IU's successful implementation is a milestone for KFS Release 3.0

Indiana University put into service the core Kuali Financial System (KFS) accounting cycle components for the General Ledger and Labor Ledger, and Sufficient Funds processing earlier this month (February 5, 2009), replacing key elements of its existing financial system with Kuali equivalents. Now all financial accounting transactions processed at IU pass through the KFS code.

This successful implementation is a very important first phase in IU's plan to implement the full set of modules delivered by the KFS project in Release 3.0. The KFS components in production at IU comprise the infrastructure data, or official record, for all of the university's finances. IU now has additional functionality including labor data validation, which didn't exist in its current system and which will provide greater data integrity assurances.

Kathleen McNeely, IU associate vice president for Financial Management Services, said, "Indiana University's implementation of core functionality will benefit the Kuali community by providing a successful example of the KFS system in production, one which will be audited through IU's annual financial audit. This verification that the core general ledger meets audit requirements will be an important step for the community."

IU officials report all transactions have completed successfully, within normal processing times, and the ledgers remain reconciled. As part of the implementation, IU contributed back to the Kuali KFS project many performance and error handling enhancements.

Brad Wheeler, chair of the Kuali Foundation commented on this important event: "As the American Council on Education issues an impassioned plea for collaboration and new models in higher education, it is timely that the shared efforts of Kuali colleges and universities are already demonstrating real outcomes that change the costs and capabilities of higher education's essential big systems."

Colorado State University (CSU) will carry out the next implementation among the KFS investing partners. CSU plans to replace completely its current financial system with KFS on July 1, 2009. Troy Fluharty, CSU director of Financial Systems Services said, "The leadership of IU in putting into production the core KFS components now is invaluable to Colorado State, it proves the viability of the system at a critical time in our implementation. This is a strong statement of confidence in the KFS project by a major member of the community and shows that a community source administrative system is a reality."

Other institutions currently planning implementation of KFS include University of Arizona, San Joaquin Delta Community College, Cornell University, Michigan State University, University of California Davis, University of California Irvine, University of California Santa Barbara, University of Hawaii, University of Southern California, and the Naval Postgraduate School.

Bruce Alexander, director of Enterprise Business Systems Projects at Michigan State University said, "Kuali KFS is the product of a well-defined user-driven process. Through it, the Kuali community pays careful attention to the need for rich functionality and for a highly disciplined approach to software development. We congratulate our colleagues at Indiana University on their successful implementation, and we congratulate our colleagues across the entire Kuali community on their collective achievement."