Tech Forum

Hello, I am a branch president and I am trying to find out our unit's remaining budget balance. I have three reports available to me in MLS, but all of them show different remaining budget balances. Which one is the real one and I should now base my decisions on making additional year-end allocations to branch auxiliaries for their Christmas activities needs? See screenshots attached.

LURBS Report 501 shows a balance of 2592,29 Litas
MLS Budget Summary Report shows a balance of 170,84 Litas
MLS Income Expense Report shows a balance of 292,06 Litas

Thank you very much for your assistance!

rchomskis wrote:Hello, I am a branch president and I am trying to find out our unit's remaining budget balance. I have three reports available to me in MLS, but all of them show different remaining budget balances. Which one is the real one and I should now base my decisions on making additional year-end allocations to branch auxiliaries for their Christmas activities needs? See screenshots attached.

LURBS Report 501 shows a balance of 2592,29 Litas
MLS Budget Summary Report shows a balance of 170,84 Litas
MLS Income Expense Report shows a balance of 292,06 Litas

Thank you very much for your assistance!

The MLS Budget Summary Report is the report you want. It shows your current Budget balance.

The LURBS Report shows your balance as of the end of that statement month; so it was once a correct balance, but is out of date.

The Income and Expense Report shows you your balance in other categories, such as Ward Missionary and Other, but does not show your Budget balance.

The LURBS reports are sent to us on a weekly basis. Any ideas why the balances differ in report 501 and MLS Budget Summary report? We definetely don't do much budget spending during the month to incure such a big difference in these reports.

rchomskis wrote:The LURBS reports are sent to us on a weekly basis.

Well, you are clearly not in the United States or Canada, which uses the financial system I'm familiar with. We have similar periodic reports sent to us (in our case monthly), so I was trying to draw some parallels. The procedures in Lithuania might be significantly different.

rchomskis wrote:Any ideas why the balances differ in report 501 and MLS Budget Summary report? We definetely don't do much budget spending during the month to incure such a big difference in these reports.

The most likely difference is caused by some transactions (either expenses or deposits) appearing in one report but not the other. You might gain some insights by looking at a weekly report from the beginning of the year, and compare it with a MLS Budget Summary Report from the same time period (you can set the date range on that MLS report to a custom date range and pick a date near the beginning of the year. That might help you understand if there was a similar difference at the beginning of the year, and that same difference has carried forward throughout the year, or if the difference accumulated throughout the year. Either way, you're going to have to do some detailed accounting investigation and/or work with your support office to track this down.

aebrown knows the reports much better then I do, but depending on what you're printing you're either looking at: 1) expenses balanced against a budget that was established for the ward or 2) compare expenses against the money your unit has been given.

Adding to the confusion, unless I'm mistaken, "Budget" can refer to one of two things: First, it may mean a number usually created at the beginning of the year for planning. For example, setting a budget for the various quorums and auxiliaries. This is the usual meaning for household and business planning. In addition, "Budget" can also refer to a category of expenses used for ward activities. Since the exact amount of money the ward gets isn't exactly know at the beginning of the year, answering the question of "how much is left in the budget" can be tricky. Is one referring to "how much is left in our planned spending" or "what is the balance of the budget category"?