New Emergency Loan eForm Delivers 24-Hour Service to UC Berkeley Students

BERKELEY, CA – One of the University of California, Berkeley’s more popular eForms is the Emergency Loan (eLoan) Request form. With over 5,000 eLoan forms processed to-date, it’s a great example of the powerful, efficient, intelligent automation that UC Berkeley has delivered with GT eForms within their PeopleSoft Campus Solutions applications.

The eLoan form enables students to apply online 24/7 for emergency loans. With built-in logic, the form can immediately determine eligibility or determine if the request requires further consideration from a Financial Aid counselor. Once approved (either automatically by the form or via a counselor), the form updates PeopleSoft and triggers the disbursement of funds by check or EFT. For co-payable applications, payment is made to the student’s account immediately. EFT payments are available within the student’s personal account in a few days. For living expense applications, a check is automatically processed and sent to the student.

Students can check the status of their requests via Student Self Service anytime and automated emails notify the applicant, approvers, and administrators of the application status. Invoices for approved applications are immediately posted to the student’s account.

The form has also had considerable impact on the University’s financial aid counselors’ ability to respond to students’ requests. Since the form can automatically approve qualifying requests, counselors can focus their attention on requests that involve exceptions. When exceptions are flagged by the form, it automatically routes to a queue for counselors to review. Counselors can assess and process the applications and communicate with applicants via email rather than having to meet in-person.

Additional configuration options within the eForm allow for term roll-over and enable counselors to easily manage changes to loan amounts, limits and due dates. Integrated check printing functionality has significantly reduced the time spent by eLoan staff registering the checks manually in the bank site. The form triggers a positive pay file to be sent to the bank to register the check in their system every time a check is printed. Built-in reporting tracks the check transactions (print, void, stop payment, etc) rather than the old method of having staff manually enter transaction data in a shared Google document.

You can find additional detail and screenshots of UC Berkeley’s Emergency Loan eForm here: https://sis.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/emergency_loans_studentguide.081518_0.pdf.