Consolidated Financial Statement - Just Curious

[wrigjef]

As a stake financial clerk, I was just reviewing the monthly statement that the stake gets. I sent a bunch or emails to ward financial clerks about issues that appear on the report. I also emailed my President and at the end stated that my goal was to see a completely clean report with no overdrawn funds from any of our units. I was just curious if anyone has ever seen such a thing? I understand that any active unit is going to have outstanding checks (which show up as action items) but I would hope to someday see a report like I do for the stake, no overdrawn funds and only checks that are less then 60 days old.

[jdlessley]

I understand that any active unit is going to have outstanding checks (which show up as action items) but I would hope to someday see a report like I do for the stake, no overdrawn funds and only checks that are less then 60 days old.

This is a laudable goal to have, yet I doubt it is obtainable. We have no control over the recipients of checks and when they cash them. Granted we can make inquiries as to their status and urge prompt action but it is not uncommon for checks to take more than 60 days to clear the system. We routinely see checks outstanding over 60 days and a majority of those are FO assistance checks sent to third party institutions and companies. I think a more realistic goal is 90 days. We even had a check written to our own stake that was 94 days outstanding.

[wrigjef]

I put a statement on the reimbursement request form that we use that says "Please make every attempt to cash checks within 30 days" I then pester people if it goes after 60. We are lucky in that that Stake does not write FO checks and the only third party we do pay, now that phone bills are consolidated through SL, is for conferencing and Verizon has always been good to process the checks.

[crislapi]

I was just curious if anyone has ever seen such a thing?

Not for every single ward. Not yet, at least. I would note that some of these issues are CUBS related and we have been instructed by LUS to ignore them. The most typical is action items for a donation batch being transmitted but not deposited and vice versa. Little hiccups where CUBS did not match things correctly.

Negative balance issues depend on the category they are in. I'll address budget. The system does allow for negative balances, and to some extent that was expected as wards build up their balances. Most wards have their largest expenses during the summer, so their current negative balance should be made up for with the Q3 & Q4 disbursements. However, it's not a bad idea to get them thinking about how they will get back in the black by the end of the year.

Statements now come out about 2 weeks into the month, which leaves you about 2 weeks to fix issues to keep within your 60 day goal. It might be better to shoot for 90. It gives you a bit larger window to work with.

[russellhltn]

However, it's not a bad idea to get them thinking about how they will get back in the black by the end of the year.

I wouldn't want them to get the impression that there's no repercussions to overdrawing. Otherwise they might go into deficit spending mode.