Help - Glossary
The following glossary listing contains definitions/descriptions of terms that are related to Federal student aid Title IV programs and/or acronyms..
The terms are listed according to alphabetical order. You can select the All link to view a listing of all of the glossary terms, or you may select the letter equal to the first letter of the term.
Glossary
T-Account
A short method accountants use to illustrate ledger accounts, alleviating the tedious reproduction of accounts as they actually appear in an institution's ledger. Accountants use the T-account as a worksheet to check the debit and credit balances of individual ledger accounts and to trace posting of transactions to the various ledger accounts.Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN)
A unique nine-digit number assigned by the Internal Revenue Service used by ED to identify organizations receiving funds from the Department.Teacher Shortage Area
A federally designated geographic area, grade level, academic, instructional, subject matter, or discipline that has been classified as a shortage area as defined by the Department.Three-Day Rule
Schools operating under advanced payment method must disburse federal cash no later than three business days following its receipt.Third Party Servicer
An individual or organization that enters into a contract (written or otherwise) with a school to administer any aspect of the institution's FSA participation.Title IV Student Financial Aid
See Federal Student Aid.Transfer
To help meet their student's need, schools may transfer funds from certain Campus-Based programs into certain other Campus-Based programs. In all cases, funds transferred that are unexpended at the end of the award year must be transferred back to the original program, and all transfers must be reported on the FISAP.(NSLDS) Transfer Student Monitoring Process
The four-step process FAAs use to automatically receive information from the NSLDS database pertaining to the federal student aid eligibility of midyear transfer students. The four steps to the process are: Inform, Monitor, Alert and Review.Transaction Number
Transaction numbers show the number of times the student's FAFSA information has been processed. New transactions can be caused by corrections made by either the student or a school, or they can be caused by automatic functions in the U.S. Department of Education, such as a change in the reported loan information and status with the National Student Loan Data system (NSLDS). Each time a FAFSA or a correction to a SAR/ISIR is processed, a transaction number is created. The transaction number is located in the lower right corner on each page of a paper Student Aid Report (SAR), right after the Social Security Number (SSN) and the first two letters of the last name.Trial Balance
A comparison of debit, credit, and account balances. A successful trial balance for the FSA programs is a confirmation that accounts receivable, program expenditures, and cash balances equal the amounts authorized. The purpose of a trial balance is to check that the dollar amounts of debits and credits are equal in the general ledger accounts. This is a useful tool for catching many types of errors, but having a trial balance in balance, in and of itself, is not an assurance that other accounting errors haven’t been made. Taking a trial balance should be performed at least monthly.Tuition
The amount of money charged for instruction and use of educational facilities such as libraries.
