Tech Forum

I was called and set apart as ward clerk last Sunday, April 10th. The last time I was a ward clerk was 1982, so many things have changed. Although I recently served as stake clerk for a few years, this is the first time I have seen LCR from a ward clerk perspective.
As the old clerk passed the office keys to me, he basically said, "Good luck with the quarterly report." As I examine the fillable items in the report, I notice that most of them only count attendance during the last month of the quarter. OK, but how do I obtain that information from the organization presidencies and secretaries? The only attendance roll I have received was from the Gospel Doctrine class -- a class that does not count for the quarterly report.
I would like to hear from those in this forum about "best practices" in this area. Who provides these numbers to me?

7 Average sacrament meeting attendance
12 Families visited by home teachers
13 Women contacted by visiting teachers
14 Melchizedek Priesthood holders attending priesthood or Primary meetings
15 Prospective elders attending priesthood meetings
16 Women attending Relief Society, Young Women, or Primary meetings
17 Young single adults attending priesthood or Relief Society meetings
18 Young men attending priesthood meetings
19 Young women attending Sunday Young Women meetings
21 Children ages 3 through 11 years (as of 1 January) attending Primary

drepouille wrote:7 Average sacrament meeting attendance

Personally I counted this myself. In my current ward they have a couple teachers (priesthood office variety) walk down the aisles and count and report it to the ward clerk.

drepouille wrote:12 Families visited by home teachers
13 Women contacted by visiting teachers

I had the HP, Elders and RS presidencies enter their numbers in MLS (now LCR) and got my result there. Sometimes they were late so I let them just give me the number directly. But I encouraged them to get them in the computer.

drepouille wrote:14 Melchizedek Priesthood holders attending priesthood or Primary meetings
15 Prospective elders attending priesthood meetings

HP and Elder secretaries

drepouille wrote:16 Women attending Relief Society, Young Women, or Primary meetings

RS secretary

drepouille wrote:17 Young single adults attending priesthood or Relief Society meetings

I did this myself based on information provided in 14 and 16 (see below)

drepouille wrote:18 Young men attending priesthood meetings

YM secretary

drepouille wrote:19 Young women attending Sunday Young Women meetings

YW secretary

drepouille wrote:21 Children ages 3 through 11 years (as of 1 January) attending Primary

Primary secretary

For the attendance numbers I asked each secretary to look through their rolls and make a list of all those who did not attend any meeting during the month. I told them that if they knew someone had a calling that prevented them from attending their meeting to leave them off the list. I asked them to give these lists to me (by email, over the phone or on paper--I didn't care which).

I then looked over those lists and removed anyone who had a calling in another organization (I usually knew much better than they did who had callings). I also checked the prospective elder list to make sure they were on the correct list. And I went through the YSA list and marked those who were YSAs on each list. From those results I calculated the final numbers for the report.

I felt this gave a more accurate result than just asking for a single number from each organization. In addition, I could give the bishop a heads up if someone seemed to stop coming (although he usually knew already).

eblood66 wrote:For the attendance numbers I asked each secretary to look through their rolls and make a list of all those who did not attend any meeting during the month.

I know MLS used to be able to print the attendance sheets which can be used to calculate the numbers. I'm sure the ability is still there somewhere between MLS and LCR.

russellhltn wrote:I know MLS used to be able to print the attendance sheets which can be used to calculate the numbers. I'm sure the ability is still there somewhere between MLS and LCR.

Those can definitely be printed in LCR now. I think they can still be printed in MLS. We used to print those for each organization at the start of each quarter. But now they can print them themselves from LCR.

Ward council and their presidencies can print the list of "potential" members for each category from LCR. (I can't remember when we added that capability, so it may only be available in beta.) The easiest way for me to gather these was to print the potential list, sit down with the someone in the presidency, and run through the list, similar to what eblood66 described. It would take a minute or two for each list to run down and highlight anyone who hadn't attended the last month of the quarter.

scgallafent wrote:Ward council and their presidencies can print the list of "potential" members for each category from LCR. (I can't remember when we added that capability, so it may only be available in beta.) The easiest way for me to gather these was to print the potential list, sit down with the someone in the presidency, and run through the list, similar to what eblood66 described. It would take a minute or two for each list to run down and highlight anyone who hadn't attended the last month of the quarter.

That is pretty much what I have decided to do. We have bishopric meetings on Wednesday nights, and this report is due in two days. Last year when I was the ward mission leader in another ward, I could not click on groups in the quarterly report or the unit statistics to drill down into the list of members in those groups. That changed a few months ago, and I was happy to see that a ward mission leader could now see the list of prospective elders and unbaptized children of record.
On a related matter, I have sensed that it is very difficult to convince many members, even those who are part of the ward council, to login to lds.org and use these great tools. Perhaps some day that will change, but the advent of smart phones has lured members away from browsers on PCs, and towards apps on very small screens. LDS Tools is getting better, but the screens are still rather small.

We try to make sure that LCR functions well on small screens. It isn't a native app and there are a few things that degrade on small screens, but most functions should work reasonably well.

eblood66 wrote:

drepouille wrote:7 Average sacrament meeting attendance

Personally I counted this myself. In my current ward they have a couple teachers (priesthood office variety) walk down the aisles and count and report it to the ward clerk.

The pop-up note says this is the average attendance of the last month of the quarter. Does this mean I don't have to do any counting at all during the first two months of each quarter?

drepouille wrote:The pop-up note says this is the average attendance of the last month of the quarter. Does this mean I don't have to do any counting at all during the first two months of each quarter?

Only if you bishop wants to know those numbers for his own benefit. But sometimes its easier to do it all the time rather than to remember to start doing every 3rd month.