Scholarships, awards, and academic research assistantships
The university frequently makes payments to students that can be categorized in a number of different ways, depending on the purpose.
For more information on reimbursing students for expenses paid while conducting UVic activities, refer to the webpage reimbursement for expenses paid while conducting UVic business.
Depending on the purpose of the payment, payments to students may be considered as employment income or as a student award. For additional information and a flowchart to help determine the appropriate payment type, refer to the webpage payments to students - employment or student award.
All scholarship, award, and bursary payments will be reported annually on a T4A. These CRA tax reporting forms are issued in February of each year following the year payments were made. Any amounts paid will be reported in the scholarship box.
Graduate students can be set up to receive monthly scheduled payments for Academic Research Assistantships (ARAs), which were formally referred to as monthly scheduled grad support using the academic research assistantship payment request form. These payments are considered to be a scholarship and are outside of an employer-employee relationship. Any duties performed in return for these payments form part of the student’s graduate degree program requirements.
These monthly payments will be made on the closest business day on or before the 18th of each month. In order to facilitate payment, the form must be received by Financial Services by the 7th working day of the processing month and submitted via the online submission form.
When ARA forms are submitted, an encumbrance is set up to commit these funds for the remainder of the specified term. Once the encumbrance is set up, the encumbrance number should be included on any modification or cancellation paperwork. The encumbrance number can be found in FAST by referring to the data in the PO # column of the Transaction Detail report - formatted as E000xxxx.
If the funding source (FAST account) isn’t confirmed or is expected to change, ARA payments should be submitted as one-time scholarship payments. Once the funding source is finalized, the **form** can be submitted to indicate the future-dated payment schedule. This prevents additional resources
to cancel and re-establish encumbrances.
For scheduled monthly payments to undergrad students, use the monthly scheduled scholarships - undergrad form.
Undergraduate students can be set up to receive monthly scheduled payments using the monthly scheduled scholarships - undergrad form. These payments are considered to be a scholarship and are outside of an employer-employee relationship. Any duties performed in return for these payments form part of the student’s undergraduate degree program requirements.
These monthly payments will be made on the closest business day on or before the 18th of each month. In order to facilitate payment, the form must be received by Financial Services by the 7th working day of the processing month and submitted via the online submission form.
When this form is submitted, an encumbrance is set up to commit these funds for the remainder of the specified term. Once the encumbrance is set up, the encumbrance number should be included on any modification or cancellation paperwork. The encumbrance number can be found in FAST by referring to the data in the PO # column of the Transaction Detail report - formatted as E000xxxx.
If the funding source (FAST account) isn’t confirmed or is expected to change, monthly scholarship payments to undergrad students should be submitted as one-time scholarship payments. Once the funding source is finalized, the monthly scheduled scholarships - undergrad form can be submitted to indicate the future-dated payment schedule. This prevents additional resources to cancel and re-establish encumbrances.
For scheduled monthly payments to graduate students, referred to as Academic Research Assistantships (ARA), use the academic research assistantship payment request form.
Students may also receive non-recurring, one-time scholarship payments. This type of payment is submitted on an online payment request form.
Instead of completing several payment request forms for the same type of payment for different payees, these requests can be submitted via spreadsheet with accompanying approvals. As a general guideline, if you are requesting five or more of a similar payment type that doesn't have supporting receipts, it can be more efficient to use the bulk payment upload process. For more information refer to the bulk payment upload webpage.
Forms:
Resources:
