What paper membership records to keep and for how long?

Does anyone know what hardcopies membership records that must be kept. As am fairly new to the calling of membership clerk and would like to try to keep the paper trail as small yet accurate as possible. At times there is a lot of various member record updates that get printed off and I am not sure what should be done with them.

Thanks

Brother Rapp

The simple answer is that no paper membership records need to be kept at all. The official membership records is stored at CHQ, and is available online to authorized clerks and leaders at LDS.org, and a copy is also available locally through MLS.

The updates that are printed are mostly intended for review by a clerk to make sure that the changes are accurate and that any other lists or data that may be affected by the change are also updated. It's also important to review new records and updates for any annotations and other changes that need to be brought to the attention of the bishop (some of this information is visible only on the printed record). But once those reviews are completed, the paper copies can be safely shredded.

Some wards choose to keep paper copies on file for convenience, but in my experience, the burden of keeping those paper copies up to date is excessive, and the paper copies are rarely 100% up to date.

1. Paper records of ordinances authorized and performed in the unit ( baptisms, Aaronic PH ordinations, baby blessings, etc) should be kept until the annual membership audit is done. Part of the audit is comparing the paper to MLS.
I have seen baptism certificates printed without MLS actually creating a record.
You'd be surprised at the number of ordinances done that do not get into MLS (like primary baptisms done without the Bishop interviewing/signing the authorization form). :p

2. I also keep the printout of mls change submissions until after I get the MLS update back -- just to insure it has happened.

Suggest you will want more of a paper trail as a new clerk than suggested. In the 8 months since I have been clerk I have lost all or part of the primary 3 times for example. Loosing all the teachers one time was my fault. The previous clerk rather than merging classes had created a bunch of custom positions for them. I created the standard positions but still had problems getting the kids where they needed to be with merge. Obvious answer was to do reset classes and then fix it from a clean start. Little did I know that reset classes thing is also the same as releasing all the teachers and they all disappear from the teachers positions.(it would be nice if it warned you when doing that or better yet gave the option of keeping the teachers) So if I hadn't had a print off with all the sustaining and set apart information I would have had to dig it up through digging through 5 years worth of paper forms to find the information. The other 2 times I have lost primary and SS Salt Lake has done it for me.(you do get a nice sorry about this email in your MLS messages)

Other information has spontaneously disappeared or been replaced with older information several times even after it had been solid in the system for a month or more so it isn't a matter of it not making it into the database there.

I am going to suggest that you want to maintain a paper trail. I would choose to have several copies scattered over 6 months to a years time of Callings by organization, and organization lists for primary, SS, YM, YW and RS in a folder so when it is time to reenter the information after a foul up you can in an easy fashion. Print these any time you make major changes in their part of the systems. Keep the current copy in easy reach but don't throw the old copy away yet. Whether it is problems from SLC or mistakes you make paper back ups are nice.

jirp wrote:Suggest you will want more of a paper trail as a new clerk than suggested.

Although I don't disagree with much of what you say, I would note that you are raising an entirely different issue. The original post and responses to this point dealt only with membership records and updates to those records. But you are talking exclusively about callings and organizations -- that's quite a different question.

I will add that keeping paper copies of callings and organizations is not necessary. All printing can be done to PDF files. Then those files are stored on a thumb drive in the locked filing cabinet.

Thank you all for your help.