Kuali Financials Overview

Kuali Financials is an enterprise higher education financial system and supports the accounting needs of colleges and universities. It supports governmental accounting that is unique to higher education. 

Some of these unique features include: 

• tracking revenues and expenditures by fund sources and higher education function codes
• Encumbrances
• Cost Share Accounting
• Indirect Cost Recovery
• Project to Date reporting
• Effort Certification

Kuali Financial modules include:

• Accounts Receivable (AR), including Contracts & Grants Billing
• Capital Asset Management (CAM)
• Chart of Accounts (COA)
• Contracts & Grants (CG)
• Effort Certification (EC)
• Financial Processing (FP)
• General Ledger (GL)
• Labor Ledger (LD)
• Pre-Disbursement Processor (PDP)
• Purchasing and Accounts Payable (PURAP)
• Vendor (VND).

Accounts Receivable (AR)

The Accounts Receivable module is used for billing non-student receivables. The module creates invoices, records payments, issues credit memos, tracks outstanding receivables, and maintains historical data regarding customer charges and payments. This module also includes functionality for managing invoicing activities related to Contracts  and Grants.

Capital Asset Management (CAM)

The Capital Asset Management (CAM) module allows you to track assets purchased through your institutions financial system, assets received as gifts, and assets that have been transferred or even found. This module handles records for both capital and non-capital assets.

CAM documents allow you to create, maintain, and retire asset records. Additionally, Capital Asset Builder functionality can create asset records from data collected on financial transaction documents in other modules. The system also provides several documents to assist your organization with inventory management and other aspects of managing assets.

Capital Asset Builder is the asset creation functionality for tracking movable capital additions. Information from the General Ledger and the Purchasing module is pulled together in Capital Asset Builder to create assets and add payments.

Chart of Accounts (COA)

The Chart of Accounts (COA) is the set of tables that define the codes and coding structures within Kuali Financials, including attributes such as accounts, organizations, and object codes. The COA exists primarily to support and validate entries into the General Ledger (GL). For example, transactions cannot be applied to an account in the GL unless that account exists in the COA. The account and other COA attributes are associated with additional attributes, such as the fund group or organization associated with an account, or the object level that is associated with an object code. Defining these attributes and their various relationships is how the financial structure of an institution is defined. By leveraging the COA, your institution can organize its information to support activities such as document routing, management of internal controls, and internal and external reporting.

The system features a very flexible, multiple Chart of Accounts capability that can accommodate the needs of Carnegie Class institutions, from small community colleges to large multi-campus research institutions.

Contracts & Grants (CG)

The Contracts & Grants module provides minimal Contracts & Grants tables to support Proposals and Awards. The data in these tables supports Contracts & Grants Billing. 

Effort Certification (EC)

The Effort Certification module uses a batch process to automate the creation of effort certification reports (also referred to as effort reports). These reports certify the percentage of effort an employee worked on a particular project. Each employee identified as being funded by or cost-shared on a sponsored agreement has an effort certification report generated by a batch process. Each report routes for approval and may be modified to correct the distribution of effort. After being fully approved, an effort certification report generates Salary Expense Transfer documents to align the Labor Ledger and General Ledger with the newly certified effort. The fully-approved effort certification report serves as a permanent record detailing the distribution of effort for an employee for a given period.

This module allows your institution to control the periods for which effort certification reports are created and the types of employees that are included in a particular group of reports. You may also recreate effort certification reports to correct errors, view effort certification reports still outstanding for approvals, inquire on the extracted Labor Ledger data used to build effort certification reports, and more.

Financial Processing (FP)

The Financial Processing module provides various documents for end users to create transactions in Kuali Financials, for example, Internal Billing, General Error Correction. This module also includes Administrative Transactions, such as Non-Check Disbursement, Cash Management Document for central administrations use. Additionally, Year End Transactions are available for processing transactions during the 13^th period to record transactions for the previous year while the transactions are processed in the new year. The Procurement Card is also part of the Financial Processing module but is not a link on the menu. Transactions are fed from the bank and create Procurement Documents for approval.

General Ledger (GL)

The General Ledger contains all the financial transactions that are created via Kuali Financials documents, fed in from external systems or created during batch processing. Files can be uploaded or corrected via the General Ledger Correction Process document. Several Balance Inquiries are available to provide access to real time balances and encumbrance details.

Labor Distribution (LD)

The Labor Distribution module manages the accounting aspects of compensation-related expenses such as salaries and benefits. It includes salary transfer, benefit transfer, Labor Ledger correction process, and Labor Ledger journal voucher documents. Labor distribution reports are accessed through balance inquiries.

Pre-Disbursement Processor (PDP)

The Pre-Disbursement Processor (or PDP) receives data from systems that need to make disbursements and outputs a data file that can be sent to a check writer or formatted and sent to a bank for automated clearing house (ACH) direct deposits. It can also generate ledger entries when appropriate, such as relieving liabilities when making a disbursement against a Kuali Financials Payment Request document.

Files for processing may be created from documents (such as Disbursement Voucher or Payment Request) or may be manually uploaded. The systems that provide these files are referred to as PDP customers. Depending on the specifications of these customers, checks and ACH deposits may be formatted in various ways before being outputted.

Purchasing and Accounts Payable (PURAP)

The Purchasing and Accounts Payable (PURAP) module allows users to request materials and services, generate and transmit purchase orders, and process invoices and credit memos received from vendors. The requisition, purchase order, payment request, purchase order amendment, and credit memo documents use the workflow Kuali Enterprise Workflow component for document approval followed by encumbrance, expense and liability entries in the General Ledger as required.

The system tracks the status of POs throughout their life cycle and manages encumbrances and other G/L entries related to the procurement process. PO numbers are stored in the reference document number of the G/L entry tables so you may track the transactions easily from the G/L inquiry screens.

Vendor (VND)

The Vendor module allows your institution to maintain a table to track businesses or other entities that your institution has done or plans to do business with. The Vendor table includes all information pertinent to a vendor, including tax ID, addresses, contacts, and other details required for the management of your institutions procurement process.

This module also provides a lookup that allows Purchasing and Accounts Payable users to quickly identify vendor contracts by description, by vendor and by payment terms.