Kuali Financial System 3.0 & Kuali Rice 1.0.1 now available
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 4, 2009
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - The Kuali Foundation has released the Kuali Financial System (KFS) 3.0 and Kuali Rice 1.0.1. These releases represent the culmination of many years of collaborative work among higher education institutions to build a financial system that meets their collective needs.
Five years ago, a community of higher education institutions frustrated by the high licensing and support costs, poor functional fit, forced upgrades, and difficult integration challenges of vended enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, decided to combine their resources to build an enterprise financial system for higher education by higher education. Assisted by a $2.5M grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, partners from a variety of schools and organizations worked together to deliver robust enterprise financial system software enabling higher education institutions to implement best practices and sound accounting practices at an affordable cost.
"This public release, its abundant commercial support, and proven low cost implementations by research universities and community colleges demonstrates the power of colleges and universities taking charge of their systems costs and future," said Brad Wheeler, Kuali Foundation Board chairman and CIO at Indiana University.
Jennifer Foutty, Executive Director of the Kuali Foundation, said, "The recent KFS implementations have gone smoothly -- for both a public research school such as CSU, and a community college such as San Joaquin Delta College. From the 'go-live' moment to month-end book closings, the schools have demonstrated that the software is easily installed because it's designed for higher education, and that the support from the Kuali community has successfully helped to trouble-shoot and to fine-tune their installations."
KFS 3.0 includes the addition of the following modules:
• Accounts Receivable
• Capital Asset Management
• Effort Certification
• Budget Construction
These new modules, along with enhancements to the previously released Chart of Accounts, General Ledger, Financial Transactions, Purchasing, Accounts Payable, Labor Distribution, and Contracts and Grants modules, provide all of the functionality of Indiana University's Financial Information System (on which KFS's functionality is based), and many valuable enhancements. KFS 3.0 is a complete enterprise financial system that meets the needs of all Carnegie class institutions, no matter how large or small.
KFS has already been successfully implemented at Colorado State University, San Joaquin Delta College, and the Naval Postgraduate School at significantly lower cost than an average ERP implementation. Indiana University is currently running the KFS 3.0 General Ledger and Labor Ledger processes. In addition, there is a growing community of support around the project including a team of sustaining partners that will allow for continuous improvements and upgrades to the system.
Out of the development of KFS and other Kuali initiatives, Kuali Rice has emerged. Kuali Rice consists of a set of modules comprising a middleware stack that provides essential services to every Kuali application. Beyond the Kuali applications, Rice is becoming a preferred choice for institutions establishing a common enterprise architecture. Rice improves enterprise application development speed, consistency, and maintainability well beyond the Kuali applications.
The completion of five years of work on KFS 3.0 and Kuali Rice 1.0.1 demonstrates what is possible when higher education institutions work together. In times where institutional resources are severely constrained, sharing resources on a collaborative project allows much more to be accomplished.
KFS 3.0 and Kuali Rice 1.0.1 are available as free downloads at kuali.org. The source code and all project functional and technical documentation, including release notes and installation guide, are readily available. Visitors to www.kuali.org are also invited to take a "test drive" and provide feedback.
About Kuali
The Kuali Foundation is a non-profit organization responsible for sustaining and evolving a comprehensive suite of administrative software that meets the needs of all Carnegie Class institutions. Kuali began in 2004 as a cooperative effort among seven partners funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Their vision was to develop an open-source, community-owned financial system. The successful development of the Kuali Financial System led to additional pooled-investment projects, including Kuali Coeus for research administration, Kuali Student, and Kuali Rice for middleware infrastructure. All Kuali projects are coordinated by an independent, not-for-profit organization, Kuali Foundation Inc. The software developed by Kuali partners is available, without fee, for anyone to use or modify under the Educational Community License.
