Student Payment Guidance - FAQs

When a department wants to issue a scholarship, grant, or fellowship that is not being funded by the FSU Foundation, or when a department wants to issue a payment to a student to pay a charge or reimburse the student for the payment of a charge on the MyFSU account, the department should use the Departmental Student Payments form and the Departmental Students Payments Addendum.

When processing an award through the FS4U (FSU Foundation) system, compensating the student for services rendered to the University of an employment nature, or paying a student research participant (i.e. a human subject who participates in research by being the target of observation, interaction or intervention by researchers), the form should not be used.

Departments should follow the Process Calendar to ensure all payments or stipends not disbursed by financial aid are processed within the appropriate timeframe. The Departmental Student Payment form must be submitted to ctl-studentpayments@fsu.edu by all dates noted in purple on the calendar to ensure the payment or stipend is processed by the DSP Processing Date. The Office of Student Finance will contact the department if there are any unexpected delays or issues with your request.

Forms should be submitted once each semester, preferably before early disbursement of financial aid to ensure aid packages for recipients are updated to prevent over-awarding.

No. Departments should keep any supporting documentation on file for their own records, but only the form is required for payment.

This is the term in which the payment should be processed.

Yes, departments can submit one request for both recurring payments and a single payment to pay off any charge on a student(s) account. Refer to the Sample Forms section on the Student Payment Form and Instructions website.

Multiple Contract and Grant funding sources can be combined on the same form, however they must all be within the same department ID and they must be funds managed by SRA OR funds managed by FSURF (i.e. you cannot have SRA and FSURF managed projects on a single addendum).

 

Forms submitted by dates in purple on the Process Calendar will be processed by the Office of Student Finance on the next DSP Processing Date as noted on the Process Calendar. This means that payments will be applied to charges on this date. Refunds for stipend payments will be initiated on this date and will be available in bank accounts in 3-5 business days.

Note that awards that are disbursed by the Office of Financial Aid or Payroll will not follow this calendar. Awards disbursed by Payroll will follow the standard pay cycles outlined in the Human Resources Payroll Calendars and Schedules website.

Awards disbursed by the Office of Financial Aid can be disbursed as early as 10 days before the start of the term if the form was submitted thirty days or more prior to the start of a term. Forms submitted within ten days before the start of the term will likely be processed by the end of the second week of the term. Forms submitted after the second week of the term will be paid within seven to 10 business days.

Yes. Departments will see an expense recorded to their journals as either an SF journal or a PAY journal for the amount of the payment made in the department and fund (and project if necessary) provided. Additionally, departments can request access to the Departmental Student Payments Log In Sharepoint to check the status of the request. To request access to the Departmental Student Payments Log In Sharepoint, click here.

International and Domestic students fall into different tax reporting requirements and must be treated separately. Payments to students who are classified as non-resident aliens for tax purposes must be reported to the IRS on tax form 1042S and could be subject to federal withholding tax for any scholarship amount greater than the student’s Qualified Tuition and Related Expenses.

Payroll reviews all requests to confirm the student’s tax status. Payments for students who are deemed non-exempt for tax purposes will have as much of the payment applied to QTRE as possible. If it is determined that the payment exceeds QTRE, the payee will be asked if they want to gross-up the payment to cover the student’s potential tax liability or pass that liability on to the student.

If the liability passes to the student, their payment will be reduced by the value of the tax reported on a 1042S. Account balances owed to FSU will be reported to Payroll. Payroll will return any funds, after taxes, to the Office of Student Finance for application to charges owed via Payroll Deduction. Any funds remaining after application to QTRE, taxes, and charges due will be paid to the student by Payroll.

The Office of Student Finance will route any Departmental Student Payment Requests on a fund code that begins with 1 (E&G) to the Budget Office and Provost’s Office for review and approval. If an issue arises during this review, a team member from those offices will reach out to the department. Please note that Budget Office and Provost’s Office review may delay processing of the payment request. Departments can check the status of the payment request by reviewing the Departmental Student Payments Log in Sharepoint.

The Office of Student Finance will route any payments on fund codes 520-540 or 550-555 to Sponsored Research Administration (SRA) for review and approval. If the payment is on fund codes 544 or 545, the Office of Student Finance routes the form to the FSU Research Foundation (FSURF) for review and approval. Please note that SRA and FSURF review may delay the processing of the payment request. Departments can check the status of the payment request by reviewing the Departmental Student Payments Log in Sharepoint.

There are four expense accounts that should be used for the vast majority of all student payments funded by departments’ or projects’ budgets. Depending on the nature of the recipient, these are:

• 741958: Stipend - Recurring
• 741958: Stipend - One Time
• 741957: Payment - Tuition
• 741580: Payment - Health Insurance
• 742201: Payment - Housing
• 742201: Payment - Dining
• 742201: Payment - Application Fee
• 742201: Payment - Bookstore
• 742201: Payment - Any Charges
• Item Type 851000000445: Non-Cash Award

b. Other expense accounts associated with student aid payments that are not paid by departments can be located in the Expense Account Dictionary here. In general, the account description for these expense accounts should begin with “Stdnt Aid”.

 

In the Campus Solutions system, all accounting transactions are represented by a unit of work called an item type. An item type represents the credit and debit side of a transaction and is a static 12-digit number that always represents the same transaction. This means that if you routinely pay a student a scholarship from Department 032104-120, for example, the same item type representing that transaction will be used every time. You can provide either the known item type or the chartfields (DeptID/Fund/Project) when completing the Departmental Student Payment Form.

Qualified Tuition and Related Expenses (or QTRE) are strictly defined fee categories charged by the University. These definitions come from the IRS and are used to determine whether payments made to students are reportable on various tax forms such as the 1098T or 1042S.

The answer depends on the method of processing. For a student to receive a payment through Financial Aid they must be enrolled in the term for which the payment is processed. If the payment is processed through Payroll or Accounts Payable as an honorarium, enrollment is not a factor. If the payment is processed through the Office of Student Finance, the student does not have to be enrolled but must have charges owed for the term noted on the Departmental Student Payment form. The Office of Student Finance can also process stipends for a term in which the student isn’t enrolled.

Awards processed through Financial Aid can be done retroactively but may have an impact on the student’s overall aid eligibility, which may cause them to have to return a portion of the aid received. Payments should always be made as early in the enrollment period as possible to avoid this issue. Payroll and the Office of Student Finance can also retroactively process awards after the term has ended.

Postdoctoral scholars are employees, not current students, and therefore are not included in the guidance. Postdoctoral scholars are appointed through OMNI HR and paid through the normal payroll process. For further information about postdoctoral scholars, please visit the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs website at https://opda.fsu.edu/.

Individuals awarded postdoctoral fellowships that have no current relationship to FSU otherwise are paid through Accounts Payable using the Vendor Authentication and Direct Deposit Form for Individuals. The Vendor Classification section should be marked Other with the description Deans Postdoc Fellowship, Provost Postdoc Fellowship, NSF Postdoc Fellowship, etc. In addition, the Vendor Type should be marked Other. As these individuals are neither students nor employees, Accounts Payable processing is allowed.

The first step in paying for a student’s health insurance is to determine if the student has a graduate assistantship appointment. Next, if you have confirmed that your student does not have a graduate assistantship appointment, submit the Departmental Student Payment form indicating in the “Purpose of Payment” field select Payment-Health Insurance. If your student does hold a graduate assistantship appointment, please see the FAQ directly below to address that situation.

Graduate students with qualifying assistantships are treated as students and employees. As a benefit to graduate students with qualifying assistantships and as negotiated through the Graduate Union, they are eligible to participate in FSU’s employer provided health insurance as a fringe benefit thereby receiving pre-tax deductions for health insurance contributions and the Health Insurance Subsidy Benefit. If your graduate student is enrolled in the Health Insurance Subsidy Benefit, they do not have qualifying health insurance charges to pay and are not eligible to be reimbursed or awarded for health insurance costs. You can check with the graduate school for information on your student’s status in the plan. You will be able to pay their health insurance for future terms if they do not enroll in the Health Insurance Subsidy Benefit plan, but any student enrolled in the plan for the current term cannot have their insurance paid or reimbursed by a department. Any award or reimbursement to an individual enrolled in the Health Insurance Subsidy Benefit subsidy benefit would be in direct violation of the negotiated terms with the Graduate Union and deem the reimbursement or award taxable compensation to the individual subject to federal income tax and payroll tax withholdings.

The answer depends on your department or the grant’s expectations for repayment. If the award is to be repaid regardless of the student’s refund status with the university, contact the Office of Student Finance to have the award returned to your department for the full or prorated amount. If the award is to remain applied to any charges the student incurs and any excess returned to the department, the Campus Solutions system will automatically apply the award to eligible charges and return the excess to the award.

To determine the proper method to process a travel reimbursement for a student, you must first determine the purpose of the payment.

If the travel award has a clear University business purpose; is reasonable and necessary; and is specifically authorized by fellowship, contract, or grant; the payment should be made via Concur. See FSU’s travel policy for more information.

If the travel award does not meet the criteria above, the travel award should be processed following the Student Payment Guidelines.

In general honorariums should not be paid to students. If you believe that a student payment is an honorarium and not a payment for service, please contact AccountsPayable@fsu.edu for further guidance.

The Office of Student Finance will perform a clawback on the funds to make the project or department whole and will collect from the student to a central university account, leaving the department and project unharmed. Reach out to Casey Eubank at ceubank@fsu.edu and Tina Bauldree at tbauldree@fsu.edu when a clawback needs to be performed.