KFS FAQs
FRS will be replaced with the Kuali Financial System starting with the next fiscal year. We will load beginning balances from FRS into KFS and start using the new system to create transactions. FRS will be used to create the University's Annual Financial Statement. Once the statement is published FRS will be shut down.
What's the General Ledger? Is it the same as the FRS General Ledger?
The KFS General Ledger is the database where the transactions and the chart of account information are stored. In FRS, the General Ledger was an account type that kept track of assets, liabilities and fund balances. The Subsidiary Ledger (SL) keeps track of revenues, expenses, budgets and encumbrances. In KFS there is an account, that is self balancing, the assets and liabilities and revenues and expenses are all in one account. KFS has the option to establish alternate offset accounts and we will be using this feature with our state accounts.
The chart of account supports and validates entries in to the general ledger. Primarily, it includes charts, accounts, object codes, organizations (aka departments, colleges, units), sub-accounts, sub-object codes and project codes.
Chart codes group other charts, organizations and accounts together. A chart will always have its own set of object codes and it may also have its own set of organizations and/or accounts. The top level chart is used for external financial reporting and groups revenues and expenses together at the highest level. We will have 2 charts at the UA:
? AZ -Top Level Chart - object codes only - no accounts.
? UA- Rolls up to the top level AZ chart and has its own set of organizations, accounts and object codes.Separating charts allows us to provide object codes that are unique to each chart for example, auxiliary charts wouldn't have student tuition and fees, but would have cost of goods sold.
Can I further sub-divide my accounts so I can allocate transactions to various professors or projects?
Yes. Kuali comes with a couple of department defined fields that will allow you to divide accounts to track transactions at a finer level, such as sub-accounts. Sub-accounts have the same attributes as accounts and can be used to budget and track expenditures at a finer grained level. Additionally, the Project Code allows you to group transactions across accounts.
KFS is delivered with functionality that takes Procurement Card transactions from the bank and drops them into the approver's in box for approval. If the approver changes the account to an account that does not belong to them it will route for approval.
Yes, you will start all "purchasing experiences" in Kuali, selecting "Shop Catalogs" will take to the Kuali Requisition will you start your order, then you will choose to go to the catalogs, where you will select your items. When you are done, you leave the catalog and return to the KFS Requisition. The Requisition is routed and then sent to the Arizona Buyways and requests are made to the individual vendors.
Can you have multiple accounting lines on a financial document? Is there a limit to how many accounting lines you can have?
You can have multiple accounting lines on any financial document. There is no system-imposed limit on how many lines you can add on a document.
Does routing to multiple Fiscal Officers happen in parallel?
Yes. If a document involves accounts belonging to more than one Fiscal Officer it will route to all of those users at the same time
If a document has been disapproved can I edit it and send it back through the system for approval?
The original disapproved document cannot be edited. However, it can be copied. Disapproved documents are returned to the initiator, anyone who had approved the document will also be notified that the transaction was disapproved. The initiator can copy the disapproved document which will reference the original document number from which is was copied. Then you can make your changes on this copy and re-submit it for approval.
The balance inquiry screens provide an "include pending" option. This will allow users to pull in pending transactions and view them along with posted transactions to gain a more complete view of the financial well being of an account. Many of the balance inquiry screens also allow the user to drill down on the balances and pull up e-docs that support the balances.
Can you process in both the current and old fiscal year and year-end?
Implementation of the planned system will occur in phases over several years. The project budget covers five years, with the bulk of the work planned for the first three years. The UA will likely add additional capabilities to Mosaic once this foundation is in place.
The primary purpose of the Labor Distribution module is to link the General Ledger with the Payroll system. Detail payroll transactions will feed the Labor Ledger and are then summarized and fed into the General Ledger. This allows you to drill down from summary salary/wage expense object codes into the detail - person and hours and type of hours and amounts paid.
Additionally, the Labor Distribution :
? Includes Salary Expense Transfer (aka Payroll Expense Transfer).
? Feeds the Effort Reporting module.
? Provides On Line Balance Inquiries related to payroll.Yes, you can add notes and attachments to any eDoc at any time, even after it has been fully approved.
Yes, this can be set by organizations within the institution, and PO's below that threshold do not require Purchasing approval.
Is the accounting line forced on the requisition? What if the user doesn't know it?
There is a workflow level for this purpose, so that if a Requisitioner doesn't know the accounting information, the Req is routed to a workgroup who can add that information.
First, let's start with ‘What is a super user?' A super user is someone knowledgeable about the work process in a particular unit and who has been involved in testing and learning the system, and in many cases designing the business processes around the new system. Most likely the super user for your work area will be a colleague who's received additional training to prepare them for the role. Perhaps most importantly, their specific responsibility will be for helping the department get their work done while using the new applications, rather than performing their normal job tasks. Their expertise will continue to be available to help users after the system goes live, even when they resume their normal responsibilities.
Is everything going to go live, everywhere, at the same time?
The Subsidiary Ledger object codes - (revenues and expenses) will not change.
The General Ledger object codes (assets, liabilities and fund balances) are changing. We'll be adding 7000 to them for the most part. So Cash was 1100 it will now be 8100 and Accounts Payable - 2100 will become 9100. We did this because we had some overlap between our SL and GL object codes. With the Kuali Financial System we will have one account that will contain the assets, liabilities, revenues and expenses. And we will continue to use 4 digit object codes.
How are we going to prepare PETs (Payroll Expense Transfers) between the time that PeopleSoft Payroll and Kuali Financials go live? There is a 3 month period- October 1 - January 1 where we will not be able to use the current PET system. We evaluated several options and based on the risk and costs associated with each of them have decided to put a moratorium on PETs during this period for non-Sponsored accounts.
PETs will be accepted on Sponsored accounts using a paper form that will be processed by Sponsored Projects. Sponsored Projects will maintain a database of these changes, will post a journal entry to FRS. The database will be available in the new data warehouse for reporting.
When KFS goes live, Sponsored Projects will reverse the journal entries that had been entered into FRS and load the salary expense transfers into KFS. We are asking that all other salary transfers be held until KFS goes live and at that time they can be entered into the new system.
I have an application that sends data to FRS. Will I need to make any changes? Systems that send data to FRS will need to make certain changes in order to send data to KFS. This data transfer is referred to as an integration point (e.g., Accounts Payable Interface, automated Inter Departmental Billing). The Integration Team will be documenting options for submitting data to KFS and sending it to those units that submit data to FRS today. This documentation should be available by mid June.
After I receive the KFS integration documentation from the Mosaic Integration Team, who will address my questions about the information? The communication of the options will include contact information. The team will be managing most of your questions through your Campus Readiness Team contact and Unit Implementation Lead. Managing these communications will ensure the appropriate parties are made aware of work to be done, deliverables, and due dates.
FRS will be replaced with the Kuali Financial System starting with the next fiscal year. We will load beginning balances from FRS into KFS and start using the new system to create transactions. FRS will be used to create the University's Annual Financial Statement. Once the statement is published FRS will be shut down.
