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Declaration Report Showing Moved Out Members?

Posted: Tue Dec 28, 2010 3:43 pm
by ckmcdonald
Is there a simple answer as to why my Declaration Report is listing a couple of families who moved out of the ward and their memberships are not in our ward any longer?

We have had other families move in and out and the report is listing (or not) them properly -- but I have two families (one moved out mid summer and the other about a month ago) that are showing up on the Declaration Report.

Posted: Tue Dec 28, 2010 6:52 pm
by lajackson
ckmcdonald wrote:Is there a simple answer as to why my Declaration Report is listing a couple of families who moved out of the ward and their memberships are not in our ward any longer?

The most likely cause is that MLS thinks they are still in your ward. It is possible that you did the Send/Receive to move the records out, but the return confirmation from CHQ did not update your local MLS. There are a number of other possibilities, including that the records were sent out and returned.

While not always reliable, a quick check of your LUWS may show them still in your ward, and a Request Unit Refresh Data via MLS will be nearly definitive.

Posted: Tue Dec 28, 2010 10:07 pm
by ckmcdonald
lajackson wrote:The most likely cause is that MLS thinks they are still in your ward. It is possible that you did the Send/Receive to move the records out, but the return confirmation from CHQ did not update your local MLS. There are a number of other possibilities, including that the records were sent out and returned.

While not always reliable, a quick check of your LUWS may show them still in your ward, and a Request Unit Refresh Data via MLS will be nearly definitive.
It has been a number of years since I was a Membership Clerk so I'm not all that familiar with the process of moving a family from the ward in MLS. For the two families in question I simply look under "Individual Member Records" and they are not listed there. Is it possible they are "moved out" but remain "unconfirmed" such that they don't show up in the list of members of the ward but are seen as members when MLS generates the Declaration Report?

The two families in question do not show up on the LUWS either.

Related question: Is it strictly true that MLS will not allow submission of the Declaration Report without a declaration for every member on this list? Or, is a note (such as "moved from ward 6 months ago") along with no declaration sufficient?

Posted: Tue Dec 28, 2010 10:28 pm
by aebrown
ckmcdonald wrote:Related question: Is it strictly true that MLS will not allow submission of the Declaration Report without a declaration for every member on this list? Or, is a note (such as "moved from ward 6 months ago") along with no declaration sufficient?
If there is a comment, that is sufficient. Every person on the Declaration Report must have a declaration or a comment; then you can submit the report.

If you look carefully, you'll see that initially the Notes field is yellow, indicating that it is required. But once you specify a declaration, the Notes field turns white, indicating that it no longer has to be specified. Or if you enter something in the Notes field, even if the status is "Not declared", the Notes field also turns white.

Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2010 1:49 am
by russellhltn
ckmcdonald wrote:Is it possible they are "moved out" but remain "unconfirmed" such that they don't show up in the list of members of the ward but are seen as members when MLS generates the Declaration Report?

By any chance were they moved out to "Address Unknown"? I think there was some kind of glitch when that happened. I don't remember the details.

Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2010 10:03 am
by ckmcdonald
RussellHltn wrote:By any chance were they moved out to "Address Unknown"? I think there was some kind of glitch when that happened. I don't remember the details.

I'll check the move-out addresses. It's very possible the family that moved out last summer went to an unknown address. However, the family that moved out last month is very active and just moved into a neighboring ward - I'm pretty sure we had their address when we moved them out.

Our Bishop is very hesitant to declare for these folks so given the comments in this thread I think I'm going to tell him we can just put a note in the report that they are no longer members of the ward and leave them undeclared.

Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2010 11:53 am
by mamadsen
ckmcdonald wrote:Is there a simple answer as to why my Declaration Report is listing a couple of families who moved out of the ward and their memberships are not in our ward any longer?

I believe anyone who made donations during the year will show on the Declaration Report, whether they have moved out or not. In the process of completing the report, you would need to do as aebrown has suggested: select the appropriate declaration or leave it as Undeclared with a note the the comments field "Moved."

As a side note, for all those who have moved and have donations with your unit, you should make an effort to mail them an end-of-year tax receipt that they can use for tax purposes.

Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2010 10:28 am
by ckmcdonald
mamadsen wrote:I believe anyone who made donations during the year will show on the Declaration Report, whether they have moved out or not.
This is not the case for me - at least with the default settings. Of the many who moved from our ward and did donate at one time, only two such families are populated on the Declaration Report. It might be that this is a selectable parameter of the report. I do know there are a few choices on what the report contains but I'm not sitting at MLS at the moment so I can't look and see what they are. One might be "All Donors".

Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2010 12:11 pm
by aebrown
ckmcdonald wrote:This is not the case for me - at least with the default settings. Of the many who moved from our ward and did donate at one time, only two such families are populated on the Declaration Report. It might be that this is a selectable parameter of the report. I do know there are a few choices on what the report contains but I'm not sitting at MLS at the moment so I can't look and see what they are. One might be "All Donors".
Current ward membership is not a filtering parameter on the Tithing Declarations screen. The filtering options are:
  • All Members
  • Donors
  • Nondonors
  • Undeclared

Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2010 9:46 pm
by ckmcdonald
aebrown wrote:Current ward membership is not a filtering parameter on the Tithing Declarations screen. The filtering options are:
  • All Members
  • Donors
  • Nondonors
  • Undeclared

I believe All Members is all members of the ward (have memberships).
I believe the other 3 are subsets of All Members.
If this is correct, the report should never include anyone whose records aren't in the ward?