In January, the Department of Education commences its peak processing period for the 2025–26 award year. To assist schools with planning and processing, FSA offers the following reminders:
- Origination and disbursement responses are processed throughout the day and are often sent to schools within hours. Batch processing may take longer during this peak period. The FSA Partner and School Relations Center will contact affected schools on the next business day in the event that batch processing takes longer than 24 hours.
- Note: Mondays and Tuesdays are the heaviest processing days. If a school has flexibility in scheduling batch submissions, it may want to consider sending data later in the week.
- All system-generated responses (see the full list in Volume 2, Section 2 of the COD Technical Reference) are processed once a day at 2:30 a.m. Eastern time (ET) for activity that occurred the preceding day. As with batches, the FSA Partner and School Relations Center will contact affected schools on the next business day in the unlikely event system-generated response processing takes longer than 24 hours.
- Most schools may submit actual disbursement records (Disbursement Release Indicator (DRI) equals “True”) up to seven calendar days in advance of the disbursement date. This applies to all award types.
If you have questions, contact the FSA Partner and School Relations Center at 1-800-848-0978. The contact center is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern time, Monday through Friday. You may also email CODSupport@ed.gov.
SOURCE: (COD-26-01) 2025–26 COD System Peak Processing Reminders