Ward Missionary Balance

What and how to handle if the missionary is already at home from his mission and there is a balance in the WARD MISSIONARY category?

sample:

Missionary name (
Balance forward 8,875
Income 000
Expenses 000
Transfers 000
Balance 8,875

Thanks

pgm44 wrote:What and how to handle if the missionary is already at home from his mission and there is a balance in the WARD MISSIONARY category?

Work with your bishop to determine if another missionary from your ward needs assistance, or if the money might be used for a missionary who will be departing soon. When the bishop makes that decision, you can transfer the money between sub accounts to reflect the guidance you are given. Or your stake may wish to have you send them the money for use by another missionary in the stake.

I'd want to find out why. Were the members overgenerous or did CHQ fail to withdraw the money from that account? That seems way too much to be off by a payment or so.

RussellHltn wrote:That seems way too much to be off by a payment or so.

Actually, if those are Philippine pesos, that would be less than one payment. But knowing why it happened is still an important part of deciding what to do with the balance.

Since the amount is less than one payment you are probably looking at interest (if that exists in your country) or just minor overpayments during the course of the missing.

After a missionary's have been home more than two months, you can be sure that no more expenses will be removed from their account. At that time you should zero out there account. You do this by transferring the remaining balance to the parent category "Ward Mission Account", that way the funds can be used for another missionary within the ward.

aclawson wrote:Since the amount is less than one payment you are probably looking at interest (if that exists in your country) or just minor overpayments during the course of the missing.

Interest shows up in the parent category not the subcategories.

One thing that cannot be done is return the money to the family. You can reclassify a donation to something else, like tithing. But since this may be less then a whole payment, that may be hard to do.

This happened in my ward, as a new finance clerk, at the time, I called CHQ. They said yes you can not return the funds, BUT since it usually is the family that donated the money ask them what they want to do, transfer to their tithing, transfer to fast offerings, or use it for another missionary. If the funds came from the ward donations then I would suggest transferring them back to the ward's general account to be used for another missionary.

I might add that you should make a transfer and "zero out" the category before the end of this year. It will make next year's reports more "clean" if this balance goes away before it's carried over again.