Tech Forum

I've tried searching these forums for an answer but have not found anything. Quite honestly I am not sure what I am looking for. The problem is that our MLS shows an urgent task that says "Some donors need to have their member record numbers recorded." When we click on that message we get the option to update the donor. However when we select the specific donor we get an error message that says "A donor already exists with the same record number." Is there a way to resolve this.

This problem existed long before I was called as a clerk so I am unsure how this happened in the first place. I think the member was in the ward as a single adult made donations and then married thereby changing her last name and now is somehow tied to a different record number. It seems like there are two record numbers that show up on the finance side. We have sent emails to Salt Lake but the replies took us in a circle. Has anyone else run into this? How was it resolved.

Again it may have been answered in another thread but as I said I am not exactly sure what is happening in MLS.

Thanks

jshumway78 wrote:The problem is that our MLS shows an urgent task that says "Some donors need to have their member record numbers recorded." When we click on that message we get the option to update the donor. However when we select the specific donor we get an error message that says "A donor already exists with the same record number." Is there a way to resolve this.

This problem existed long before I was called as a clerk so I am unsure how this happened in the first place. I think the member was in the ward as a single adult made donations and then married thereby changing her last name and now is somehow tied to a different record number. It seems like there are two record numbers that show up on the finance side. We have sent emails to Salt Lake but the replies took us in a circle. Has anyone else run into this? How was it resolved.

I've dealt with similar problems in the past. It requires a bit of detective work to figure out what's going on.

You're clearly familiar with the Add/Update Donors screen in MLS. One thing that can help in that screen is to click on the Record Number column heading to sort by record number (after first noting the record number of the donor in question). Then go to that place in the list and see if by chance there is another donor (either Visible or Hidden) that has the same number.

MLS won't let you create a second donor with the same record number, but I have seen problems that go all the way back to the FIS conversion (around 2004) where multiple records were created in the conversion process.

As an intermediate step, it might be helpful to modify a donor record to be "Not a Member/Miscellaneous" to break the link to the record number, especially if there are multiple donor records involved. You can always go back and link one donor record to that member.

Those are a couple of ideas; maybe you will be able to see what's going on and fix it. If not, report back with additional details and we'll try something else.

Alan_Brown wrote:MLS won't let you create a second donor with the same record number...

If necessary, perhaps you could make a Special Request through MLS to Church Headquarters to have them fix that donor to be the same under the covers?

mkmurray wrote:If necessary, perhaps you could make a Special Request through MLS to Church Headquarters to have them fix that donor to be the same under the covers?

That wouldn't really work. Donor information is all at the local level, and so the linkage between donors and members is in the local database. It has nothing to do with the membership records that CHQ deals with in Special Requests.

The Add/Update Donors screen has the ability to merge donor records, and to adjust what member is linked to what donor record. The solution lies in that area.

Alan_Brown wrote:That wouldn't really work. Donor information is all at the local level, and so the linkage between donors and members is in the local database. It has nothing to do with the membership records that CHQ deals with in Special Requests.

The Add/Update Donors screen has the ability to merge donor records, and to adjust what member is linked to what donor record. The solution lies in that area.

Thank you for the clarification and correction.

Thanks for the ideas. I will give them a try and report back.