Tracking Membership Changes

We have several people making changes to membership information, including, I suspect, members changing their own records from home. Sometimes, these changes are incorrect or another change has superceded the first one. If we could have a date associated with each change and a name that would simplify finding out who made the change and when.

BruceHampson wrote:We have several people making changes to membership information, including, I suspect, members changing their own records from home. Sometimes, these changes are incorrect or another change has superceded the first one. If we could have a date associated with each change and a name that would simplify finding out who made the change and when.

The only change that can be made by the members on line is their phone number and e-mail.
All other changes have to be made from within Leader and clerk resources or through the MLS system in the clerks office.
The best thing you can do is to ensure only clerks have the rights to update membership records in MLS that way only the clerks are making the changes. Organization leaders should only have organizational rights which usually don't allow them to make any changes but only pull reports. An exception would be HT/VT which can be changed by the RS, EQ, and HP leaders.

While I agree it is disconcerting to have a change made by someone with membership edit rights (clerk, assistant clerk, assistant clerk - membership, and bishop) and then have that change once again change shortly afterward, the list of people who can make certain changes is relatively small. The only information that can be changed by a member or adult member of the household by way of the Directory is the contact information (e-mail address & telephone number) and photo.

When I was an assistant clerk, my ward clerk and I used the MLS report of membership record changes (the report prompted to be printed after a send/receive) to keep an eye on membership record contact information changes. Other membership record changes could only be made by the ward clerk, me, or the bishop (we didn't have an assistant clerk - membership). While this report did not tell us exactly when the changes were made nor by who, we at least had a clue the information changed recently, whether the change was made in MLS or online, and we could contact members to verify the validity of the changes if necessary.

It would be nice to have those membership record changes tagged with information as to when and by who made the change. But I doubt that type of programming change would have much of a priority for future inclusion in a change to any report available in Clerk Resources, the Directory, or in MLS.

Gary_Miller wrote:The best thing you can do is to ensure only clerks have the rights to update membership records in MLS that way only the clerks are making the changes. Organization leaders should only have organizational rights which usually don't allow them to make any changes but only pull reports. An exception would be HT/VT which can be changed by the RS, EQ, and HP leaders.

MLS will allow you to take away rights, but that can't be done in Leader Resources on LDS.org. According to the access table the entire bishopric (Bishop, Exec Secretary and counselors) can all update contact information including addresses. Our bishop has updated addresses on several occasions, so I recommended some guidelines to them to make sure we do it correctly. The other option is review the Membership Update Reports that print from MLS when you do a 'Send/Receive'. That will show you the dates the changes were made, but I don't believe it shows who did the change. If any addresses have been changed you can review them for accuracy. I often will look up the address in Google/maps, and the Meetinghouse Locator to see if it's a real address and go from there.

jasonfitt wrote:MLS will allow you to take away rights, but that can't be done in Leader Resources on LDS.org. According to the access table the entire bishopric (Bishop, Exec Secretary and counselors) can all update contact information including addresses.

I don't have a problem with Bishopric members being able to update contact information. Of course I would rather they give the clerks the information and let them do the work. Thus freeing them up to do other more important things pertaining to their calling.