What's in the KFS?

Are you new to the Kuali Financial System? If so, here's a primer on its major components. The system's basic building blocks include the following:

• Electronic Documents (e-docs). In the KFS, electronic documents, or e-docs, provide a user-friendly way for you to view, maintain, and approve financial transactions online. Any person who initiates, reviews, or approves financial transactions will use e-docs.

• General Ledger (G/L). The General Ledger, or G/L, stores all of your institution's financial and budget information for multiple fiscal years, including account balances and detailed records of all transactions.

• Reporting. A collection of online services provides access to the data in the KFS, so you can view account budgets, balances, and individual transactions, as well as retrieve reports.

• Kuali Enterprise Workflow (KEW). The system's workflow, or KEW, begins when you or any other user initiates an e-doc. The KFS immediately assesses the e-doc's validity, based on the data involved and its compliance with business rules. Once validated, the e-doc is routed to one or more designated approvers, based on its type and content. Fully approved e-docs are later sent to the G/L.

• Chart of Accounts (COA). This set of tables defines the hierarchy of accounts throughout an entire organization. By leveraging the COA, your institution can organize its information to support e-doc routing, management of internal controls, and both internal and external reporting.

• Contracts and Grants. The KFS supports all post-award financial requirements for contracts and grants, including indirect costs and cost share as well as budgets and project to date balances.

• Kuali Identity Management (KIM). A standard Kuali module, KIM provides central management features for individual users, groups, roles, permissions, and their relationships with each other. It lets you control access to, and interaction with, KFS data according to your institution's needs.

The KFS also contains these modules.

• Purchasing and Accounts Payable (PURAP). This module enables you to request materials and services, generate and transmit purchase orders, and process invoices and credit memos from vendors. You can also maintain and track all the vendor information you need to manage the procurement process.

• Pre-Disbursement Processor (PDP). The PDP receives data for disbursements and creates a data file that can be sent to a check writer, or formatted and sent to a bank for automated clearing house (ACH) direct deposit.

• Capital Asset Management (CAM). With the CAM module, you can track a variety of assets, such as purchases, gifts, and assets that have been transferred or even found. Although it is intended primarily to handle records for capital assets, you may also use it to manage non-capital assets.

• Accounts Receivable (AR). The AR module handles billing for non-student receivables. It allows you to create invoices, record payments, issue credit memos, track outstanding receivables, and maintain data for customer charges and payments.

• Effort Certification. This module automatically creates effort reports that certify the percentage of effort by an employee for a particular project. Effort reports are routed for approval and can be modified by approvers.

• Labor Distribution. With this module, you can manage compensation-related expenses, such as salaries and benefits. It includes electronic documents for salary transfer, benefit transfer, corrections to the labor ledger, and labor ledger journal vouchers. 

This listing is just a snapshot of the Kuali Financial System. Each module in the KFS is feature-rich and highly flexible, and will accommodate the unique needs of all types of educational institutions.