The electronic Commonwealth Assistance Form (eCAF) is an online form used by domestic students to apply for a Commonwealth Supported Place (CSP) and/or Higher Education Loan Program (HELP) loan to assist with their training.
Required: eCAF Integration Set Up
A successful eCAF Integration is required for the following functions to work.
Within your Student Management System you are able to action eCAF requirements throughout the year alongside your student's studies. This can include submissions for eCAF details, eCAF Progressions and viewing returned eCAF error messages to be amended.
This article serves to show the required settings and areas that are needed to manage eCAF information for VET Student Loan (VSL)/TCSI reporting.
Note: Articles exist to assist with detailing some of the acronyms and terminology associated with the VET Student Loan (VSL)/TCSI reporting scheme, as well as information regarding the scheme itself
Within Your System
FEE-HELP eCAFs can be processed in two places: individually via the enrolment, and individually or in bulk via the eCAF Manager screen. The following details will cover the enrolment portion of these management tools.
For the Higher Ed tab to display within an enrolment, the following conditions must be met:
- The Fee-Help Capability feature has been enabled for your Student Management System instance
- The Enrolment Preference setting to display the Higher Ed tab has been checked.
- FEE-HELP is enabled for the Course
The Higher Ed tab will then display a FEE-HELP Eligibility indicator.
The Eligible indicator appears in the FEE-HELP Eligibility section, displaying ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ depending on whether the enrolment is eligible for FEE-HELP.
FEE-HELP eligibility is checked automatically by the SMS, checking a range of fields including Citizenship Status, Academic Suitability, Studying in Australia, New Zealand eligibility fields and Bridging Course for the different FEE-HELP eligibility scenarios.
If Eligibility is displayed as ‘No’, the reasons for ineligibility are displayed in the FEE-HELP Eligibility section.
The FEE-HELP (TCSI) checkbox also appears in the FEE-HELP Eligibility section and continues to control the display of the eCAF and TCSI Reporting sections below.
Note: The TCSI Support website has external resources for detailing student loan eligibility requirements across both Higher Education and VET Student Loans schemes:
In the eCAF section, select the Submit eCAF button to send enrolment data to the eCAF system. Enrolments can be excluded from eCAFs via the Exclude from eCAF Submission checkbox.
Once submitted successfully, the eCAF section is updated with the eCAF ID, an eCAF Status of Pending and the eCAF Type of FEE-HELP. The Submit eCAF button changes to Sync eCAF, enabling a manual synch of the enrolment’s eCAF data with the eCAF system.
Data Submission
Your Student Management System will automatically synchronise eCAF data with the government eCAF system hourly.
Once the student has completed their eCAF submission via the eCAF Portal, the Status field is updated to Student Submitted, other key fields are populated, and no further action is required.
Error Messages
Any error messages returned from the eCAF system are displayed in the eCAF section. Select the edit buttons on the right to be taken to the SMS screen to correct the data error.
Note: The TCSI Support website has resources for detailing validation errors, including an error list that allows keyword searching: