Tithing Settlement report does not match Year-to-date report

Printing out Tithing Settlement Statements. One member's statement shows no donations being made through the entire year on his statement. However, the Year-to-Date Donation Summary does correctly show all donations made throuout the year. So far I have only seen this for one member. Running on Version 3.5.1 software.

The only time I have really seen this is when a member is not marked as a member of the unit. Usually someone will move in and pay tithing for a week or two before the records are transferred over into the ward. In these instances, the member is marked as a member of another unit or not a member. What should happen then is one of the clerks will need to go into the list of donors and change their membership status when the record is actually in the unit, linking the membership and financial record. Try this fix first.

I checked their status and found that the person is indeed listed as a "nonmember". When I go into "Add/Update Donor" list, I clicked on their name and their donor name and info screen come up showing that the "Not a member" choice is checked. So I clicked on the "member of unit" choice to make the change and then clicked on Save. However, I got an "Invalid Entry" message saying that the record number is an invalid format. However, there were no boxes to enter the member number next to that selection. When I clicked on "Member of Unit" choice, some boxes appeared next to the "Member of another Unit" selection, but they were grayed out. If I click on "Member of another Unit" choice the boxes next to that selection disappear.
If I click on the "Select" button which appeared, the individual is not listed. If I click on the "Individual Not Found" button it takes me back to the first window.
Is it possible that my access status does not give me permission to make that change?

When you click "Member of unit", a "Select" button with a magnifying glass appears above and a little next to the grayed out membership number spaces. You have to search for the member using that tool for it to link. If he is not showing up in that list, he might be listed under a preferred name, so try searching for his first name, instead of his last. Once you select from that list, then it will auto-populate the membership number from the record, then you can click save.

And if you have permission to even be looking at this financial menu, you have permission to change it too.

If donations have been made to a nonmember donor record, all that needs to be done is to merge the nonmember donor record to the member record. This of course assumes the membership record is in your unit. To merge these records go to Finance > Add/Update Donors. Click the "Merge Donors" button. In the Merge Donors dialog the "From Donor:" is the nonmember donor record. The "To Donor" is the member record.

There was no list of names in that search window, but if I delete the members name in the top box the the entire ward list shows up and I was able to find his name and make the change. However, when I printed out his Tithing Settlement statement again after fixing this there were still no donations listed for the year, which I guess is expected since he was designated as a non-member the whole year.
Thanks

You will have to do a send/receive first. Afterward, I believe they should sync up.

Same thing happened to me. A man was baptized last July. The Sunday after his baptism he paid tithing. When the clerk was entering his donation, he could not find a member by that name, so created a “nonmember” donor and entered the tithing. Several weeks later the membership came in, but the donor record was never changed from Nonmember to member, so all of his donations for this years were input to his name as a nonmember.

When the bishop printed out this new member’s Tithing Statement, it showed zero payments, I printed out the donor statement, and it showed the full amount paid. It was on the donor page that I noticed he was listed as a nonmember. So I went into the Add/Update Donor screen, and changed him from nonmember to member. But that did not change his Tithing Statement, it still shows zero. Not a big problem, as the bishop will use the Donor statement for tithing settlement, but how can the clerks avoid this problem in the future?

surf40 wrote:A man was baptized last July. The Sunday after his baptism he paid tithing. When the clerk was entering his donation, he could not find a member by that name, so created a “nonmember” donor and entered the tithing. Several weeks later the membership came in, but the donor record was never changed from Nonmember to member, so all of his donations for this years were input to his name as a nonmember.

This is where the nonmember donor record should be merged with the member record. Changing the membership status of the nonmember donor record does not link the nonmember donations with the membership record. Only merging the records does this.

jdlessley wrote:This is where the nonmember donor record should be merged with the member record. Changing the membership status of the nonmember donor record does not link the nonmember donations with the membership record. Only merging the records does this.

This method only works though if you have two donors that are the same person, but different statuses. In this case, MLS would not let you change the non-member to a member also, because it knows only one record should be linked to one member. What has been talked about in this thread are cases where you have just the one "nonmember" status name that no one changes to "member of unit". You can't merge it, because there is nothing to merge it with. You would have to create a new member donor to merge it with. The financial system does not automatically make one when a member joins a unit.

sghall wrote:This method only works though if you have two donors that are the same person, but different statuses.

There are three statuses for donors; Visible, Hidden, and Merged. I think you may be thinking of donor types. There are four donor types; member (member of unit), out-of-unit (member of another unit), another unit, and nonmember (not a member/miscellaneous).

Merging requires the "From Donor" type to be nonmember because the selection list is only populated by those with that donor type. The "To Donor" type must be a membership record.

sghall wrote:In this case, MLS would not let you change the non-member to a member...

There is no reason to change the type of record from nonmember to member to get the donations tied to the nonmember donor record. That is the purpose of the merge function.

sghall wrote:What has been talked about in this thread are cases where you have just the one "nonmember" status name that no one changes to "member of unit". You can't merge it, because there is nothing to merge it with. You would have to create a new member donor to merge it with. The financial system does not automatically make one when a member joins a unit.

I believe there is a bug in MLS. Prior to version 3.5 I have merged nonmember donor records with member records for members in which no donation had been recorded using their member record. What is not working is the ability to add a member record to the list of member donors. The "Add" button is not functioning to add a member record to the list of member donors.

Notwithstanding this problem, there is a work-around to be able to make the merge happen. This requires editing the last donation made to the nonmember donor record. The edit is to change the nonmember donor name to the member record name to create a member donor record. Then the merge of the nonmember donor record with the member donor record is possible.

These are the steps to change the donor from the nonmember donor to the member record when no donations have been made under the membership record.

1. Go to Finances and click on View/Update Donations
2. Select the batch that the donation is in by clicking on the Date that the batch was processed on.
3. Select the Donor that needs to have the information changed.
4. Click the magnifier glass icon next to the donor name.
5. Click the "Add" button on the "Select the Donor" dialogue.
6. Click the "Yes" button when prompted "Is the new donor a member of your unit?"
7. Select the member name from the list of membership records in your unit.
8. Click the "Add" button on the dialogue with the donor name and the greyed out MRN.
9. Click "OK" on the next dialogue with the note "The participant information has changed. ...".
10. Click on "Save Donation".
11. Enter the reason for the adjustment. Something like "donor name corrected" is fine.
12. Click on the "Close" button in the bottom right corner to close out the batch.
    Click on "Yes" to re-print your batch report.
    Replace the old batch report with this new batch report in your file.
    The administrative office will be automatically notified of the change and will make the change to the Unit Financial Statement.

For those clerks who run into the situation where they must process a donation for a member in which the records have not arrived in the ward, or a newly baptized member record has not been received, the best procedure is to create a member donor record without recording the MRN as described in the wiki article Donor records (MLS). Creating the member donor record without the MRN will create an urgent action. Each time MLS is opened the user will be reminded of the urgent action to record the MRN. Once the record is received then the clerk can update the member donor record with the MRN. No merging of a nonmember donor record to a member record is required and all donations previously made will be linked to the member record. This saves headaches around tithing settlement as described in this thread.

jdlessley wrote:There is no reason to change the type of record from nonmember to member to get the donations tied to the nonmember donor record. That is the purpose of the merge function.

I can see why a merge would be necessary if a particular donor has both a nonmember donor record and a member donor record. But if all donations were recorded for a nonmember donor record and no member donor record was ever made, it is simpler to simply edit the nonmember donor record to become a member donor record, tied to the membership record number.

It appears that a merge is necessary because there's a bug in MLS 3.5 (and later, so far). As I was reviewing donor status and types last month I had a recent move-in whose donor record needed updating. Certain functions had changed since the last time I'd done this (which makes me think it's a bug) so I worked around it using a merge. Of course, I can't remember all of the details as this only affected one donor's status.

Correct you have to create/add the member as a new donor then you go into the donor list and merge the two records. After that everything should print correctly.

mrrad wrote:It appears that a merge is necessary because there's a bug in MLS 3.5 (and later, so far). As I was reviewing donor status and types last month I had a recent move-in whose donor record needed updating. Certain functions had changed since the last time I'd done this (which makes me think it's a bug) so I worked around it using a merge. Of course, I can't remember all of the details as this only affected one donor's status.

You have always had to merge the records unless the donor was added after the membership record was received.

No. I seem to remember that, as aebrown pointed out, I used to be able to simply edit the donor's information to change him from an out-of-unit donor to a ward member without creating a new donor record. But this time, the out-of-unit donor couldn't be changed. (The donor did not have any duplicate record to interfere with editing his donor status.) So I had to create a new donor record, linked to the donor's member record, and then do a merge. As I recall, this merge workaround was not necessary in the past.

mrrad wrote:No. I seem to remember that, as aebrown pointed out, I used to be able to simply edit the donor's information to change him from an out-of-unit donor to a ward member without creating a new donor record.

I hope you meant "nonmember" instead of "out-of-unit". Changing a donor type from 'out-of-unit' to 'member' cannot be done as long as the membership records are not in the local MLS. A donor's record is automatically changed from 'member' to 'out-of-unit' when the record is moved out of a unit.

I think there is a bug in MLS. I agree with aebrown and others that changing a donor type from 'nonmember' to 'member' should work as long as there is no other donor record linked to a MRN. From what testing I was able to do with two records it appears that in the process of changing the donor record type to 'member' that MLS is not actually linking the donor record to the membership record.

After completing all the steps to make the change I noticed that the type had changed to 'member' but the "Record Number" field was blank. I clicked on the donor name again to see what the donor record showed. The donor type was listed as "Member of unit" but the greyed out record number showed the previous nonmember donor record number and not the MRN. Of course now that the change had been made I could not make any further changes to the donor record to include merging.

I believe that what I experienced is that the correct MRN did not show on the member's donor record until after a send/receive (maybe 2) had completed and the Add/Update Donors screen had been closed and re-opened.

jdlessley wrote:I hope you meant "nonmember" instead of "out-of-unit".

No. I meant out-of-unit. When I add someone manually and I know that person is a member of the church but their record is not in our ward then I do not designate them as a non-member. I've been doing it that way for some time and, whenever one of those persons eventually moved into the ward, there was no problem editing their donor record to link it to their membership record. It was only a problem after we got MLS 3.5 and I wanted to edit the donor record of a recent move-in.

mrrad wrote:

jdlessley wrote:When I add someone manually and I know that person is a member of the church but their record is not in our ward then I do not designate them as a non-member.

Neither do I. For those situations where the member is moving into the ward but we have not received the record I enter them as "member" but without a MRN. I get an urgent task notice as a reminder to update the donor record with the MRN. Once we do get the membership record in I update the donor record.

sghall wrote:You will have to do a send/receive first. Afterward, I believe they should sync up.

Yes. They did sync up and I was able to print a complete tithing statement.

We have an issue in which several donors.are showing up as non-members on the year end report. Is there a way to change this?

kylemori wrote:We have an issue in which several donors.are showing up as non-members on the year end report. Is there a way to change this?

Are the donor records tied to thier membership?

kylemori wrote:We have an issue in which several donors.are showing up as non-members on the year end report. Is there a way to change this?

Yes, if those donors are members of your ward. If they are then go to Finance > Add/Update Donors and click on the donor name. Change the "Member Type" from "Not a member/Miscellaneous" to "Member of Unit" and click the "Select" button to locate and select the member's name. Once this is done the donor record will be tied to the MRN.

Note that if the donor record name is not exactly the same as the member's name of record then changing the member type will not be possible. Instead a new member donor record must be created. Once the new member donor record is created then the nonmember donor record can be merged with the member donor record.