Timing of missionary deductions

Has anyone else had missionary support deducted from the Missionary's account before they even arrived at the MTC? Last year we had several missionaries return from their missions and were charged for 25 months. Upon investigation, I found that they were charged at the beginning of the month, even though they didn't report to the MTC untill later that month. Then they were charged (full) for the last partial month they were out, making 25 months. Is there any way to correct this, or avoid this in the future?

funaddict wrote:Has anyone else had missionary support deducted from the Missionary's account before they even arrived at the MTC? Last year we had several missionaries return from their missions and were charged for 25 months. Upon investigation, I found that they were charged at the beginning of the month, even though they didn't report to the MTC untill later that month. Then they were charged (full) for the last partial month they were out, making 25 months. Is there any way to correct this, or avoid this in the future?

Actually, you always get charged at the beginning of the month when the missionary is entering the MTC. Unless the missionary enters in the first few days of the month the charge will occur before they enter the MTC.

On the other end you should not be charged at the beginning of the last month of their mission so the total should be 24 payments (for an elder). If your ward was charged for 25 months you probably should contact LUS. But the mistake was the last payment, not the first.

funaddict wrote:Has anyone else had missionary support deducted from the Missionary's account before they even arrived at the MTC?

[Moderator Note: I moved this this post and its response from the original thread Ward missionary category creation, since it had nothing to do with that topic. Please start new topics in a new thread.]

As eblood66 reported, the first payment was timed correctly according to policy. However, before you can conclude that there is some mistake in 25 payments being deducted, you should check to see if the missionaries in question actually served longer than 24 months. It is certainly not unheard of for a mission president to ask a missionary to extend his length of service for some time, which may lead to an extra payment being charged. So I would recommend that you research that angle before you contact Local Unit Support. But if indeed they only served 24 months, then you should correct the extra payment at the end of the mission.

Please forgive my inadvertent posting in the wrong thread. I truly wasn't trying to hijack the thread. I guess I thought that the timing of an individual missionary's category creation, and the timing of the start of an individual missionary's deductions were similar enough topics to be included in a single thread. But anyway, thanks for clearing that up for me.
It's been awhile since I researched the 25th deductions, but I am aware of missionaries extending their missions by several weeks, and we did have one sister who did indeed stay out an extra month. The others didn't extend beyond 24 months, unless there was a few days difference in traveling. So I guess my question now is this: What constitutes an extension? If they're gone 24 months and 3 days, do they get charged for a whole extra month? What about a week? What if they don't purposefully extend their mission but experience delays in returning home from halfway around the world? I'll have to check with their parents, but I'm pretty sure that if they were indeed out more than 24 months, it wasn't for more than a few days.
Thanks,
Alan

funaddict wrote:Please forgive my inadvertent posting in the wrong thread. I truly wasn't trying to hijack the thread. I guess I thought that the timing of an individual missionary's category creation, and the timing of the start of an individual missionary's deductions were similar enough topics to be included in a single thread.

I can see how you might think that, but the start of the deductions is well documented and is consistently implemented, so the only outstanding question regards deductions at the end of the mission. That indeed is quite unrelated to the creation of subcategories in MLS, but you didn't know that when you posted, so it's understandable. In any case, it's good to have a separate conversation.

funaddict wrote:It's been awhile since I researched the 25th deductions, but I am aware of missionaries extending their missions by several weeks, and we did have one sister who did indeed stay out an extra month. The others didn't extend beyond 24 months, unless there was a few days difference in traveling. So I guess my question now is this: What constitutes an extension? If they're gone 24 months and 3 days, do they get charged for a whole extra month? What about a week? What if they don't purposefully extend their mission but experience delays in returning home from halfway around the world? I'll have to check with their parents, but I'm pretty sure that if they were indeed out more than 24 months, it wasn't for more than a few days.

I don't know the exact rule. I know that I had a son who served 6 days longer than 24 months, and yet only 24 deductions were made. I would guess a missionary would have to serve at least 24.5 months to be charged an extra payment, but that's just a guess. It sounds like you have some cases where 25 deductions occurred for missions shorter than that. So it's definitely worth a call to Local Unit Support to see if your ward was overcharged. Since you'll be asking about some specific cases, perhaps you can ask about the general policy and report back here.