Federal Student Aid has added additional volumes to the 2027–28 FAFSA Specifications Guide.
Initial versions of Volume 2, 3, 6, 7, and 9 have been added. In addition, there are updates to Volume 4A, the Excel version of the ISIR record layout, Volume 4B, and Volume 8.
The FAFSA Specifications Guide is designed to meet the reference needs of financial aid administrators, programmers, data processing staff, and other FSA partners who want to incorporate electronic FAFSA functionality into their institutional systems and communicate electronically with the FAFSA Processing System. It includes FAFSA-related processing information and guidance in a multi-volume resource.
FSA will continue to post revised versions of volumes throughout the processing cycle to implement new requirements or address issues in earlier published drafts. To assist in tracking these changes, FSA includes a “Change History Table” in each volume to outline changes made to the volume over time, after its initial publication.
Current available volumes:
- Introduction
- Volume 1 – Summary of Changes
- Volume 2 – FPS Schedule and Getting Help
- Volume 3 – Electronic Data Exchange and FAFSA Processing
- Volume 4A – Record Layouts
- Volume 4B – Processing Codes
- Volume 5 – Edits and Rejects
- Volume 6 – ISIR Guide
- Volume 7- Comment Codes
- Volume 8 – Agency Matches
- Volume 9 – Testing