PELL or Loan Disbursement Blocked by "Insufficient Units" Error

Issue

When attempting to add a student's PELL grant or loan to a disbursement batch, the system returns an "Insufficient Units" error and the disbursement does not process. This occurs even in cases where the student has met or exceeded the required earned hours, or where it is the student's very first payment period and no hours should yet be required.

Common Scenarios

• First-time disbursement blocked: The student is a first-time borrower or has a first-payment-period award, but the system requires units that have not yet been earned because enrollment just began.
• Mid-program disbursement blocked despite sufficient hours: The student has earned enough clock or credit hours for the next payment period, but the system still shows insufficient units. This often occurs when the student's enrollment hours or schedule changed during the program (e.g., moved from 35-hour to 30-hour weekly enrollment), affecting how cumulative hours are counted.
• Wrong award year packaging: The student was originally packaged out of the prior award year (e.g., 25/26 instead of 26/27). When the correct award year FE is created, the units check runs against enrollment data that does not yet align.

Steps to Resolve

1. Confirm the student's earned hours in the SIS match what is expected for the payment period. Check both the hours on the enrollment record and the hours reported by the attendance system (Trajecsys or equivalent).
2. Confirm the funding estimate is packaged against the correct award year. If the student was packaged out of the wrong year, see the related article on correcting award year on a funding estimate before proceeding.
3. For first-payment disbursements where no hours should yet be required, verify the student's first-time borrower status and loan origination date in Campus Ivy.
4. If the hours appear correct and the award year is confirmed, submit a support ticket to CI Customer Care with:
   • Student name and ID
   • FE number
   • The exact error message displayed
   • Total earned hours as shown in the SIS
   • Whether this is a first payment, second payment, or subsequent period
   • Whether the student's enrollment hours changed at any point
5. The Portico support team will review the hours calculation and, if appropriate, process the disbursement manually or correct the underlying unit count.

Important Notes

• Do not create a new or duplicate FE to work around this error. Submit the ticket with the existing FE number so the team can investigate the root cause.
• If the student changed enrollment intensity (clock hours per week) during the program, include both the original and updated enrollment records in the ticket. Hour accumulation rules differ depending on the schedule at time of each attendance period.