Budget Help

[eblood66]

The IROP should include the name of the person who make initiated the order.

That is not my experience for orders made through the distribution center online. I have several IROPs that I am looking at for purchases at the distribution center online on which the the customer block is the unit ID and the "Name of requestor:" block is empty. There is no place on the IROP identifying who placed the order. Unless the person making the order inputs their name in one of the two fillable blocks there will be no record of who made the order.

Unfortunately, I don't have any IROPs in front of me right now. In generally I know that orders made in stores do include the name of the person who made the order. I've seen this many times. Are the orders you're looking at from store.lds.org or from the Staples eWay site? I can understand why Staples orders wouldn't include a name since that site isn't directly connected to lds account. But I thought that orders from store.lds.org did include the name since the person making the order has to be logged onto their lds account to make the order. In either case, however, the number of people who can charge directly to the ward online is much smaller, generally only bishopric members and clerks. Of course, that doesn't help for orders that are old but if you keep on top of them it usually isn't hard to figure out who made the order.

[russellhltn]

but it looks like we have started the year 1100 in the hole,

If you really are $1100 in the hole, and it didn't just happen in the last few weeks, then it would appear that the stake hasn't done a good job of monitoring the ward.

[aebrown]

They looked at my year end budget balance and also think we had a $800 carryforward, but it looks like we have started the year 1100 in the hole

The only way to tell where you really stand with your budget is to run a Budget Summary Report. Several people in this discussion have recommended that you run it. It may well be that you have run that report, but I can find no post from you that specifically says that you have.

When you run that report, there are two very important numbers to look at:

• For the year 2014, look at the Carry Forward Balance (first line in the bottom section). That will tell you what your end of 2013 overall Budget balance truly was.
• Look at the bottom in the row labeled "Actual Available Budget." That is the amount you truly have in your account now. It should be the sum of the Carry Forward Balance and your Q1 allocation, less any expenses incurred thus far in January.

You will see plenty of other numbers on that report, but they all have to do with your assigned budget allocations. Those numbers are very helpful in tracking your organizations' spending, but you can adjust assigned budgets as needed, and they don't affect how much money you really have. If you're looking anywhere else hoping to see your actual budget balance, you may well be misled and make an incorrect assumption about where you stand.

[susan0246]

As I read through this discussion I was dismayed at all the badmouthing of stake finance clerks who "weren't doing their job" because they didn't know what happens to funds you thought you had at EOY when MLS closes the fiscal year and everything is zeroed out in the BASR. I was a ward financial clerk for five years (this last time) before becoming stake financial clerk three years ago. I take the available training at least twice every year, and yet there are major areas of MLS (like using and interpreting the BASR) that are nowhere to be found. Instead of bashing us hard working ward and stake financial clerks, you should try answering our questions. If you don't know, just admit it, but, please, stop insinuating we aren't doing our jobs. At the end of each year MLS zeroes out everything and I'm at a loss to figure out where all the money went. There is no rhyme or reason to it that I can see. And I've been fighting with MLS for many, many years. END OF RANT.

[aebrown]

As I read through this discussion I was dismayed at all the badmouthing of stake finance clerks who "weren't doing their job" because they didn't know what happens to funds you thought you had at EOY when MLS closes the fiscal year and everything is zeroed out in the BASR.

I'm sorry you feel that way. As I have reviewed this discussion, I have seen many very helpful, very detailed responses. There are only a couple of responses that were at all critical, and they both seemed to me to be conditional -- along the lines of "if" a stake clerk had done or not done something, then he wasn't doing his job. I would agree that those statements could have been worded more sensitively. It's unfortunately all too easy with online communications to be hasty in making a response without taking time to be empathetic. We all can use a reminder to be kinder in our responses and more grateful for the help that all the volunteers here take the time to give.

I take the available training at least twice every year, and yet there are major areas of MLS (like using and interpreting the BASR) that are nowhere to be found.

The Help Center document Local Unit Budget Instructions has a section titled Budget Reports which explains the BASR, providing an explanation for each of the labeled entries. That should help quite a bit in interpreting that particular report. If, after reading that help document, you still have questions, please feel free to post your specific questions here and people will be happy to help you.

Instead of bashing us hard working ward and stake financial clerks, you should try answering our questions.

I believe that just about every question that has been asked has been answered. If there are still unanswered questions in this discussion, I'd appreciate it if you could point me to those and I'll try to answer them or find someone who can.

At the end of each year MLS zeroes out everything and I'm at a loss to figure out where all the money went. There is no rhyme or reason to it that I can see.

I tried to address this in my previous post, but I could have done a better job. MLS doesn't zero out everything in the Budget category at year-end. It does zero out all the budget subcategory balances, but the total remaining budget (labeled "Actual Available Budget" on the BASR) at the end of the year is not zeroed out -- it is carried forward to the new year to become the "2014 Carry Forward Balance" (which may be a positive or a negative number).

Then for the new year's Budget, the clerk (in consultation with the priesthood leader) estimates the quarterly allocations (the Q1 allocation is known, but the other 3 quarters are estimates) and adds in the Carry Forward Balance to obtain the total available budget funds for the new year. Following the instructions in Handbook 1, Section 14.7.1 (which are also in the Policy and Principles section at the beginning of the article I linked to earlier), the priesthood leader and clerk then develop an annual budget that allocates a portion of the anticipated available funds to each budget subcategory.

What part of that process is confusing? Or were you referring to something else as having "no rhyme or reason"?