Scholarships

Seminaries fund students from donations, endowments, and staff-tuition benefits, and they need that generosity to be traceable — every dollar forgiven should be tied to a named fund, stay within a budget, and be reviewable each term. The Scholarships module separates the policy (a reusable scholarship you offer) from the grant (one student's award on one enrollment), computes the discount at billing time rather than baking it into payer splits, and keeps a running check that recipients still meet the conditions they were given the money under.

Overview

There are two layers, much like graduation requirements:

Scholarships         — the template: type, program, discounts per fee,
   (the policy)         funding, granting & retention criteria
        │  grant to a student's enrollment
        ▼
Scholarship Award    — one student's award on one Program Enrollment, with a
   (the grant)          snapshot of the terms and its own approval lifecycle
        │  at invoice time
        ▼
Discount applied on the student's tuition invoices, booked to the fund

• A Scholarship is the reusable offer — "Merit Award for the MDiv, 50% off tuition, funded from the Scholarship Fund." You define it once.
• A Scholarship Award grants that offer to one student's enrollment. It snapshots the discount terms at the moment of granting, so later edits to the template never silently change awards already given.
• The discount is computed when invoices are raised, not stored on payer rows. The student always owns 100% of their own share; the forgiven portion is invoiced to the seminary's scholarship customer and booked against the fund.

The scholarship template

Create a Scholarship for each distinct offer. Its fields fall into four groups:

• Identity — a name, a Type (Merit, Need, Work-Study, Staff, or Other), and the Program it applies to. Active controls whether it can be granted at all; Show on Portal lets students see and apply for it themselves.
• Discounts per fee — one row per fee category, each either a Percent of that fee or a Flat amount. This is what determines how much is forgiven.
• Funding — the Cost Center the forgiveness is booked against, and Budget Slots, the maximum number of awards that may be active at once.
• Granting criteria — the minimum GPA and minimum total credits a student must have to qualify, plus free-text requirements / notes.
• Retention criteria — the minimum credits per term and minimum GPA to retain the award once granted (see Retention review).

The scholarship award

A Scholarship Award is one grant to one Program Enrollment. When you pick the scholarship, its discount rows are copied onto the award's Award Terms — this snapshot is what billing reads, so the award is insulated from later template changes. The award also carries an effective window (Effective From / Effective To); the discount only applies while today falls inside it.

One award per enrollment. While an award for an enrollment is active or still in progress, you cannot create a second one for the same enrollment — only a rejected or ended award frees the slot.

The approval lifecycle

Awards move through a workflow:

Draft ──Submit──► Submitted ──Send for Review──► Under Review
  │                   │  └──Approve──► Active        │
  │                   └──Reject──► Rejected          ├──Approve──► Active
  └──Grant Directly──► Active                        └──Reject──► Rejected

Active ──Suspend──► Suspended ──Reactivate──► Active
Active / Suspended ──End──► Ended

• Students can Submit a request (from the portal); Registrars drive every approval step.
• A registrar can skip the queue with Grant Directly (Draft → Active).
• An award only ever bills while it is Active and inside its effective window. Suspended, Ended, and Rejected awards never discount an invoice.

How the discount reaches the invoice

When tuition is billed, the system looks for the enrollment's single Active award (within its window). For each fee on the invoice it then applies the matching Award Term:

• Percent — that percentage of the student's share of the fee.
• Flat — the fixed amount, capped across the term so several course invoices in one term never forgive more than the flat value once.

The forgiven amount is never more than the student actually owes. The student's own payer percentage is untouched; the discount is a separate, fully-discounted invoice to the scholarship customer, booked to the fund's cost center so it can be reported on.

Budget and availability

Funding is governed by the cost center and Budget Slots:

• Set an ERPNext Budget against the scholarship's cost center for the fiscal year to cap total forgiveness. No budget configured means unlimited.
• Budget Slots caps how many awards can be active at once.
• A scholarship is "open" only while it has budget and slots left — this is what gates whether students may apply for it on the portal.

Portal applications

If the global Seminary Settings → allow portal scholarships toggle is on and a scholarship's Show on Portal is ticked, an eligible student sees it on the portal and can apply with a short comment. A student may apply only when they have an active enrollment in the scholarship's program, the scholarship is still open, and they don't already hold or await an award on that enrollment. Applying creates a Submitted award for a registrar to review.

Retention review

Scholarships usually come with strings attached, and the system checks them for you. A daily review compares each active award against its template's retention criteria (minimum credits per term, minimum GPA to retain). Awards that fall short are flagged — At Risk or Under Review — and the registrars are notified, so a human decides whether to suspend or continue the award. Nothing is suspended automatically.

Reports

• Scholarship Budget vs Given — how much of each fund's budget has been committed this fiscal year.
• Students at Scholarship Risk — recipients currently failing their retention criteria.
• Active Scholarships lists — who currently holds what.

Day-to-day for staff

Task	Where
Offer a new scholarship	New Scholarship (template) with its discounts and funding
Let students apply themselves	Tick Show on Portal + Seminary Settings → allow portal scholarships
Grant an award directly	New Scholarship Award → Grant Directly
Review a student request	Open the Submitted award → Approve / Send for Review / Reject
Pause an award	Suspend it (it stops discounting immediately)
Close out an award	End it
Check a fund's remaining budget	Scholarship Budget vs Given report
Find recipients who slipped	Students at Scholarship Risk report

Related

• Enrollment — how tuition is billed, where the discount lands.
• Programs — scholarships are scoped to a program and its fees.
• Initial Setup — the Fee Categories a scholarship discounts.
• User Roles — who may grant and approve awards.