Federal Student Aid has issued a reminder to institutions that the Common Origination and Disbursement (COD) System has entered a peak processing period for the 2026–27 award year. Schools should be prepared for the possibility of longer processing times as activity increases.
Key COD Processing Reminders
FSA highlighted several items institutions should keep in mind during this peak period:
- Origination and disbursement responses are processed throughout the day and are often sent to schools within hours. During this peak period, batch processing may take longer. In the unlikely event batch processing takes longer than 24 hours, the FSA Partner and School Relations Center will contact affected schools on the next business day. Note: Mondays and Tuesdays are the heaviest processing days. If your school has system flexibility in scheduling batch submissions, you 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, in the unlikely event system-generated response processing takes longer than 24 hours, the FSA Partner and School Relations Center will contact affected schools on the next business.
- 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.
Institutions should keep these processing timelines in mind when planning COD submissions and reviewing expected response times during this busy period.
For complete details, institutions should review FSA’s 2026–27 COD System Peak Processing Reminders (COD-26-06) announcement.