms". Finally, you will find the improved version of our Email Notification under the "Notify Me!" link.

The new client functions were created using the same technology as the borrower application. What this means is that new or enhanced features can be added almost anytime without long downtimes in the service. Plus, updates can happen without taking the entire web site down (a big deterrent to doing frequent updates). A final advantage is that all the security features available to borrowers are now available to clients. These include: encryption, support for multiple logins and multi-level security access. Enhanced security will finally allow us to provide clients with access to information that was previously much too sensitive to place on the web.

Client Page Changes:

Under the Information heading, you will see that each item (except the User Conference) has a date of last update. Even the Site Changes are available directly from the Client page. We hope that the client page will serve as your 'one stop shopping' to all the areas of our web site relevant to our Clients.

Notice the new "Headlines" topic. Here we have a collection of articles from across the web on any subject that is even remotely of interest but didn't fit into another category. We scour over 60 different sources to collect information that may be of interest to you. The Headlines section is updated at least twice a week when there is relevant news.

The SAL HelpDesk portion of the client page has received some much needed attention. The entire on-line help manual is now available directly on the web. Every time we update the manual internally, the web version is updated that day!

We have reorganized the topics and have added a 'single-page view' of all the topics on file. Now, you can either drill-down through the categories or view all documents on a single page. The hope is to make the information easier to find.

There's still plenty of time left to sign up. Hope to see you in April!

Until Next Time

Learning Center

Creating a New Letter

• Click on Modify Letters, a window will appear displaying all letters on file
• Click on New Letter, a window will appear asking for the letter information
• Click on Accept, to save after entering all of the desired information
• Click on OK, the information for this letter has been saved
• Click on Quit, X or Esc to close the window
• Click on Open Letters Window
• Double click On Any Letter
• Click on File
• Click on Save As
• Click on File Name (change your letter from Let_AA to Let_XXX, you can use a two digit and a space or a three digit field)
• Click on Save
• Right click on Skip Record If
• Click on Toggle Field Codes
• Change AA to XXX (UPPER CASE ONLY) (it must be the same as your file name, a two digit and a space or a three digit field)
• Click on File
• Click on Save
• Make all of your changes to the letter
• Click on File
• Click on Save
• Click on X to close the window
• Click on X to close the window

Modifying an Existing Letter

• Click on Modify Letters, a window will appear displaying all letters on file
• Double click on the letter you wish to modify, a window will appear displaying the current letter information
• Click on Change, enter any new information that you desire
• Click on the Accept, to save after entering all of the desired information
• Click on OK, the information for this letter has been saved
• Click on Quit, X or Esc to close the window
• Click on Open Letters Window
• Double click on any letter
• Make all of your changes to the letter
• Click on File
• Click on Save
• Click on X to close the window
• Click on X to close the window

Deleting an Existing Letter

• Click on Modify Letters, a window will appear displaying all letters on file
• Double click on the letter you wish to delete
• Click on Delete
• Sal will ask for confirmation before deleting the letter. Click on 'Yes' to delete the letter information within the Sal System
• Click on OK, the letter information has been deleted from SAL
• Click on Quit, X or Esc to close the window
  
  

Generate Mass Letter Mailings

• Loan Status - This allows you to choose the status codes of the loans. For example, if you wanted the letter to be created on all loans in repayment, you would select Loan Status 3. The Document Writer would only create letters for accounts with a status 3. All other accounts would be bypassed.
• Special Codes - This allows you to send letters on accounts that have matching Special Codes. For example, if you wanted to send letters on all NL [New Loan] accounts, you would select the NL Special Code.
• Campus Codes - This option allows a school with multiple campuses to send letters to accounts at a specific campus.
• Fund/Type - This allows you to send letters to accounts that have a specific loan or fund type.
• Program Type - This option enables you to send letters on certain program types. For example, creating letters for all Institutional Loan types, but not Campus Based loans.
• Collector Code - This option allows you to send letters to accounts that have a specific Collector Code assigned to it.

• Enter 1 to 1 in the Months Delinquent Range
• Check the Loan Status option, double click on Loan Status 3, click on Accept Choices
• Check the Collector Codes, double click on my Collector Code, click on Accept Choices

Generate Individual Letter Mailings

• Address This Letter Will Be Sent To - If you wish to send the letter to a different address, use the arrow buttons to choose the available addresses for the account.
• Available Loan Types - If the borrower has multiple loans, you can choose which loans should be included in the letter by clicking the check box beneath each loan type. (All loans are selected by default. Remove the checkmark if a loan is not to be used for the letter.)
• Consolidate Loans - The last option is Consolidate Loans. This totals all of the selected loans and creates one letter with this information. If this option is not selected, a separate letter will be created for each loan type.