Processing Tithing and Fast Offering Receipts

I am the ward clerk for my local unit. I've been trying to find out if membership clerks are allowed to process the weekly tithing and fast offering receipts. So far, I have not found anything. Membership clerks are not given permissions to view the finance data in MLS. At least, this is the case in my ward. But, this wouldn't prevent a member of the bishopric or even myself from logging into MLS and letting the membership clerk enter the tithing information into MLS instead of me or the financial clerk. Does anyone know if there is written policy which specifically prohibits membership clerks from processing donations?

tsaijk wrote:I've been trying to find out if membership clerks are allowed to process the weekly tithing and fast offering receipts.

A membership clerk is simply an assistant clerk who has been assigned to work on membership issues. The bishop can choose to assign any assistant clerk to perform any clerking functions, including finances. So there is certainly no policy against it, if that's what the bishop wants.

However, there are two technical restrictions that have to be dealt with before he can work on finances in MLS:

• An MLS administrator has to give him Finance permissions (System Options > Users)
• He has to have a calling of Assistant Clerk or Assistant Clerk-Finance if he needs to be able to authorize a batch (this is a new requirement starting with MLS 3.5)

tsaijk wrote:Membership clerks are not given permissions to view the finance data in MLS. At least, this is the case in my ward. But, this wouldn't prevent a member of the bishopric or even myself from logging into MLS and letting the membership clerk enter the tithing information into MLS instead of me or the financial clerk.

That particular proposal sounds deceptive. That means the batch would show that it is authorized by a member of the bishopric. The batch report would have a signature line for the member of the bishopric to provide his initials. But he would not be the one who actually processed the batch.

aebrown wrote:

tsaijk wrote:Membership clerks are not given permissions to view the finance data in MLS. At least, this is the case in my ward. But, this wouldn't prevent a member of the bishopric or even myself from logging into MLS and letting the membership clerk enter the tithing information into MLS instead of me or the financial clerk.

That particular proposal sounds deceptive. That means the batch would show that it is authorized by a member of the bishopric. The batch report would have a signature line for the member of the bishopric to provide his initials. But he would not be the one who actually processed the batch.

Thanks for your reply. However, I am not sure what you actually meant by "That particular proposal sounds deceptive." I wasn't really proposing anything except for what could possibly happen in any ward or branch. I think it could happen but that was the reason why I asked the question in the first place because I would feel uneasy if a membership clerk were asked to process the donations. But you answered my question. So, no harm, no foul. Have a Happy New Year!

The only way it wouldn't be deceptive is if the member who signed in was also part of the count. But if the bishop signed in, walked away, and let the membership clerk and a member of the bishopric do the count, that wouldn't be okay because the records would show that the bishop's username inputted the donations, with a second username verifying the donations when in fact the bishop had nothing to do with it. It's about making sure that what is reported into MLS matches what occurs in the clerk's office.

There's no problem with having the membership clerk perform the count, as long as he has the privileges in MLS to sign off on it.