What’s New and Next at FACTS: Q1 Product Roadmap Update

We believe the best ideas come from listening to our customers. Your feedback has been instrumental in shaping our products, which is why we’re so excited to keep you informed with our new quarterly product roadmap updates. We’re looking forward to giving you a behind-the-scenes look at what’s new, what’s on the way, and what’s coming down the road across our product suite. Here’s your first update for 2025.

Product Updates:

• Student Information System
• Application & Enrollment
• Grant & Aid
• Payment Plans & Billing

What’s New with Student Information System

Security Updates:
We’ve added two new staff security permissions which allow for more nuanced data permissions.

• School List All – Allows the user to assign a staff member to any school in the district.
• School Information – Allows the user access to a staff member’s school information on the staff security screen.

Maiden Name:
Maiden name is now available in Family Individual Demographics and Staff Demographics.

What’s Near with Student Information System

MFA:
Multifactor Authentication (MFA) is currently available for all users accessing Tuition Management and Financial Aid, and we are in the process of rolling it out to SIS school and parent users. We expect MFA to be available for all SIS school and parent users by August!

There are a few changes that will occur as part of the update to add Multifactor Authentication to the SIS sign in process. Here’s what you need to know.

What’s Changing:

• MFA will be available as an option for staff and parents; however, students will not be prompted to use MFA.
• Users will have the option to enroll with email or an authenticator app.
• MFA will be optional, meaning users will have the ability to bypass setting it up and log in. We will continue to prompt the user every time they log in until they enroll.

Username/Password Management:

• Schools will no longer create or update usernames or passwords for staff or parents. Users will create and manage their own usernames and passwords.
• Schools will retain the ability to create usernames and passwords for student accounts that access the Family Portal.
• All users with an account will be required to have at least one email address, which must be entered in the “Email #1” field
• Usernames will need to be unique across all of FACTS. Today, usernames are unique to your specific school. If the existing username is not unique, the user will be prompted to update it the next time they login.
• Password requirements will be streamlined across all FACTS products and will no longer have an expiration date.

Dashboard Builder:
Currently in beta, the new dashboard builder allows you to create custom PowerBI dashboards. Schools may also enjoy selecting from various data options to create their own report. Using filter options, schools can drill down their data to get exactly what they need! We plan to have a full release of the new dashboard builder in Q2 2025.

We’re always listening, learning, and improving—and it’s all because of you. Your feedback continues to guide our work, and we’re excited to keep sharing updates as we roll out new features. Stay tuned for more to come!

What’s Next with Student Information System

Here’s a sneak peek at some things we’re exploring and building behind the scenes. These updates are on our roadmap, but they might take a little time—good things are worth the wait! Want to share your thoughts or stay in the loop in the meantime? Join the conversation in FACTS^SPACE.

Scheduling:
We are doing a large comprehensive update to scheduling that will be a theme over the next year. This project will include an updated interface to make scheduling more intuitive for school staff, added features such as teacher recommendations and the ability to mass update classes, and improvements to reporting to make it easier to manage scheduling conflicts and ensure your school scheduling is complete, along with other enhancements to courses and classes that make up a vital part of the school scheduling process. This will be an ongoing project, but we will be releasing features as they become available! We plan to roll this out in phases:

• Phase 1 – Templates and Patterns Configuration Enhancements
• Phase 2 – Course Requests
• Phase 3 – Courses, Classes, and Rooms

Here is a sneak peek at some of the plans for Templates and Patterns!

District Management Tool:
For our dioceses and districts, we’re creating a new system to help you better manage all your schools. Our first focus will be migrating the functionality from our current DART system with a few new improvements and will continue to update with more robust functionality over the next couple years. Reporting, security, configuration, district wide IDs, and more are heading your way!

Events Label Change:
Thank you for the large amount of feedback you gave us in FACTS^SPACE on this! We have changed the default label in events from “Not interested” to “Not at this time.”

What’s Near with Application & Enrollment

Inquiry Triggers for Email Series Manager: We will be adding Inquiry Triggers into our Email Series Manager that allow you to automate parent reach-out. This will include the option for parents to opt out of marketing emails, ensuring they have control over the communications they receive.

What’s Next with Application & Enrollment

New Look and Experience for Inquiry & Application:
We are modernizing the Inquiry and Application experience! Over the next year, we will be transforming the look and feel of our platform to provide a more modern and visually appealing experience. But that’s not all—our focus is also on enhancing the user experience with improved, intuitive, and streamlined workflows. Expect a smoother, more efficient process that will make your interactions with our system easier and more enjoyable.

Here is a sneak peek at the design:

What’s New with Grant & Aid Assessment

SIS Enrollment Status & New/Returning Status in Reporting:
You can now add the Application & Enrollment Status and the New/Returning status from the SIS directly into financial aid reports! Whether you want to see how a family is progressing through their admissions process or quickly identify returning new to aid families, that information is now at your fingertips.

IRS Integration:
With IRS Integration, applicants can now securely retrieve their tax transcripts directly from the IRS, eliminating the need to manually scan or upload financial documents. This not only streamlines the application process for families, but also reduces administrative work for schools and enhances data security. For more information, including a video and step by step brochure for families go to: https://factsmgt.com/grant-aid-assessment-irs-integration/

Student Level Internal Tracking Fields as Smart Tags in Notices:
Our Notices, including award and denial notices, now have even more customization options. Internal tracking fields can be added as smart tags, allowing you to include dynamic content in your notices.

Remaining Need Reporting Field:
The remaining need reporting field is the FACTS calculated need minus any reserved awards for that student. This new field is available in any of our custom reports.

What’s Near with Grant & Aid Assessment

Supplemental Document Enhancements:
We have two exciting enhancements on their way for our supplemental document feature, which allows you to collect extra documents outside of the FACTS collected and reviewed tax documents.

Both enhancements add more options to conditionally request documents so only families needing those documents see them as a requirement. You will be able to conditionally request documents based on:

• Family Not Filing Taxes (DNF Status): Request documents from families not filing taxes, such as an attestation of non-filing.
• Internal Tracking Fields selection: This allows you to tie a document requirement to a checkbox or drop-down option for internal tracking, allowing you to add document requirements after reviewing a family’s submitted application. You will be able to leverage all the tools associated with internal tracking, such as being able to assign the documents in mass within reports.

Turn Off W2 Wage Adjustment:
Currently, our system automatically adjusts a family’s income based on the most recent W2 when paired with a prior year tax return. Some users have requested the ability to turn off this automatic adjustment, allowing them to receive a more recent year’s W2 without it affecting the family’s assessment. This will now be an optional setting.

What’s Next with Grant & Aid Assessment

More IRS Integration Options:
We will be adding the ability to get the most recent year tax return, W2s, and a co-applicant experience to the IRS integration. We’ll release these as the come available but will have all options added by September.

Turn Off Tax Return Override:
Currently, when we receive the newest tax return from a family, our system automatically updates the assessment with the new values. However, some schools and organizations have requested the ability to still require the prior year tax return, even if the new return has been received, to keep all family data consistent with the same tax return year. This new feature will allow you to turn off the automatic override and maintain the requirement for the prior year tax return.

Internal Tracking Fields in Award Notification Reporting:
You will be able to add internal tracking fields to the award and denial notification reporting, enhancing your ability to sort and filter and assign the appropriate award and denial message for students.

Returning User Experience:
We currently streamline some of the application experience for returning families by prefilling demographic and student information (including automatically increasing the student’s grade), but we are always looking at families’ experiences and thinking of how we can make it even better. This project will be a multi-phase initiative, so we will keep you updated on our plans and progress.

What’s New with Payment Plans & Billing

Ability to Apply Mass Corrections:
Schools now have the ability to post payment plan corrections for multiple agreements in one mass balance adjustment process rather than entering them all individually. A mass correction can be entered when a user selects agreements and is in open column entry mode. They will be given two different mass correction options: charge correction or credit correction.

What’s Near with Payment Plans & Billing

3rd Party Payment at Institution:
We are adding the ability to record a Payment at Institution from a third party, such as payments from school choice programs. This will give you better reporting on the money received from school choice programs and ensure the parents’ payment summary is accurate, as it will not include these payments.

What’s Next with Payment Plans & Billing

Auto-Replenish Prepay Accounts:
We will be working on adding the ability for families to have their Prepay Account automatically refreshed from a saved account when the balance reaches a certain threshold. Love this idea and want the most up-to-date news? “Like” the idea in FACTS^SPACE and you’ll be among the first to know!

Mass Transfer of Funds & Credits:
We are excited to announce that we will soon be adding the capability to transfer funds and credits in mass. Previously, we introduced this feature for balances due and received valuable feedback indicating a need for similar functionality for funds and credits.