MLS financial year-end observations

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Mikerowaved
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MLS financial year-end observations

#1

Post by Mikerowaved »

OK, we all got our year-end donation statements out, right? Here's some observations I had during the process...
  1. Mailing Labels - First I go to Finance --> Finance Reports --> Donor Statements, change the Fiscal Year to 2007, and check the By Household box. Then I go to File --> Print Mailing Labels and press Select All. Now, several of the families (random as far as I can tell) have a child's name listed on the mailing label instead of the head of household. Even our Bishop's label had his oldest son's name instead of his. Even more confusing in cases where the child's last name is different from the parents and the label gets alphabetized by the child's name.
  2. There are cases where during the year a donor's address had changed, but the family was still within the Ward boundaries (or an address correction was made to MLS). The address in the donation database does not get updated from what was originally pulled from MLS, unless you manually do it again. Since most of us are not membership clerks, we often don't know about address changes or corrections for every donor. I would suggest a button that would update ALL addresses for donors that are Ward members to whatever is currently stored in the membership area of MLS.
  3. Why do Official Tax Statements get printed that just say (No Donations)? What purpose does it serve in having the Bishop sign these and mail them out to donors? (I understand they probably made non-charitable donations during the year, but that's not included on this form.)
  4. If the list of donations on the Official Tax Statements are longer than 1 column, the Bishop's signature block gets moved to Page 2, even though there's ample room for it in the 2nd column. Doesn't a signature on Page 2 (which has no donations listed, BTW) kind of defeat the purpose for the signature in the first place?
  5. Several Official Tax Statements had the following footnote added: "*** Donations marked with a triple asterisk (***) indicate adjustments made to other donations." Yet, there are no lines with a *** on them. (Minor issue.)
That's all I can think of right now. Oh yeah, one question... To keep with privacy concerns, when combining statements for members of a household into a single envelope, at what age should I put a child's statement in a separate envelope? 18? 21? Other? I don't remember reading any specific guidelines for this.

Cheers,
Mike
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russellhltn
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#2

Post by russellhltn »

Mikerowaved wrote:To keep with privacy concerns, when combining statements for members of a household into a single envelope, at what age should I put a child's statement in a separate envelope? 18? 21? Other? I don't remember reading any specific guidelines for this.
I would not put in an 18 year old's in with the family. At that point they are an adult. Other then the postage cost, I see no problem with separating the child's statement no matter what the age. While it seems a small thing for us, I think it will make quite an impression on the child.
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aebrown
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Tax Statements with no donations

#3

Post by aebrown »

Mikerowaved wrote:Why do Official Tax Statements get printed that just say (No Donations)? What purpose does it serve in having the Bishop sign these and mail them out to donors? (I understand they probably made non-charitable donations during the year, but that's not included on this form.)

In MLS when you print the tax statements, there is a checkbox for "Show Reports with Zero Amount". If you check that box, you can get statements that say "No Donations". That's pretty obvious.

But if a donor has made only non-charitable donations, then the tax statement will be printed even if you have not checked "Show Reports with Zero Amount". That seems to be what you are describing, and it seems to be undesirable.
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Mikerowaved
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#4

Post by Mikerowaved »

RussellHltn wrote:I would not put in an 18 year old's in with the family. At that point they are an adult.
While I tend to agree, I was wondering if there is a specific guidline for this from the Church somewhere. Maybe another way of thinking about it is, at what age does a Bishop conduct a separate tithing settlement interview with family members?
Alan_Brown wrote:In MLS when you print the tax statements, there is a checkbox for "Show Reports with Zero Amount". If you check that box, you can get statements that say "No Donations". That's pretty obvious.

But if a donor has made only non-charitable donations, then the tax statement will be printed even if you have not checked "Show Reports with Zero Amount". That seems to be what you are describing, and it seems to be undesirable.
Yes, thanks for clarifying that. The Show reports with zero amount box was not checked.
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Mikerowaved
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#5

Post by Mikerowaved »

RussellHltn wrote:I would not put in an 18 year old's in with the family. At that point they are an adult.
While I tend to agree, I was wondering if there is a specific guidline for this from the Church somewhere.
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