Deleting "Other" accounts

When is one allowed to delete an “other” account? The account was used earlier this year, but is currently zero, and will not be used again. I tried to delete it, but it said it was “in use”. Can I delete it next year?
So I made the account “inactive” (or is it less-active?) Does making the account inactive keep the clerk from entering money into the account, and more importantly, keep the bishop from writing a check against it?

surf40 wrote:When is one allowed to delete an “other” account? The account was used earlier this year, but is currently zero, and will not be used again. I tried to delete it, but it said it was “in use”. Can I delete it next year?

You can not delete the account if there is any activity in the account until the record retention period is past. In the US it is three years.

surf40 wrote:So I made the account “inactive” (or is it less-active?) Does making the account inactive keep the clerk from entering money into the account, and more importantly, keep the bishop from writing a check against it?

Making the account inactive is all you can do when there is any activity in the account until the retention period is past. At that time the account will be deleted by the system.

When you make an account inactive is does not show up as an account option when you right a check or make a donation. So no one can write a check or put money into the account unless they make it active again.

Making the account inactive ought to be enough, but I sometimes also add to the account name. So, for example, instead of "Summer Project" I will change the name to "Summer Project 2012-NOT USED ANYMORE" and then nobody else will be inclined to make it active again. These "closed" accounts won't show when you make donations or write checks but they can appear on some reports. So, to keep them from being sandwiched between active accounts, I might change the name to "Z-Summer Project-Not used anymore."

Also, be advised that MLS has been known to inactivate active accounts and activate inactive accounts on its own without notice. I experienced that myself while sitting at the MLS computer. I used to have to check it every week just before entering tithing so we could see the other accounts for camps.

Now, my experience with this was over a year ago so MLS Updates may have stabilized it (I am no longer ward clerk so cannot see what is going on in the finance side). I used to modify the name like mrrad so if an account suddenly self-activated you could see it shouldn't be used.

I'm sorry to report that some old, de-activated budget categories (which gave me some headaches during the CUBS transition) have been re-activated during the transition to MLS 3.5. These are categories which show Zero balances when I print reports but when I try to de-activate them MLS says I can't because, it says, they don't have Zero balances.

CORRECTION:

The warning box tells me that there is not a Zero balance but there was no activity this year, so it WILL allow me to de-activate the categories I want to de-activate. Still a bother, however. And I'm pretty sure that if these were "Other" accounts without Zero balances I couldn't make them go away.