2014 Year End close corrupts Other Account

Discussions around using and interfacing with the Church MLS program.
Locked
rickk
Member
Posts: 134
Joined: Fri Aug 19, 2011 11:13 am
Location: Ridgefield, WA, USA

2014 Year End close corrupts Other Account

#1

Post by rickk »

Good morning,

I logged into the stake computer this morning and performed the year end close procedures for finance. Everything said it worked properly, but when I checked the Other account balances, I now have a negative balance of $35.70 in one sub account and an offsetting positive balance of $35.70 in the uncategorized Other area. I know this was clean last night as I checked to be sure all of the finance info was ready for the year end roll. Both of these are audit exceptions, so I was hoping that one of the programmers here could take a look and see if this is localized or if a number of units are seeing similar issues. As the stake finance clerk, I have been working closely with the wards to clean up their Other accounts (we had a number of exceptions last audit cycle) but now it looks like MLS may have messed up at least the stake account. I see no transaction for $35.70 when displaying all history for the Other account, so I am wondering if this is a lingering remnant from the CUBS transition several years back when all of the expenses were shuffled around and had to be fixed.

Rick
scgallafent
Church Employee
Church Employee
Posts: 3025
Joined: Mon Feb 09, 2009 4:55 pm
Location: Riverton, Utah

Re: 2014 Year End close corrupts Other Account

#2

Post by scgallafent »

rickk wrote:I was hoping that one of the programmers here could take a look and see if this is localized or if a number of units are seeing similar issues.
This would be handled by the service center. One of the analysts there can work through the issue with you and they will hand the issue off to the product manager if there is a widespread issue that needs to be addressed by the development team.
rickk
Member
Posts: 134
Joined: Fri Aug 19, 2011 11:13 am
Location: Ridgefield, WA, USA

Re: 2014 Year End close corrupts Other Account

#3

Post by rickk »

I talked to the service center and they were not able to provide any meaningful information. Of course they can tell me how to fix it (I already know how to do a transfer :-)), but they couldn't even bring up the old backup without it asking for them to roll finance to 2015. So the answer at this point is "we are sorry, we can't help you". They even claimed that the programmers couldn't open the backup file without having to roll to the new year. I find it hard to believe that there isn't a special MLS version that would allow this - or that it isn't possible to change the clock on a computer so it thinks it is still 2014 and will allow viewing the info before the roll...

Anyway, unless someone here wants to dig into it further, I guess I am stuck having to work with my auditor to explain why I have 2 exceptions that were not there when I exited 2014. :-(

Rick
emarkp
New Member
Posts: 12
Joined: Sun Nov 16, 2014 12:22 pm

Re: 2014 Year End close corrupts Other Account

#4

Post by emarkp »

Just tell them what I do: that this garbage software hasn't had a stability improvement in a decade and that we're lucky it runs at all. Seriously. 10 years ago someone changed the date on our clerk machine (probably were using the helpful pop-up calendar and helpfully clicked on a different day). When i noticed the date was wrong I changed the date to be correct, and the software refused to take donations "in the past". HQ told us to revert to a backup from *before* the date change and manually re-enter the old data. It's really quite scandalous that this kind of thing still happens.
rickk
Member
Posts: 134
Joined: Fri Aug 19, 2011 11:13 am
Location: Ridgefield, WA, USA

Re: 2014 Year End close corrupts Other Account

#5

Post by rickk »

It looks like it was not just the stake but at least one of the wards got hit as well. Most of them were ok, but one ward has a balance of -$16,000 in their uncategorized Other area with lots of incorrect positive balances in the sub accounts to balance out the real amount. I sure wish that we could get some help to correct things properly (i.e. in MLS) instead of being asked to try to recreate the correct balances by doing a bunch of transfers. I realize that we are cheap labor, but corrupting the hard work of the local clerks and then asking them to fix it manually doesn't seem like a good way to handle this.
Locked

Return to “MLS Support, Help, and Feedback”