Home teaching calculations?

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unixguy
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Home teaching calculations?

#1

Post by unixguy »

I'm confused by different "mini-reports" that MLS 2.7 is giving me. Here are some screen shots that show the problem. The first one is our "unit statistics", to show the number of households (178) and the number of women (129).

When we look at the HT/VT percentages, the numbers seem grossly out of adjustment. For the HT statistics, it shows that it is using 145 households. That's a discrepancy of 33 families, which leads to confusion when our Monthly Report (which seems to use the Unit Statistics number) and the HT Statistics report (that the EQP and HPGL are looking at) don't match up.

I think that the VT report shows the same thing on a smaller scale-- the VT stats page shows that it's using 120 women, but the unit statistics page shows 129 women.

What am I missing?
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russellhltn
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#2

Post by russellhltn »

How many move-ins did you have in October? I think Unit statistics only looks at the count at the end of the month while HT/VT only looks at those that were there the whole month. 33 families sounds like a lot, but I thought I'd ask.
unixguy
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#3

Post by unixguy »

I thought you might be onto something-- there were about 37 families that moved out during October, and 9 that moved in. Then I remembered that even November doesn't total up right. All of those reports are from tonight. We had 2 families move in so far in Nov, and no families move out so far.

Thanks
russellhltn
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#4

Post by russellhltn »

I'm not in a place I can poke around in the MLS help file. I'm fairly sure I'm right on the HT/VT report - it's only a list of families that have been in the ward for all (or at least most) of October. But the unit stats might be for the start of Oct rather then the end. You might try a print preview and see if it say so in the header somewhere.
unixguy
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#5

Post by unixguy »

What you can see in the screen shot is all there is. It always just shows a snapshot of the unit. One thing I didn't think to do is look at the detailed view and see if there are some households that don't get counted. I would think the Nov HT stats should be pretty close to the unit stats, since it's the beginning of the month.
unixguy
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#6

Post by unixguy »

I took another look at it this morning, and I think I'm even more confused.

According to the HT statistics page for OCT, there were 133 families. During the month of October, we had 8 new HOH move in and about 33 families moved out. According to the HT statistics page for NOV, there are 145 families.

No matter how I work that math, I can't come up with the same numbers that MLS is showing. Everything else to do with the unit indicates that we currently have between 178-180 families in the unit. (There's a range, because the HT assignment screen lists 180 families, but the "unit statistics" still only shows 178 families, which suggests that perhaps my belief that "Unit Statistics" reports current values might be wrong?) (I have verified by counting the HOH entries in the .csv export, and have confirmed that the current count is really 180.)

I suppose one thing I could do (early in the month of course) is record that every family was home taught and see what that does to the statistics. If it computes to 124%, then that would seem to be pretty concrete. (I'll definitely do another backup before I try this, though. I'd hate to have MLS crash and be unable to recover because of a bug like that.)

Does anybody else see the same differences that I'm seeing with their own unit?
russellhltn
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#7

Post by russellhltn »

I'd suggest printing off the list of Households from the different reports. There's ways of getting the lists from each. Then it's a matter of comparing to figure out where the differences are.
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thedqs
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#8

Post by thedqs »

You might want to check to see how many are assigned and how many have multiple assignments (if possible). It could be making the count through how many home teachers there are and how many families they home teach and divide the number by 2 (2 companions so prevent double counting)
- David
unixguy
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#9

Post by unixguy »

Ok-- I did my experiment and MLS didn't crash. It has however decided (on the November Statistics page) that I really do have 180 families in my unit, rather than the 145 that it was showing before.

What I did to get this result:
1) select the "enter HT visits" menu option, tell MLS that each family had been visited
2) save that screen
3) select "HT Statistics" menu option
4) Click "Nov" (it's a hyperlink)- the numbers are now correct, and are closer to correct for October, too.

I don't know which 35 families weren't getting counted, but it does make me think that the HT Statistics page is meant to be used in a different way than I was expecting. (Or, maybe it's a bug.)

I'd love to hear what anybody else is able to figure out about this, whether they can duplicate it or figure out what circumstances would cause some families to not get counted in the HT stats.
russellhltn
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#10

Post by russellhltn »

In my poking around, what I did notice is that it appears that the total families in HT stats is a total of the ones in the different groups (Assigned HP, Assigned Elders, Unassigned). If for any reason a family fails to fall into one of those groups, it won't get counted.

I'm sure the move-in and move-outs have some impact on it. One thing I'd be curious about is when if a move-in a "in" and when is a move-out and "out"? Is it when the request is entered, when the transaction is sent to SLC, when SLC does it, or when the transaction is received back from SLC? Depending on the timing of the send/receives, that can make a difference.

Also a factor is how recent was the MLS 2.7 upgrade? Someone has suggested that it triggers an automatic membership refresh that could have impact on some reports.
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