Tech Forum

I have tried twice today to get LCR to generate the (Official US Tax Statement) by going to finances-Tithing Settlement-Year end Statement-Generate a Statement.
After initiating (Generate a Statement with all members selected (Households) and for the previous year) it works on it for about 10 minutes and then simply returns with this message.

Official US Tax Statement Multiple (431) (01 Jan 2016 - 31 Dec 2016) was not generated. Please try again.

Are we overlooking some step?
Any other tips?

Thanks

Last year the official tax statement weren't available until almost the end of January. There was a message indicating that they would be available no earlier than January 19th and no later than January 31st on the Donations page of lds.org. I'd guess that the same will be true this year as well. Basically, it's probably too early to generate them. Of course, assuming that's the case, it would be nice if they had a better error message and/or some banner message.

eblood66 wrote:Last year the official tax statement weren't available until almost the end of January. There was a message indicating that they would be available no earlier than January 19th and no later than January 31st on the Donations page of lds.org. I'd guess that the same will be true this year as well. Basically, it's probably too early to generate them. Of course, assuming that's the case, it would be nice if they had a better error message and/or some banner message.

Thanks, That's interesting to know.
Yes, it would be much nicer to have a little more info available to indicate what is happening and when the statements are available to generate.

In the Official communications Library, the notice about tithing settlement says:
Annual statements
or official tax
statements, if
applicable
Print and give to each donor
by January 31, 2017.
The notice doesn't give any indication that we need to wait until a certain time to generate the statements.
See attached.

We do see a "Pre-Generated Donor Statements" pdf, but it is for 2015.

That's what the annual letter has always said. It used to be that the ward always knew whether all donations had been processed. If a new donation came in the mail that was post dated before the end of the year you could just print a new statement. However, statements can now include donations from other units and we have no way of knowing if someone mailed a donation to another unit (for a missionary for instance) and it hasn't yet been deposited. So even though there is no instruction to do so, it may be wiser to wait at least another week or so before generating and printing them just to make sure all donations have been processed and show up.

It's probably also less load on the church servers if we wait for the pre-generated statements rather than generating them ourselves. The pre-generated statements will also omit those who have indicated they will print their own statements so there should be fewer to mail or deliver.

Overall, I'd recommend waiting for the pre-generated statements.

However, having said that, I just tried and I was able to generate my own statement for 2016 so it is possible. Have you tried to just do one or two? Perhaps the problem is how many you're trying to generate at once.

eblood66 wrote:That's what the annual letter has always said. It used to be that the ward always knew whether all donations had been processed. If a new donation came in the mail that was post dated before the end of the year you could just print a new statement. However, statements can now include donations from other units and we have no way of knowing if someone mailed a donation to another unit (for a missionary for instance) and it hasn't yet been deposited. So even though there is no instruction to do so, it may be wiser to wait at least another week or so before generating and printing them just to make sure all donations have been processed and show up.

It's probably also less load on the church servers if we wait for the pre-generated statements rather than generating them ourselves. The pre-generated statements will also omit those who have indicated they will print their own statements so there should be fewer to mail or deliver.

Overall, I'd recommend waiting for the pre-generated statements.

However, having said that, I just tried and I was able to generate my own statement for 2016 so it is possible. Have you tried to just do one or two? Perhaps the problem is how many you're trying to generate at once.

Thanks for the insight, We'll most likely just wait now.
I have tried to generate just one at a time, it takes about 10 minutes before it says that it was not generated and to try again. I have tried 3 times with about an hr in between each time.
Since you had success, I'll go ahead and try it one more time.

My Finance clerk and I have been trying to figure this out for a whole week. The website keeps timing out if we try to generate multiple statements. It would be nice to have more communication from salt lake to Bishop's, Ward Clerks, and Finance Clerks if they will be automatically generated on the 19th or not. I saw the December 15th PDF which just shows the dates to submit the declaration by and to hand out statements by. I guess if its the 19th we will have 2 Sundays to hand them all out. We usually have to mail quite a few out so we will have to get them out quickly this year.

eblood66 wrote:It used to be that the ward always knew whether all donations had been processed.

Almost always. I've had checks submitted on time get returned in January for NSF. It's just prudent to let the dust settle after the year end before printing anything marked "official".

BTW, if I try to print my own statements from lds.org, 2016 doesn't show up yet. I would imagine when CHQ throws the switch, all the 2016 statements will appear both in LCR and lds.org on the same day. Just a hunch, but it might save you time checking to see if they are available over letting LCR timeout.

I was able to generate my own statement quickly but waited several minutes to generate other member's without success.

jeffreyshawnjames wrote:I was able to generate my own statement quickly but waited several minutes to generate other member's without success.

When was your last donation? Was it more then 20 days ago?