Kuali Financial System released
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- The Kuali Foundation announced today (October 25) the release of the open source Kuali Financial System (KFS) 1.0 providing the first phase of a comprehensive suite of software tools to serve the financial system needs of colleges and universities. The system is available to anyone to use, modify, redistribute without any software licensing fees.
Funded in part by a $2.5M grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Kuali Financial System represents a major first step to establish a comprehensive series of modules for administrative functions in higher education. KFS was designed to serve the financial system needs of all Carnegie Class institutions. It provides for core financial operations, including accurate accountability, timely reporting, efficient processing, and strengthened internal controls through computerized business rules.
“Colleges and universities are demonstrating that we can pool our investments, execute a disciplined project, and get the software functionality that we need to run our campuses,” said Brad Wheeler, Indiana University chief information officer and chair of the Kuali Foundation. “The KFS system was not adapted to the needs of education from a corporate system with the attendant misfits and costs of that approach. KFS is software that from its genesis is of, by, and for higher education.”
The new system is the result of collaborative work by KFS founding partners including The University of Arizona, The University of California, Cornell University, The University of Hawai’i, Indiana University, Michigan State University, and San Joaquin Delta College; the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO); and The rSmart Group.
NACUBO President and CEO John Walda noted, "A great many NACUBO members have been following the progress of the Kuali Financial System with keen interest. This first release demonstrates the dedication of the higher education community to provide a valuable resource to colleges and universities across the country. I have been impressed by the collegiality and forward thinking of all of the members of this project, and I am excited about the future of Kuali."
Lee Belarmino, VP for IT & CIO at San Joaquin Delta College, observed, “Community colleges are among the greatest beneficiaries of these open source projects. We are full partners in the design and development, and our work in KFS is now freely available to any community college, too. Commercial support for KFS gives us lots of options in how we implement.”
KFS is an enhancement of the proven Indiana University Financial Information System. It fully meets the standards of both the Governmental Accounting Standards Board and Financial Accounting Standards Board. This design has been in operation at Indiana University for ten years and meets the needs of both the small and large campuses of IU through a highly flexible chart of accounts.
Judith G. Palmer, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Indiana University, believes this first release of KFS to be a major milestone for higher education. “The successful completion of the first phase of the Kuali Financial System is a success not only for the Kuali Partners, but also for the higher education community,” she said. Palmer indicated that the university looks forward to its implementation of Kuali in the 2007-08 fiscal year.
The basis for the system is a robust chart of accounts that supports financial management and reporting for fund accounting, functional activities, and programs. The Kuali system is designed to address the core financial operations including accurate accountability, timely reporting, efficient processing, and strengthened internal controls through computerized business rules. Further module releases in 2007 will complete the financial system.
Specific KFS v1.0 deliverables:
- Chart of Accounts
- Electronic Document Financial Transactions
- General Ledger
- Kuali Nervous System
- Kuali Enterprise Workflow
Additional modules for Purchasing, Accounts Payables, Capital Assets, etc. will follow through releases in 2007 as part of the 2.5 year grant. In July 2007, the University of California Office of the President and the Davis, Irvine, and Santa Barbara campuses added a $1M investment of staff time to further the next release of the Kuali Financial System.
Joanne DeStefano, VP for Financial Affairs at Cornell, said, “The Kuali Functional Council has brought the best wisdom of large and small schools, public and private, multi- and single campus to bear to shape KFS for our needs. Cornell is delighted that KFS will meet our needs and we have control of our software future.”
Barry Walsh, executive director of KFS and initiator of the Kuali project, said, “Kuali software offers institutions an opportunity to address the expensive, disruptive upgrades of today’s typical ERP systems. ‘Zero Disruptive Upgrades’ are what we need, and that is an objective of our work. We are also seeing that these open source projects are inspirational for retaining our most talented staff.”
The independent Kuali Foundation was established to provide long-term coordination and sustainability for Kuali software in similar fashion to the open source Sakai Foundation. Additional information, a full demonstration of KFS, details for the next Kuali Days Workshops in Tucson Arizona on November 14-15, and the KFS system for download are available at http://kuali.org.
About the Kuali Foundation
The Kuali Foundation is a non-profit organization responsible for sustaining and evolving a comprehensive suite of administrative software that meets the needs of all Carnegie Class institutions. Its members are colleges, universities, and interested organizations that share a common vision of open, modular, and distributed systems for their software requirements. The goal of Kuali is to bring the proven functionality of legacy applications to the ease and universality of online services.