New Missionary Finance Tips

[aebrown]

I have been trying to figure out how to see the balances for the ward missionary subcategories, but have not found any way to do so. I see "Income and Expense report" referenced by Alan. Is that the only way to see the individual missionary balances? Where is that report seen?

The easiest way to see all the balances for your ward missionary subcategories is to:

1. Run the Income and Expense Report (on the Finances tab under Reports/Reconcile).
2. Choose "Summary by Sub-Category" from the Report dropdown in the upper right corner.
3. Generally the date range of Current Year will be fine.
4. Check the Ward Missionary parent category and that will automatically check all the Ward Missionary subcategories.
5. Print the report.

The balance for a subcategory doesn't actually exist anywhere in MLS, but rather it is a total of all the transactions in that subcategory. So running a report is the only way to see the balance.

[blairjames]

The "Missionary" fund should not be used. Create the subcategory under Ward Missionary; make all donations to that subcategory, and all payments from that subcategory. Each month you will have to manually enter the expenses for the missionary. They will show up on your Church Unit Financial Statement, but nothing automatic happens in MLS. Just use the Enter Expenses screen, and check the "Not a check" checkbox so that you can enter the reference number from your financial statement.

The "Missionary" category is an odd category that really should be cleared out by transferring to the "Ward Missionary" category, if you can figure out how to do it. All unspecified ward missionary funds should be in the "Ward Missionary" category, and all designated funds should be in a particular subcategory of "Ward Missionary."

It's a bit tricky to clear out the "Missionary" category, but you can see how to do it in this post.

I know this is an old Thread, but the topic is new to me. I followed all of the conversation just fine, except where I got to the part of the above quote that I underlined. Two questions.

1) In the enter expense screen you enter the reference #, but there is still the box for the payee. What do you put in that box? Where exactly are we transfering the money from the ward missionary subcategory to?
The Ward Missionary main category------- because that is the account the church sweeps each month? Just hazy here.

2) Apparently you have to wait until you get the financial statement at the beginning of the next month to make the missionary money transfer.
So the printout for the subcategory is always a month behind because you can't transfer till you get the reference # from the financial statement? Need help here too! Hope you can remove some cobwebs.

[allenjpl]

I know this is an old Thread, but the topic is new to me. I followed all of the conversation just fine, except where I got to the part of the above quote that I underlined. Two questions.

1) In the enter expense screen you enter the reference #, but there is still the box for the payee. What do you put in that box? Where exactly are we transfering the money from the ward missionary subcategory to?
The Ward Missionary main category------- because that is the account the church sweeps each month? Just hazy here.

I always put "Corporation of the President." Remember, this isn't actually a transfer, because the money has already been taken out of the ward's account. This is an expense; the expense entry you put in just reflects that money already left the account. It's a bookkeeping function, so that's why you select "Not a check" and input the reference number.

The post you quoted referred to an older separate category that was being used instead of using a subcategory under "Ward Missionary." If you don't see a "Missionary" category, don't worry.

[mfmohlma]

To answer your other question:

2) Apparently you have to wait until you get the financial statement at the beginning of the next month to make the missionary money transfer.
So the printout for the subcategory is always a month behind because you can't transfer till you get the reference # from the financial statement? Need help here too! Hope you can remove some cobwebs.

In essence, yes. It's not that big of a deal, though, because money is always (hopefully) flowing in to the account as well.

[gregwanderson]

Since I know that the money is usually taken on-or-about the first Thursday of the month, I'll enter a not-a-check expense at about the same time. I may give it a made-up reference number like "2010-04." This allows me to track the expense "as it happens" instead of waiting for the financial statement. Then I just confirm the expense during the monthly reconciliation.

Since there's always some kind of Ward Missionary expense each month, there's no confusion over what the reference numbers mean when they are "2010-01," "2010-02," "2010-03," etc. Also, I usually enter one Ward Missionary expense per month and list all of the full-time missionaries within that one entry.

When I create a Ward Missionary sub-category with the missionary's name, I like to call it something like "Smith, John-Last pymnt 2012-03." I like to know that I'm keeping track of when the 24th payment will be made. This can help when the family loses track of exactly when they can stop donating (especially when other relatives are making contributions) and they can't even remember when the first payment happened. If I see, for example, that the missionary has three months to go and there's currently a balance of $800, I can inform the family that they only need to worry about one more month.

[blairjames]

Thank you for the informative tips.

As I have looked back to see what others have done in the past, I see that they have created a transfer somehow from the ward missionary sub category instead of the expense method that has been earlier discussed. How would that work and would that accomplish the same thing properly?

[aebrown]

Thank you for the informative tips.

As I have looked back to see what others have done in the past, I see that they have created a transfer somehow from the ward missionary sub category instead of the expense method that has been earlier discussed. How would that work and would that accomplish the same thing properly?

The reconciliation process is the most likely technique that led to the creation of transfers (as opposed to expenses) for the debits to the ward missionary subcategories. During reconciliation, you can create Other Items (not Temporary Items). Once you save those Other Items, they become Transfers (which you can see on the View Transfers screen).

The one tricky thing is that you do have to make sure you enter a negative amount -- if you enter a positive amount you'll create a mess, since you'll have to undo those transactions and then make the correct negative transactions.

One ward financial clerk in our stake does it this way very successfully. He likes the fact that this technique lets you see the transactions for all the missionaries in the ward on one screen. That way it's less likely you'll lose your place as you are entering transactions for multiple missionaries, as might happen when you enter Expenses one by one.

I personally prefer Expenses because you can't accidentally enter the wrong sign, and then on Income and Expense Reports it makes better sense for the expenses to show up in the Expense column. But either way works; it's just a matter of personal preference.

[Mikerowaved]

But either way works; it's just a matter of personal preference.

For years I enter them during reconciliation as an Other Item, then one day I noticed in the training videos they only entered them as Expenses, never as Other Items, so I changed my methods.

Like Alan mentioned, either way works, as long as you are mindful of the sign, but I figured I couldn't go wrong by doing it the way the training stated.

[shawndowler]

For years I enter them during reconciliation as an Other Item, then one day I noticed in the training videos they only entered them as Expenses, never as Other Items, so I changed my methods.

Like Alan mentioned, either way works, as long as you are mindful of the sign, but I figured I couldn't go wrong by doing it the way the training stated.

I have never entered them as expenses. I guess I missed that part of the training and the Stake auditor never mentioned it. Thankfully, CUBS will take care of this for us.

[ashbycl]

I have searched but have not found an area to ask about our particular predicament. We are military and just moved overseas to Japan. We have a daughter who is stateside due to the short time between college and her mission. She enters the MTC 11June. We just got our records transferred to our new military branch however her records need to stay in the ward she is attending until she gets set apart. How do we set up the payment arrangement so our previous ward and stake in Virginia do not have to take on that expense? Can these payments be made online? If so what is the URL to the site where we can do so?