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News Release

Last modified: Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Kuali Financial System goes live at Indiana University

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

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Feb. 18, 2009

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Indiana University has put into service core components of the community source Kuali Financial System (KFS), replacing key elements of its existing financial system. Now all financial accounting transactions processed at IU pass through the KFS code. IU is a KFS investing partner.

This successful implementation, which took place Feb. 5, included replacing accounting cycle components for the General Ledger, Labor Ledger and Sufficient Funds processing. It 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 previous system and which will provide greater data integrity assurances.

"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," said Kathleen McNeely, IU associate vice president for Financial Management Services. "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.

"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," said Brad Wheeler, chair of the Kuali Foundation and IU Vice President for information technology and CIO.

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's 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."

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