MLS finance transition to CUBS

Discuss questions around local unit policies for budgeting, reconciling, etc. This forum should not contain specific financial or membership information.
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aebrown
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#31

Post by aebrown »

ddurocher wrote:OK, so I guess we still don't know if in Canada, we should be entering $100 in the budget account and $6 in the tax (and the system automatically re-allocates $3), or if we manually have to split the tax amount between the two - $103 and $3.
So are you saying you disagree with my reading of the documentation where I said that you would enter the full $6 tax? Or that I wasn't clear in my answer? Because I definitely think (and wrote) that the documentation says you enter the full tax amount -- MLS will then take care of what to do with half the amount (charge it to the unit) and the other half (effectively reimburse it).
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crislapi
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#32

Post by crislapi »

ddurocher wrote:The documentation says:

"For units in Canada, half of the amount of the tax will be left in the unit's account. The other half of the tax amount plus the expense will be deducted from the account."

Does anyone know if this allocation of "half the tax" needs to be done manually or if we should be putting the full amount of the tax in the tax account ...
It seems the first switch will be this coming week, so as of right now it's all based on what we understand from the very short description given. My best guess is that the "Tax" section will now be either another column or a second row in the category and amount section. That comes from this:
For those units that are required to record sales tax with each disbursement, this will no longer be recorded in a Tax field on the Expense screen. Instead, the amount of the expense will be split between the expense and the tax on the expense. Both will be entered under the "Category" and "Amount" columns
I understand "expense" to be the subtotal and "tax on the expense" to be the tax which, added together, sum to the total reimbursement amount. I assume, then, that based on your geographic region, HQ will figure out how much, if any, of the tax to take from the budget. Half is a pretty easy calculation for them/MLS to do. Again just guessing, but I don't think you will have to figure it out yourself.
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#33

Post by ddurocher-p40 »

crislapi wrote:It seems the first switch will be this coming week, so as of right now it's all based on what we understand from the very short description given. My best guess is that the "Tax" section will now be either another column or a second row in the category and amount section. That comes from this:

I understand "expense" to be the subtotal and "tax on the expense" to be the tax which, added together, sum to the total reimbursement amount. I assume, then, that based on your geographic region, HQ will figure out how much, if any, of the tax to take from the budget. Half is a pretty easy calculation for them/MLS to do. Again just guessing, but I don't think you will have to figure it out yourself.

In my stake we already have the new tax account in MLS. When we enter an expense now, the budget category (or categories) and the tax amount need to add up to the total that the cheque (or check) is being written for.

As not all items are taxable and some re-imbursements can cover multiple budget categories, having MLS do it automatically seems a bit haphazard. Presumably it would assume that everything was taxable at the same rate. However, in the big scheme of things this is probably not really material enough to make that big of a difference.

David
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#34

Post by ddurocher-p40 »

Alan_Brown wrote:So are you saying you disagree with my reading of the documentation where I said that you would enter the full $6 tax? Or that I wasn't clear in my answer? Because I definitely think (and wrote) that the documentation says you enter the full tax amount -- MLS will then take care of what to do with half the amount (charge it to the unit) and the other half (effectively reimburse it).

Sorry Alan, I wasn't trying to be disagreeable. I'm just here trying to get some clarification/answers. I'm sure your answer was very clear to you, but was not so clear to me. It's like I often tell people, "everything is easy to understand, when you understand it".

I called the clerk support line earlier today. They had to call me back because they did not know the answer either, even after reading the documentation with me over the phone. After calling back, they confirmed for me that in Canada, we will in fact enter the full tax amount in the tax category when writing a cheque. What happens behind the scenes I will leave to faith, at least for the time being ...

David
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aebrown
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#35

Post by aebrown »

ddurocher wrote:In my stake we already have the new tax account in MLS. When we enter an expense now, the budget category (or categories) and the tax amount need to add up to the total that the cheque (or check) is being written for.
Yes, Canada is already on CUBS (according to the wiki article, this happened on 7 July 2010). So the procedures you're following now will not change on August 22. The discussion of an August 22 date is only for stakes in the US (and perhaps other countries) that were recently notified of the specific date for their transition to CUBS.
ddurocher wrote:As not all items are taxable and some re-imbursements can cover multiple budget categories, having MLS do it automatically seems a bit haphazard. Presumably it would assume that everything was taxable at the same rate.
MLS is making no assumptions about the tax rate or what items are taxable. The financial clerk will enter the tax amount as part of the expense. The only thing that MLS calculates in this regard is for Canada, it will calculate one half of the specified tax amount for each expense, and reduce the cost to the unit by one half of the specified tax amount for that expense. That doesn't sound haphazard at all to me.

Since you're already on CUBS and entering these amounts, it sounds to me like you're worrying about a non-issue. Just keep doing what you're doing; you'll see no change on August 22.
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aebrown
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#36

Post by aebrown »

ddurocher wrote:Sorry Alan, I wasn't trying to be disagreeable. I'm just here trying to get some clarification/answers.
By no means did I think you were being disagreeable. I was just trying to understand whether my response had not been worded well, or whether you understood but had a different opinion. It sounds like my response wasn't very clear. Hopefully my subsequent post makes that clearer.
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lajackson
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#37

Post by lajackson »

Alan_Brown wrote:The discussion of an August 22 date is only for stakes in the US (and perhaps other countries) that were recently notified of the specific date for their transition to CUBS.

According to this thread, there has been a change of schedule.
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#38

Post by ddurocher-p40 »

Alan_Brown wrote:Yes, Canada is already on CUBS (according to the wiki article, this happened on 7 July 2010). So the procedures you're following now will not change on August 22. The discussion of an August 22 date is only for stakes in the US (and perhaps other countries) that were recently notified of the specific date for their transition to CUBS.


MLS is making no assumptions about the tax rate or what items are taxable. The financial clerk will enter the tax amount as part of the expense. The only thing that MLS calculates in this regard is for Canada, it will calculate one half of the specified tax amount for each expense, and reduce the cost to the unit by one half of the specified tax amount for that expense. That doesn't sound haphazard at all to me.

Since you're already on CUBS and entering these amounts, it sounds to me like you're worrying about a non-issue. Just keep doing what you're doing; you'll see no change on August 22.

Yes, but we are seeing changes now and it is not clear to many of the clerks in my stake how we need to deal with them all as of yet. I am getting questions from my stake financial clerk as well as from several units in my stake and I am trying to help them find the answers.

As a stake clerk, I have only had one experience entering expenses since CUBS was downloaded and that was last night. I was working with my financial clerk since MLS now requires two individuals to authorize the printing of cheques.

If you are doing a reimbursement, you do not enter a separate tax amount for each individual expense, at least not that I have seen. The only way I could see to do this would be to write separate cheques for each inidvidual item, which I doubt most clerks would do. For example, say I get a reimbursement request from my stake YW Pres for refresehments for a regional dance and for craft supplies for a YW activity. These would be two separate budget categories or accounts in MLS. However, one is subject to tax (the crafts) while the refreshemnts (depending on what they are) typically would not be taxable. If I enter those two items and the total tax on a single cheque, MLS (or CUBS) cannot know how to correctly apportion the "half" of the tax between these two accounts. This is what I meant by haphazard. Perhaps it would have been better to say, "will not always be accurate in all situations" when cheques are being written. However, as I said before, the error in this scenario would not be material from a Gernerally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) point of view.

David
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aebrown
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#39

Post by aebrown »

ddurocher wrote:Yes, but we are seeing changes now and it is not clear to many of the clerks in my stake how we need to deal with them all as of yet. I am getting questions from my stake financial clerk as well as from several units in my stake and I am trying to help them find the answers.
Well, you're ahead of those of us in the US. At least you can see MLS with CUBS in action. But of course, there are also issues unique to Canada. And now it looks like the day when we can see CUBS in action has been delayed. :(
ddurocher wrote:As a stake clerk, I have only had one experience entering expenses since CUBS was downloaded and that was last night. I was working with my financial clerk since MLS now requires two individuals to authorize the printing of cheques.
That's bad news. As stake financial clerk, I print checks all the time by myself. They still have to be signed by two authorized individuals. Now I'm going to have to drag someone over to the stake office just to get the checks printed???? What a pain!
ddurocher wrote:If you are doing a reimbursement, you do not enter a separate tax amount for each individual expense, at least not that I have seen. The only way I could see to do this would be to write separate cheques for each inidvidual item, which I doubt most clerks would do. For example, say I get a reimbursement request from my stake YW Pres for refresehments for a regional dance and for craft supplies for a YW activity. These would be two separate budget categories or accounts in MLS. However, one is subject to tax (the crafts) while the refreshemnts (depending on what they are) typically would not be taxable. If I enter those two items and the total tax on a single cheque, MLS (or CUBS) cannot know how to correctly apportion the "half" of the tax between these two accounts. This is what I meant by haphazard. Perhaps it would have been better to say, "will not always be accurate in all situations" when cheques are being written. However, as I said before, the error in this scenario would not be material from a Gernerally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) point of view.
Thanks for the example. That makes it a lot clearer to me (although it would really help if I could run it myself). I didn't realize that tax was apportioned to individual budget subaccounts -- that's a change from the current practice that was not clearly documented. You raise a good question, but it's probably not a significant amount of money, so I don't think it will be a big problem.
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#40

Post by ffrsqpilot »

To quote from Alan's post above regarding needing two people to print checks.
Alan_Brown wrote:That's bad news. As stake financial clerk, I print checks all the time by myself. They still have to be signed by two authorized individuals. Now I'm going to have to drag someone over to the stake office just to get the checks printed???? What a pain!

I sincerely hope that was a misquote on the part of the stake clerk up in Canada. I cannot imagine anything more painful than having to have a second person nearby in order to write a check. For me, and I imagine quite a few other folks, that will entail some real issues. None of my Stake Presidency is in the same ward as I so it will necessarily require an extra evening or time before stake meetings to get check printing done (which takes away from their valuable time).

We may be jumping the gun on this and I certainly hope so. However if this really is a coming feature of CUBS then I intend through my Stake President and Area Seventy to see if we can't get this feature stopped (politely of course with the intent of helping the clerks out rather than making their calling even more difficult). We already have enough security inherant in the system with two signatures needed on a check and approval of either the Stake President in my case or a Bishop for everyone else at ward levels before a check is ever disbursed. Sorry, but this feature of needing two people to print a check just doesn't make sense.

Sorry if I am jumping the gun, but when I read this in the two posts above my heart sunk.
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