Kuali Financial System FAQ
What is the Kuali Financial System (KFS)? A modular financial accounting system that will be developed using the Community Source development model. KFS will be a conversion of the Indiana University’s Financial Information System (FIS) to the web with enhancements identified by the development partners. KFS will be available under the Educational Community License and can be adopted by colleges and universities without licensing fees.
Who are the development partners? Development partners in the Kuali Financial System project include Arizona, Cornell, Hawaii, Indiana, Michigan State, San Joaquin Delta Community College, University of California Presidents Office, Davis, Irvine and Santa Barbara, NACUBO and r-smart.
What modules are included in the Kuali Financial System? KFS' modular design includes a base system of Chart of Accounts, General Ledger, Transactions, Reporting, and Workflow. Additional modules that can be implemented as a school identifies a need include: Accounts Receivable, Budgeting, Capital Assets Management, Endowment, Enhanced Decision Support/Reporting, Labor Distribution, Purchasing/Accounts Payable, Pre- and Post-Award Research Administration
The baseline modules became available for download October 13, 2006. If we should download your system, do I need to acquire an Oracle 10 license? An Oracle license is not required. We are working on a patch version of the software that will allow you to run KFS using MySQL. The date of the patch release has not yet been set but we expect it should be sometime within the next month or two.
If we download your system, do we need to acquire an Oracle license to run it? An Oracle license is not required. The next release of the software will allow you to run KFS using MySQL. The release is currently scheduled for October 2007.
If we decide to go with an open source database such as MySQL, how does your system work? The release version will run with MySQL and will be tested to work in this environment.
Can I have access to your database tables, schema, and data relationships to access the customization we need to do? We do not currently have ER diagrams available. However, all of the DML comes with the release package. You can install the database and use whatever database tools you have to generate the diagrams. We hope to deliver these types of diagrams in the future, but they aren't available yet.
How much will the Kuali Financial System development project cost?
- $7.4 m total project cost
- 72+ person-year effort
How is it being funded?
- Core partners contributing $500,000 - $2,000,000 in cash or tendered personnel resources, depending on size and Carnegie Class
- $2.5m grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
How is the project governance structured?
In summary, the Kuali Financial System Development project organziation:
- Kuali Board, chaired by Brad Wheeler, IU, comprises of a votiing member from each Institution, NACUBO and rSmart (nonvoting) and extended board members from each partner.
- Project Manager, Jim Thomas, IU oversees developers from each institution and rSmart
- Functional Council, chaired by Kathleen McNeely, IU, and comprises of members from each Institution, NACUBO and rSmart and functional subcommittees for each module.
What is FIS? FIS is an acronym for Financial Information System. FIS is Indiana’s accounting system. FIS has workflow and when a user creates a document in FIS, the document is validated (business rules), routed (workflow) and passed into the General Ledger that night for use in reporting the following day. Account balances are updated immediately.
What are Business Rules? Business rules are the part of the application that validate transactions, for example, is this account valid; is this object code valid; is this object code allowable with this account. Routing rules, who needs to approve this document, where it goes next are handled by Workflow.