KUALI FINANCIAL SYSTEM (KFS)
Kuali Foundation Applications & You!
Vani Prasad
WHAT IS KUALI FINANCIAL SYSTEM (KFS)• The Kuali Financial System (KFS) is a community-source
software application system developed by and for higher education institutions to serve their financial software needs
• The KFS is a higher-education, community-source software project that is part of the larger Kuali Community. KFS is a core product developed around the Student, Research, Endowment and Financial sectors of the University environment
• Follows the key elements of the Kuali mission: o Designed for specific needs (for higher education, by higher
education)o Dramatically lower hard costs for administrative systems
WHAT IS KUALI FINANCIAL SYSTEM (KFS)• KFS was the original Kuali project starting in 2005
• KFS founding partners are Indiana University, The University of Arizona, the University of Hawaii, Michigan State University, San Joaquin Delta Community College, Cornell University, NACUBO and the rSmart Group
• KFS is now a mature product that can be scaled for complex, multi-campus, research-intensive institutions as well as smaller private, liberal arts, or community colleges
• Currently implemented at well over 20 Universities, with many more in the works
WHAT IS KUALI FINANCIAL SYSTEM (KFS)• The major software modules that constitute the KFS are:
o Chart of Accounts (COA)o Vendoro Purchasing and Accounts Payable (PURAP)o Pre-Disbursement Processor (PDP)o Capital Asset Management (CAM)o Accounts Receivable (AR)o Contracts and Grants (C&G)o Effort Certificationo Labor Distributiono Endowment (KEM).
• Current Version is Release 5.0.2 (as of May 2013)
• Many implementations are at Ver 4.x and will go thru upgrade path
• KFS has matured from its Release 1.0 of Oct 2006.
• KFS product releases include partner contributions (a key element!), software patches, new functions, expanded workflows and so on.
• KFS has completed year-end audit runs with full compliance
• KFS has interest outside North America too….such as Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, United Kingdom, etc.
WHAT IS KUALI FINANCIAL SYSTEM (KFS)
KUALI OLE AND KFS • Kuali OLE (Open Library Environment) development started
in 2010, so the learnings and experiences from KFS are applied into OLE
o Mature Kuali Rice Infrastructure and Middleware o Kuali-Rice is like the ‘chassis’ of the ‘car’
o Better use of project communication and collaboration tools
o Improved open-source software productivity and testing tools
o Some features of KFS are part of OLE, such as ‘Fines’o Software Development team is co-located o Adopt tighter Agile processes for improved
collaboration, product scoping and project monitoring
KUALI OLE AND KFS • Closing remarks – things to consider in OLE or KFS
implementations
o Learn about the product (OLE or KFS) to understand the Fit, Form and Function of each Module (Feature)
o Look at data sources and data outputs, including reporting – may require an external datamart
o A lot of existing business processes may get simplified (dramatically!)
o Decisions may have made about processes and transaction postings that need to be done in real-time vs batch mode
o The products (OLE and KFS) come with good abilities to configure to suit unique needs and workflows of the Institution
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