Text Box: The University of Arizona

A Financial System of, by, and for Higher Education

Kuali Overview

On March 11, 2005, the Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) approved Arizona's participation in the Kuali Community Source Project.  By joining the Kuali Project, the University of Arizona has the potential to acquire workflow, a much-improved reporting system, gain knowledge about building and deploying large financial systems, and possibly replace the Financial Records System (FRS).

 

What is Kuali? Kuali is the name given to the modular financial accounting system that will be developed using the Community Source development model. Kuali will be a conversion of the Indiana University’s Financial Information System (FIS) to the web with enhancements identified by the development partners. Kuali will be available under the Educational Community License and can be adopted by colleges and universities without licensing fees. Development partners in the Kuali project include Arizona, Cornell, Hawaii, Indiana, Michigan State, San Joaquin Delta Community College, NACUBO and r-smart. Kualis’ 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

 

What is Open Source? Open source software refers to programs for which the licenses allow users to: 1) freely access, install, and run the software for any purpose; 2) modify the original software; 3) redistribute copies of the original or modified programs; and 4) share modifications with the community. This is in sharp contrast to use of commercially developed software for which a licensing fee is required and user modifications are not permitted, or when changes are made by the campus IT staff and they are not supported.

 

What is Community Source? Community source describes a model for the purposeful coordinating of work in a community.  It is based on many of the principles of open source development efforts, but community source efforts rely more explicitly on defined roles, responsibilities, and funded commitments by community members than some open source development models.

 

What is FIS? FIS is an acronym for Financial Information System. FIS is Indiana’s accounting system which is similar to our FRS. 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 as transactions are approved.

 

Why is Kuali different from other software development? In addition to being a joint development effort based on the Community Source model, Kuali is the conversion of an existing application that’s been used by Indiana for the last 10 years. Kuali in essence is a recompilation of FIS into another language – a web based language. We are not reinventing the wheel or starting from scratch, additionally, partner schools will have the opportunity to suggest enhancements as FIS is converted to Kuali.

 

What is workflow? Automatic routing of documents based on rules established either administratively or by the department for their unique routing requirements. For example, documents that use Sponsored Projects accounts could route to Sponsored Projects; Check Request greater than $1,000 could route to the College’s Business Office.

 

What is OneStart Workflow/Kuali Workflow? In addition to the FIS workflow, Indiana built a web based workflow application called OneStart Workflow to route documents within their OneStart Portal.  As part of the Kuali project, OneStart workflow will be upgraded to route financial documents mimicking the FIS workflow and will be called Kuali workflow. Kuali workflow will be flexible enough to handle each institutions routing requirements.

 

What are Business Rules? Business rules are the part of the application that validates transactions, for example, is this account valid; is this object code valid; is this object code allowable with this account.

 

What’s going to happen to FRS? Nothing yet. FRS has not been identified for replacement. Consequently, Kuali has not been identified as a replacement for FRS. Developing Kuali and implementing Kuali are two separate projects. The project at hand is to develop Kuali, including the upgrade to Kuali Workflow to mimic FIS workflow. During the development of Kuali, the feasibility of Kuali as a possible financial accounting software/reporting solution will be evaluated.

 

Can we have workflow without Kuali? We can have workflow without Kuali. But to use workflow, we must have a Portal. Once we have a portal and workflow is implemented, then we will need applications within the portal to use workflow.

 

What are SMEs? Each partner school will have a lead Subject Matter Expert (SME) for each module. The University of Arizona will form SME teams for the different modules to assist the lead Arizona SME. The lead Arizona SME will be responsible for working with the UA Functional Council Representatives (Kymber Horn and Mark McGurk), the module's lead SME (assigned by the Kuali Functional Council), the development team and the Kuali business analyst.