Tech Forum

I have done statements for ward tithing settlement in Nov. for the last two years as per stake's request in Canada and now getting ready for round three.
The down side is, that by time most people come in to see the bishop, the statement is so outdated they want a new one anyways.
Often they don't pick up the Nov. one early enough to peruse either.
I wonder about just waiting for the people to sign up to see the bishop and print the week before (which seems to happen anyways) rather than print them all in Nov. at once and then print again.
Or maybe I need to be more diligent in distributing the Nov. statements ASAP?.
Just trying to save time and resources.Any thoughts?

punman wrote:I have done statements for ward tithing settlement in Nov. for the last two years as per stake's request in Canada and now getting ready for round three.
The down side is, that by time most people come in to see the bishop, the statement is so outdated they want a new one anyways.
Often they don't pick up the Nov. one early enough to peruse either.
I wonder about just waiting for the people to sign up to see the bishop and print the week before (which seems to happen anyways) rather than print them all in Nov. at once and then print again.
Or maybe I need to be more diligent in distributing the Nov. statements ASAP?.
Just trying to save time and resources.Any thoughts?

I failed to distribute the YTD statements last year because I flubbed that part of my orientation training. But some people did expect it and were disappointed not to receive the statement. It gives them a chance at home to compare their records to the ward's.

Yes, it will be outdated before tithing settlement. So clerks just need to print it twice.

One other hint to those who didn't already know this: Before mailing out statements, make a pass through the donor address records for current members in MLS and refresh the links to the member-record mailing addresses, just in case there were any moves or corrections during the year. (I can't understand why this doesn't happen automatically.)

punman wrote:I wonder about just waiting for the people to sign up to see the bishop and print the week before (which seems to happen anyways) rather than print them all in Nov. at once and then print again.

As boomerbubba pointed out, people need a chance to review their statement prior to tithing settlement. As a finance clerk for 5 years, I can't remember a year that there weren't clerical errors brought to our attention from this important step. Things like, donations credited to the wrong member, or placed in the wrong category are the most common.

All in all, there are 3 major printings of donation information and they all use different reports. The YTD Donation Summary report in November for all donors, a Tithing Settlement Statement for those who attend tithing settlement, and the Official Tax Statement for all donors in January.

Yes, it's a lot a paperwork, but I wouldn't recommend skipping any step of it.

boomerbubba wrote:One other hint to those who didn't already know this: Before mailing out statements, make a pass through the donor address records for current members in MLS and refresh the links to the member-record mailing addresses, just in case there were any moves or corrections during the year. (I can't understand why this doesn't happen automatically.)

I agree. This is something I've asked for in MLS for quite some time.

So, how exactly do you refresh the addresses? I've never done this before

drp wrote:So, how exactly do you refresh the addresses? I've never done this before

It's a bit tedious, but the process is:

1. Go into Finance > Add/Update Donors
2. Click on the Type column to sort by Type (we are only interested in the donors of type Member for this exercise).
3. Start with the first donor of type Member
4. Click on the donor name
5. In the dialog box that appears, click on the Select button
6. Double click the donor name
7. Click Save
8. Move to the next donor of type Member, and repeat from step 4

This has the effect for each donor record of reselecting the same member record that was already connected to that donor record. This will update the address to match the current address in the member record.

Experience shows that it is faster to just run through the list and update each donor record than to painstakingly compare the addresses to see if they are the same.

This is slightly off-topic, because it does not affect tithing settlement. But it is also useful to update the addresses of payees who are members. The procedure is similar, but as I recall there is not a way to do the initial sort. You have to inspect each payee whose address you think might need updating, check to see if he or she is currently a member of the unit, then relink them like the donor records.

This is important to do occasionally if you tend to mail reimbursement checks instead of hand-delivering them.

Once again, I can't understand why all this does not happen automatically when members' addresses change.