Tech Forum

There is a unit in our stake that has never done a 0 balance reconciliation with no temporary items (how they have passed an audit in the last three years is a issue). I am attempting to straighten that out and we have got their other category taken care of but the ward missionary account has a very large positive balance on the CUFS and a lesser but still large, negative unreconciled difference on the MLS report. We know that the church has been taking out funds for missionary payments but they have not been entered into MLS. I was asked if they needed to backtrack through each month as far back as they can and enter in those transfers (other items) or if they can do a large one for the balance. I suspect that in order to account for specific missionaries, they will have to do it individually but is there a way they can count up all the deductions for one missionary and enter it all at once? What would you advise?

wrigjef wrote:There is a unit in our stake that has never done a 0 balance reconciliation with no temporary items (how they have passed an audit in the last three years is a issue). I am attempting to straighten that out and we have got their other category taken care of but the ward missionary account has a very large positive balance on the CUFS and a lesser but still large, negative unreconciled difference on the MLS report. We know that the church has been taking out funds for missionary payments but they have not been entered into MLS. I was asked if they needed to backtrack through each month as far back as they can and enter in those transfers (other items) or if they can do a large one for the balance. I suspect that in order to account for specific missionaries, they will have to do it individually but is there a way they can count up all the deductions for one missionary and enter it all at once? What would you advise?

That is certainly interesting that they could have passed an audit. You might want to mention that to the audit committee chairman so he can review how such an auditing lapse might have occurred.

If you just "do a large one for the balance" then you are just trusting the CUFS and not really reconciling, so that wouldn't be appropriate.

You need to identify each transaction on each CUFS for each missionary that has not been entered into MLS and then enter those transactions. Entering individual transactions will give you the most accurate accounting, since then you could run Income and Expense reports for any time period and they would be accurate.

But it seems to me that entering one transaction per missionary for the sum of the identified transactions is probably okay (but I would never do it that way). You'll only have one date for a set of transactions done over many months, but at least it will be based on an actual count of the missed transactions.

A compromise could be to enter the 2010 transactions individually, and then one composite transaction dated December 2009 for all the transactions up to that point. That way, you would have done the accounting by the book for the current audit period.

Follow the instructions in the wiki article Reconciliation for units that have not reconciled in MLS. Since reconciliations must be complete for the current year back through the previous three years in the US, going back to December 2006 will be necessary. I don't know of any shortcuts to meeting this requirement.