Quick question about membership transaction reports

New membership clerk here. The previous one moved months ago. So I'm still learning. Seems every Sunday more membership transaction reports show up in my mailbox in the clerk's office. I know the wiki says to store things until they aren't needed and to store them in "date" order. Is there an advantage to "date" order instead of "last name"? And if you're storing multiple years worth I assume you don't mix last year's (march 2012) with this year's (march 2013). Do most ward's only have a small amount of these records? We have several hundred some date back 6 years. Just need some advice on what most other wards do. Thanks.

I would store it in date order just because it's fast to file and the odds are you don't need to look at them very often. If you go to the trouble of storing them in name order, I think you'll find you're spending more time sorting them then any time advantage you get out of that system.

I don't print them or store them, unless its a new move in record then I print it and give it to the bishop.

So how long should these records be stored? If Gary's not printing them I'm guessing just the current year should be sufficient?

The short answer: as long as you need them. How long that is really depends on your situation. Remember, MLS has no real transaction log. If you want to look back and see when someone was moved out, or where they were moved out to, it's going to be the membership transaction reports.

One item that should be noted: In the case of move-ins, you should at least look at every one. The reason: if the member has an outstanding disciplinary action: such as being disfellowshiped. It will be visible in the move-in report. But after that, it's not obvious. Sure, the bishop can query for it, but that assumes the bishop suspects there's something there. I can't remember if anyone else can run the query.

russellhltn wrote:I can't remember if anyone else can run the query.

Only the bishop or stake president. The information is also on the membership record (not the IOS) if the bishop asks the clerk to print one out for him.

Some of our wards print the reports to pdf files. Most keep them (pdf or paper) for about a year. Based on the comings and goings around here, that seems to meet their needs.