Tech Forum

Our ward sent a check out in July and the check status in MLS shows as "Cleared" but the payee claims that they have not received it. How can I find out the date that it cleared or what information can I send the payee to confirm that the check was indeed cashed?

Thank you,

Tyler Christensen
tylerc@honeyvillegrain.com

Easiest is to look through your Unit Finance Statements to find the date the check cleared the bank. With that, I'd have the member check his/her bank statement for that same month to see if they did in fact cash it. If the member still disputes having ever received the check, you can contact Local Unit Support and have them provide a copy of the processed check, complete with endorsement signature.

As additional follow-up, cleared status used to mean the check had only been acknowledged by the bank, not cashed. The new system is suppose to show the actual status, but I honestly haven't done any detailed checking to see if that is the case. You should have just received your October UFS. For your first course of action, check in the action items section to make sure the check is not outstanding still.

crislapi wrote:As additional follow-up, cleared status used to mean the check had only been acknowledged by the bank, not cashed.

The exact wording for the description of the "cleared" status from the MLS 3.4.1 release notes is:

Disbursement cleared bank and matched at HQ

If the MLS developers, in advisement from the finance department, are using the standard banking term for cleared in this description then we can rely on the following banking definition of cleared:

Transactions are given a "Cleared" status when they have been posted to your account. "Cleared", or posted transactions, are not always final because there may be certain circumstances when such transactions may be reversed.

Essentially that means the disbursement check has been cashed.

jdlessley wrote:Essentially that means the disbursement check has been cashed.

Thank you. I do understand the meaning of cleared. As I stated, I hadn't done any checking to verify that this new feature was in fact reporting the status correctly. I have since been able to check my MLS and it does appear to be reporting the status of my checks correctly, so cleared should mean cleared.

What is the best way to get a hold of Local Unit Support to request a copy of the check so I can send this to payee?

Also, is the date in the Unit Financial Statement the date that the check was issued or the date the check "clears" the bank? If a check is issued in July but not cashed until October then will the July, August, and September statements all show this check outstanding and then in October it will appear in the Expense section of the CUBS financial statement?

Tyler

tylerchristensen wrote:What is the best way to get a hold of Local Unit Support to request a copy of the check so I can send this to payee?

The ways of contacting LUS are listed in the wiki under Local Unit Support.

tylerchristensen wrote:Also, is the date in the Unit Financial Statement the date that the check was issued or the date the check "clears" the bank? If a check is issued in July but not cashed until October then will the July, August, and September statements all show this check outstanding and then in October it will appear in the Expense section of the CUBS financial statement?

The date on the statement is the date the check was issued. It shows in the Expense section of the Unit Financial Statement is in the month it is issued (and transmitted from MLS, of course). It will also show in the Outstanding Items section for every month for which it has not cleared by the end of the month. So in your example, you were correct about when it would appear as an outstanding item, but it will show in the Expenses section in July, not October.

If the date on the check is the date it was issued, is there anywhere in the Unit Financial Statement that shows the date it clears so I can at least give the payee this date?

As best I can tell, no, there is no way to determine what day a check was cashed from either the UFS or MLS. Just the month. If you need the actual date you will have to contact local unit support.