Donations Drop Menu

Discuss questions around local unit policies for budgeting, reconciling, etc. This forum should not contain specific financial or membership information.
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ronk-p40
New Member
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2009 8:07 pm
Location: Concord, CA, USA

Donations Drop Menu

#1

Post by ronk-p40 »

When posting a donation there is a point when adding the name of the donor you are able to select the members name from a window listing members names and selected by clicking the magnifying glass icon. My question is how can you edit that menu of names. It allows you to add a name to the list but I can't find a function that allows you to delete a name from the list or to make a correction. I recently changed two names in membership. One because the member remarried and the second because the member was divorced and requested that she be listed by her maiden name. The listing does not show these two changes.
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mfmohlma
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Posts: 854
Joined: Thu Feb 28, 2008 5:45 pm
Location: Hillsboro, OR

#2

Post by mfmohlma »

First, remember that the donor name can be linked to a membership record, but that the donor name can be different. Changes in the membership record do not change the donor name.

To change the donor name, use the View/Edit Donors menu item.

Oh, and there is no way to delete a donor, but you can hide their name from being displayed. It doesn't sound like you want to do that in this case, though.
crislapi
Senior Member
Posts: 1267
Joined: Mon Jul 07, 2008 4:05 pm
Location: USA

#3

Post by crislapi »

All financial records in MLS (including donor name) are kept for the retention period required by law (3 yrs plus current in US - I call this previous 4 years here). Therefore, if someone has donated in any of the 4 most recent calendar years, their name will be in the list of donors on MLS. If they have not donated in the current or previous 3 years, their name will automatically be removed from the list when the next calendar year begins. I believe this is part of the year-end tasks that MLS does automatically at the start of each new calendar year.

There are at least three separate list of names in MLS - membership, donors and payees. A membership record can be linked to either of the other two, but because they are independent, they can have different names, spellings, addresses, etc than what is shown on the membership record. This is also why you can have donors or payees whose records are not in your ward.

As was mentioned, you CAN edit which names appear and what they say. In your finance section, find the "Add/Update Donors" option. That will pull up a list of all the donors over the previous 4 years. Clicking on the hyperlinked name pulls up the dialog window you see when you are adding new donors, just with the current info. This is where you edit any of the info about the donor (names, spelling, address). If you have duplicate donor records for a single member, use the merge option to combine the two records into one. If you have old donors, you can hide their record using the drop-down menu in the right-hand column. Select hidden. This will keep them from showing up in any financial report.

I have had issues in the past where and old donor shows back up and asks for a printout of their financial records. If they are hidden, you cannot do it, so keep that in mind. You'll need to go back to the add/update donor menu and change their status to "visible" before you can print the report.

Hope this helps.
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