After the Clarity integration is enabled, award data and application milestones flow automatically into Finalsite Enrollment, ensuring your student records and contracts stay accurate in real-time. This guide explains how to manage these auto-populated fields, interpret application statuses for single and multi-household families, and ensure financial aid amounts are correctly reflected on your enrollment contracts.
In this Article
- Clarity Fields
- Clarity Application Status Definitions
- Managing Financial Aid Applications for Multi-household Families
Clarity Fields
The Clarity integration will automatically create four primary fields as well as individual award fields (for schools utilizing individual awards) in the Finalsite Enrollment system. The fields will automatically update with the most current data directly from Clarity.
Key Details about Clarity Fields:
- Data Integrity: To maintain Clarity as the single source of truth, these fields are view-only in Finalsite (located under the Enrollment tab on the contact record).
- Controlled Access: These fields are internal and admin-facing by default, allowing you to control whether to expose the data to families through specific forms or communications.
- Field Search: The Clarity fields will automatically be set to Searchable within their Field Settings when the integration is set up, so you can pull these fields into a search as search criteria or display them as columns within your results. Learn more about building searches by visiting "Search Overview."
- Display Options: You can also add these fields to the Contact Widget to display them at the top of your student records.
Notifying Families of Their Financial Aid Awards
Once the awards have been finalized, the school can decide how to share the award amounts with their families, such as sending a notification from Clarity, emailing or generating letters from Finalsite, or asking families to complete their contracts. No automated notification will be sent to families once awards have been determined, so it is up to the school to communicate with their families.
Primary Fields
Following the successful integration with Clarity, four primary fields will become available within the system:
- Clarity Awarded Amount
- Clarity Application Status
- Clarity Application is Multi-Household
- Clarity Enrollment Status
Clarity Awarded Amount
This displays the total amount of aid the student is receiving. The amount will populate automatically once a decision has been made and finalized by the school in Clarity.
For schools using the Enrollment module, this field will populate the financial aid amount on the student's contract automatically, but only if individual award fields are not being used. The system is designed to show either the total award or individual awards on a contract to prevent duplicating the financial aid amount. Learn more about individual award fields in the “Individual Award Fields” section below.
Avoiding Duplicate Awards
If your school is using the Financial Aid Amount Granted field in Finalsite Enrollment, please be aware:
- This field does not sync with the Clarity Awarded Amount field or individual award fields.
- If the Clarity and Financial Aid Amount Granted fields are used together, all amounts will appear in the contract, which may result in duplicate financial aid awards.
To prevent this, we strongly recommend discontinuing use of the Financial Aid Amount Granted field once the Clarity integration is enabled.
Clarity Application Status
This is the status of the student's financial aid application. The status will appear within the field on the admin side and on the Parent Portal checklist item for families. See status definitions in the "Clarity Application Status Definitions" section below.
Clarity Application is Multi-Household
This field will be set to Yes in Finalsite Enrollment if a student has more than one household contributing to their education, and the parents/guardians complete separate financial aid applications in Clarity.
Clarity Application Status for Multi-household Families
Since there is only one checklist item and one "Clarity Application Status" field per student, Finalsite Enrollment will display the lowest application status between the two parents/guardians when the Clarity Application is Multi-Household field is set to Yes. Learn more about this in the "Managing Financial Aid Applications for Multi-household Families" section below.
Clarity Enrollment Status
Below is a list of enrollment statuses used in Clarity that will populate in this field:
- CURRENT_STUDENT_APPLICANT
- CURRENT_STUDENT_OFFERED
- RE_ENROLLED
- ATTRITION
- WAIT_POOL
- PROSPECT_APPLICANT
- PROSPECT_OFFERED
- PROSPECT_ENROLLED
- HOUSEHOLD_DECLINED
- SCHOOL_DECLINED
- APPLICATION_CANCELLED
Individual Award Fields
If you are using individual awards, additional fields will be created for each specific award type defined in Clarity.
- These fields populate their own Contract Fees automatically in Finalsite Enrollment.
- Each amount awarded to a student will appear as a separate tuition discount on the student’s contract.
- The names of the fields and contract fees will match the names of the awards set up in Clarity.
- All individual fields will be visible under the Enrollment tab on the student record.
- The Clarity Awarded Amount field will continue to populate with the total awarded amount on the student’s record, but will not appear on the student contract if individual award fields are being used.
Clarity Application Status Definitions
As families progress through Clarity's financial aid application process, the application status will update and will be visible to the parent/guardian on Finalsite Enrollment's checklist. The status will also be visible to admins on the student record in the Clarity Application Status field. Below are the statuses and their definitions.
Not Started
Before an application is started for a student, the family will see two buttons on their checklist:
- Go to Clarity: This button will take them to the Clarity site to create an account and start an application.
- Financial Aid Not Needed: This button is for families that will not be going through the process to apply for financial aid. When selected, the checklist item will be marked as complete.
In Progress
In Progress status is when the student's application is underway. The family will see a Continue Application button on the checklist, which will take them to their family dashboard in Clarity. They will also see a message that says "Your Clarity application is currently in progress."
Application Complete
This status means that the family submitted the application and is pending school review. When the application is complete, the checklist item will be marked as complete, and families will see a View Status in Clarity button, which will take them to the status page in Clarity. They will also see a message that says "Your application is complete. Please wait to hear from the school."
This status may change depending on additional document requirements by the school.
Managing Financial Aid Applications for Multi-household Families
If a student has more than one household contributing to their education, Clarity makes it easy for each household to complete their own financial aid application.
How It Works
- Families can indicate a second household during the financial aid application process.
- If selected, Clarity will prompt them to enter the second household’s email address. Providing an email address is optional.
- The family member in the second household will receive an email to complete their own financial aid application.
- The second household does not need to receive the email to submit their application and can apply separately at any time.
Why Two Applications?
Each household completes a separate application because each parent/guardian may have a different financial situation. This means:
- Each household has its own application status in Clarity (e.g., one may be Application Complete, the other still In Progress).
- Clarity tracks both applications separately, but Finalsite only shows one status in the Clarity Application Status field per student.
What Status Will I See?
Clarity always shows the lowest status across both households. For example:
| Household 1 | Household 2 | Status in Finalsite |
| Application Complete | In Progress | In Progress |
| Application Complete | Application Complete | Application Complete |
Even if one parent has submitted their application, the checklist will show “In Progress” until both are complete.
If you're reviewing a student's financial aid status and see "In Progress," it may mean one household has submitted while the other has not. You can check Clarity directly to confirm which household is outstanding.
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