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FreeBalance launched a government Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) in 1994.  The FreeBalance Accountability Suite™ became the most widely deployed financial application inside the Government of Canada. 

Today, the FreeBalance Accountability Suite™ GRP is implemented globally within governments across the world. The Suite is recognized by the World Bank as the best solution for fragile states with low capacity, where governments need to initiate reform with a simple solution that has the flexibility to become more complex over time and reflect the government progress in implementing PFM reforms or a changing political context.

FreeBalance software is used by more than 60,000 public finance managers to manage hundreds of billions of dollars of government expenditures and more than 1.5 million civil servants across 18 time zones. Customers include the governments of Canada, Nunavut, Mongolia, Timor-Leste, Guyana, Sierra Leone, and Kosovo.

International Standards

The FreeBalance Accountability Suite supports good fiscal practice and internationally recognized standards such as:

• United Nations Common Functions of Government (COFOG): Functional classification to report government statistics to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the United Nations.
• The International Monetary Fund Government Finance Statistics (GFS): Provides a comprehensive conceptual and accounting framework suitable for analyzing and evaluating fiscal policy and performance of the general government sector and broader public sector of any country
• The International Monetary Fund Code of Good Practices on Fiscal Transparency: Method to assess government fiscal transparency with practical advice for improvement.
• Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP): A collection of rules, procedures and conventions that define accepted accounting practices.  This includes broad guidelines and detailed procedures applied to both the public and private sectors.
• International Accounting Standards Board, International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS): International private and public sector reporting standards.
• International Federation of Accountants International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS): Cash and accrual reporting requirements for government and public sector organizations.
• Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC): Governance outcome measurements supported in performance objectives.
• Medium Term Expenditure Frameworks (MTEF): Multiple year rational planning and budget formulation processes enabling the government to establish credible and transparent criteria for allocating public resources to strategic priorities while ensuring overall fiscal discipline.
• The World Bank Treasury Reference Model: A development tool for fiscal managers and system developers, intended to help implement good practices in fiscal accounting and expenditure control.

100% Focused on Government

The FreeBalance Accountability Suite supports all aspects of the budget cycle and provides fiscal control over fund allocations, expenditures, appropriations, revenue administration, and human capital management.

FreeBalance is focused 100% on government.  The underlying product architecture is designed for managing public finance.  Unlike private sector finance, public finance is budget driven, not profit driven.  Commitment accounting requires numerous control mechanisms between the initial budget approval and the completion of government fiscal transactions. 

As a standard configuration (out-of-the-box), the FreeBalance Accountability Suite supports a wide range of budgetary controls in compliance with international public finance rules and codes of good fiscal practice: 

• Aggregate Fiscal Controls: The initial approved budgetary funds are mapped to the Chart of Accounts (COA) at a pre-determined COA hierarchy level for aggregate fiscal control.
• Multiple Levels of Allotment Controls: Support for approved appropriations, warrants, cash controls, supplemental budgets and allocations, mapped to summary or detailed levels within the COA and to fiscal periods.
• Multiple Commitment Levels: Pre-encumbrance, commitment and obligation controls.
• Multi-Funds and Project Controls: Projects and Programs are linked with fund sources, including linking specific budgets, projects or programs to specific revenue sources or donors.

The FreeBalance Accountability Suite adapts to meet many unique country needs including:

• Chart-of-Accounts design supporting consolidation, reporting objects, international standards, valid code combinations and accounting offsets.
• Multiple currencies, adjustment of fiscal periods, multi-year commitments, year-end and period-end procedures.
• Multiple accounting methods (cash, modified cash, modified accrual and full accrual).
• Workflow, business rules, forms and report configuration.
• Custom domains to support unique government information integrated with workflow, rules, forms and reports.

Integration

GRP systems need to integrate with a wide variety of automated sub-systems.  The FreeBalance Accountability Suite leverages a component-based Services-Oriented Architecture (SOA) to facilitate integration: 

• Government Systems integration supports of bank, revenue and expenditure systems including multiple government tiers.
• Systems Management integration includes integration tools and support for identity management.
• Office Integration support typical office software and e-mail.

Country-Specific Functionality

Governments worldwide select required functionality that reflects the unique country circumstances and can activate additional features and functionality as the political process evolves.  The FreeBalance Accountability Suite is designed for managing government fiscal processes from the ground up.  The FreeBalance GRP solution is implemented by activating functionality options through software configuration rather than bespoke programming and software source code customization.

Language and Localization

The support of local languages and terminology enables capacity building and government self-sustainability.  The FreeBalance Accountability Suite is a multi-language GRP that adapts to meet unique language requirements:

• Language support facilitated through uploading translation files.
• Multiple character set support includes Unicode.
• Terminology adjustment after uploading translation.