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December 2009 Reconciliation

Posted: Mon Jan 04, 2010 3:58 pm
by ffrsqpilot
Thought I would give the Stake Clerks here on the forum a heads up. The December Unit Financial Statements have been posted to MLS. I printed our stake financial statement today to do the monthly reconciliation. When I got to block three on the statement I saw we had a bunch of debits for Qwest Communications. The financial report debited those charges against our other account. In our case it was a debit for $1477.73. It made our "other category" a negative balance of over $900. I called Salt Lake as I thought telephone bills were paid by the church rather than by the stake and maybe something had changed. I was informed that there has been an error in the charges between Salt Lake and Qwest and they (church headquarters) are busy working on reversing the charges.

I hung up and went ahead with the reconciliation and at the MLS help desk recommendation added a temporary adjustment for the Qwest charges (one large adjustment of $1477.73 rather than 19 different charges adding up to that amount). After adding the adjustment the report came out with no unreconciled differences which is good.

However, trying to think ahead, I wondered what this would do when I get audited next month. I called Salt Lake again and asked if once they cleared the issue up with Qwest if they would be resending a corrected Unit Financial Statement - their answer was no - no corrected statement. So the December financial report is the one that the auditor will be seeing when he does the audit next month. I sat down and did the typical "Other category" list as you would do on the audit form (page 9 in the new Stake Audit form) and balanced everything out. After entering what MLS shows in our Other accounts, writing in what Financial Statement shows and the difference it all came to total up to the Qwest charges which I listed in the next section on the audit form. I plan on keeping this to show the auditor as I don't want to have to explain why I have a large inbalance in the Other account.

So a heads up to fellow stake clerks. Be aware of the Qwest charges. Church finance folks are working the issue. The finance statement that is in MLS for December is apparently what you will have to live with. To get ahead of the game it may be worthwhile to fill out the audit page that has you reconciling the Other account and keep a copy. It will be a whole lot easier to explain to the auditor if you figure it out now rather than when the auditor shows up and you try and remember what happened.

Jim

Posted: Mon Jan 04, 2010 4:09 pm
by aebrown
Pilotfly wrote:Thought I would give the Stake Clerks here on the forum a heads up. The December Unit Financial Statements have been posted to MLS. I printed our stake financial statement today to do the monthly reconciliation. When I got to block three on the statement I saw we had a bunch of debits for Qwest Communications.
Thanks for sounding the warning -- for those stakes that are affected, it will definitely help to have some understanding of what is behind this issue.

However, I reconciled our stake's December statement on Saturday, and we had no odd charges for Qwest Communications. Our phone service is provided by McLeod, not Qwest, so I wouldn't expect a Qwest issue to affect us. So fortunately the problem is not universal, although it may still affect many stakes.
Pilotfly wrote:The finance statement that is in MLS for December is apparently what you will have to live with.
Since any correction cannot happen until January at this point, indeed you'll have to live with the December statement, and the Temporary Item is required for reconciliation.

Regarding the audit, I would note that the December reconciliation report will show the temporary item, which should mention in its description what it is for. In all probability, by the time the audit occurs, you'll have your January statement, which should show the credit and thus would also support your explanation to the auditor of what happened. In any case, for unusual items such as this, it's good to have explanatory documentation to show to the auditor.

Thank You

Posted: Mon Jan 04, 2010 8:36 pm
by jeromer7
Yes, a great big thanks for sharing this info and saving those of us with Quest service the problem of each having to work it out on our own.

Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 10:23 am
by crislapi
Part of the audit is a reconcile of the other account. Since your MLS ending balance in Other does not match your December ending balance, you will need to itemize what is causing the difference and describe the steps you will take to resolve each one. You have already done this, so as you suggested, be sure to have it on hand for the audit. Your fix is simple - wait for the January statement to come out and the problem should be resolved.

Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 10:34 am
by aebrown
crislapi wrote:Part of the audit is a reconcile of the other account. Since your MLS ending balance in Other does not match your December ending balance, you will need to itemize what is causing the difference and describe the steps you will take to resolve each one.
Just a slight clarification to that statement: the audit's "Reconciliation of Other Category" does indeed require you to itemize every item that causes a difference between the MLS balance and the CUFS balance for the Other category.

But as long as the items listed lead to a reconciliation (there is no unexplained difference), then there is no audit step that requires you to "describe the steps you will take to resolve each one." An auditor may well ask for such a clarification, so it's good to be prepared with an answer, but it is not an explicit part of the audit.

Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 9:47 pm
by stanstrad
Thanks for the heads up. Just found same problem with our unit statement. Our phone service is/was also with McLeod, but these unknown Qwest charges still appeared, to the tune of $1400.00+. So saves me a call to SLC tomorrow. But not sure why SLC will not adjust/give back the $ to the other category, to get it back into balance?

Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 10:38 pm
by aebrown
sls wrote:Thanks for the heads up. Just found same problem with our unit statement. Our phone service is/was also with McLeod, but these unknown Qwest charges still appeared, to the tune of $1400.00+. So saves me a call to SLC tomorrow. But not sure why SLC will not adjust/give back the $ to the other category, to get it back into balance?
CHQ will indeed make the adjustment and credit the funds back to your Other account. But that will show up on January's statement, so you have to deal with it as a Temporary Item in order to reconcile December.