Bishopric Yearly Financial Training

Hello All
During the twice yearly Stake audit Bishops are asked if they and their Bishopric members have watched the Financial Training at LDS.org. What is the specific requirement and where is it located?

Question 3 of the outdated (W6) ward/branch audit checklist that asked whether the bishopric members and clerks who handle finances have reviewed the online finance training in the past year has been replaced on the current (W7) ward/branch audit checklist. It is no longer a "formal" audit question.

The training referenced in the outdated checklist is found in the Finance section of RKATS (Record-Keeping And Technology Support) on LDS.org.

When i was called to be clerk last spring i was shown these videos and told to watch them. Two months later i got around to wanting to watch the videos but when i went to see them they appeared to be taken down. is this true? has anything changed in the last year as far as the type of training available.

JParnett wrote:When i was called to be clerk last spring i was shown these videos and told to watch them. Two months later i got around to wanting to watch the videos but when i went to see them they appeared to be taken down. is this true? has anything changed in the last year as far as the type of training available.

Although I haven't done an exhaustive search, every video I looked for was still there. For example, the Record Donations article has a video (click the Watch link).

Where are these videos? I am an executive secretary and our bishop has two newly called counselors and wants to show the video illustrating the companionship principle when counting donations. How can I locate those specific video clips?

AlanTidwell wrote:Where are these videos? I am an executive secretary and our bishop has two newly called counselors and wants to show the video illustrating the companionship principle when counting donations. How can I locate those specific video clips?

The Record Keeping and Technology Support (RKATS) site has a search feature. To find the video you are talking about, I did a search for Donations. Then I had to look at a couple of options to find the right article. The video you are talking about is connected to the Weekly Donations article.

jdlessley wrote:Question 3 of the outdated (W6) ... has been replaced on the current (W7) ward/branch audit checklist. It is no longer a "formal" audit question.

Just to note, the question does appear again as a formal audit question. It is question three in the Procedure Review and Risk Assessment section on the current W9 form released for this summer audit.

benjamincarleski wrote:Just to note, the question does appear again as a formal audit question. It is question three in the Procedure Review and Risk Assessment section on the current W9 form released for this summer audit.

Additionally the question has been reworded. It now asks if the bishopric and clerk(s) have recieved training in the past 12 months. Viewing the videos is but one method of getting the training.

jdlessley wrote:Additionally the question has been reworded. It now asks if the bishopric and clerk(s) have received training in the past 12 months. Viewing the videos is but one method of getting the training.

The training may have been online, from a member of the stake presidency, or from the area auditor or his assistant.

It is still good practice to review the online videos, but there are other ways now to receive training that will satisfy the audit question.

lajackson wrote:

jdlessley wrote:Additionally the question has been reworded. It now asks if the bishopric and clerk(s) have received training in the past 12 months. Viewing the videos is but one method of getting the training.

The training may have been online, from a member of the stake presidency, or from the area auditor or his assistant.

The actual list of options on the W9 Ward Audit form is:

• From a stake presidency member, the stake clerk, the assistant stake clerk assigned to finances, or another member of the stake who was assigned and had the necessary knowledge.
• By reviewing the lessons and other instructions found in the Record-Keeping and Technology Support section of LDS.org.
• From the assistant area auditor.

The list on the S9 Stake Audit form only includes the last two options. I find it a bit odd that stake leaders have no option to be trained by any other person, except for the assistant area auditor, but that's what the form says.

Our assistant area auditor often trains our audit committee and the auditors prior to each audit, but I can't remember him training the stake presidency.

Our stake presidency have had annual training for the past couple of years and the assistant area auditor has also offered to do a session with the bishoprics. We have found his visits to be very helpful.

One of our monthly stake bishopric meetings included Ward Clerks and Finance Clerks. The Area Auditor presented a discussion about the auditing process and gave a lot of tips about doing finances the "right" way. It was very good. I have been doing finances for years and learned a lot. Especially some of the reasons we do things the way we do.

One thing stood out to me in particular. He said that everything we do in the Church has witnesses to verify that it was done and done correctly. Clerks are the second witness to the bishop that the handling of donations and expenditures conforms to Church policies and procedures.

That shouldn't be a surprise - I had just never thought about it in that way before. And as Ward Clerk, my responsibility as a witness extends to ordinances, callings, reports, etc. A bit overwhelming to think about sometimes but points out how vital clerks are.

Glad I'm hearing this discussion, my experience was that Leadership didn't place much stock in this type of training as it wasn't deemed 'spiritual' - In 5 years serving as a stake clerk I never once addressed our Bishopric training meetings (not for want of asking, nor showing in the handbook that I'm invited to those meetings), and it was a source of constant frustration for me about the miserable finances in our wards and branches. The Stake President seemed to think it was my responsibility to fix it when it went bad (which it always did).

Auditors were made up of former bishopric members or clerks so there wasn't much of a help there either... I found that as long as the BATCHES were ok - the other account, balances, etc.. just didn't matter.

I can testify to you that if a Bishop/Branch President doesn't lead out in financial responsibilities no clerk - no matter what kind of brother that is - can overcome the minutia of a Bishop/Branch President that just doesn't see finances as a priority.

I trained our clerks quarterly and for 5 years that training remained consistent on handling budgets, other, missionary accounts, etc.. but the same problems crept up time and time again, all avoidable if they used the training they received. Rather, they did what the 'Bishop told them to do' - and I was in the office 6 months later trying to figure out how to repair the damage...

Glad to see it work well in areas.

idjeeper2 wrote:One of our monthly stake bishopric meetings

When the 2010 Handbooks were published, we changed from monthly bishopric training to quarterly, as stated in Handbook 2, section 18: "One to four times a year as needed".

We also changed from monthly stake council meetings to quarterly: "Two to four times a year as needed".

johnshaw wrote:In 5 years serving as a stake clerk I never once addressed our Bishopric training meetings . . .

Our stake clerk gets three minutes in every bishopric training meeting, and may request (and will usually receive) more time as needed.

With only two to four meetings a year, however, we are not able to train on everything the Church asks us to train on, let alone the things we need to train on in our particular stake. (So we leave out most of the Church stuff.)

In our stake, the chairman of the audit committee takes about seven minutes once a year to hit the high points of financial training. Anything else has to happen outside of formal meetings.

A couple years after we changed to quarterly bishopric training, we expanded it from 90 minutes to 120 minutes, just to fit everything in that had accumulated on the agenda over the past quarter.

From information my mission supervisor posted. I haven't checked it myself as I do not have the proper permissions.

"The training videos to watch in compliance with the semi-annual audits is not really easy to find. The member of a bishopric or stake presidency, including clerks, must first sign in to 'My Account and Ward'. Then follow this path: Serve and Teach / Melchizedek Priesthood under callings / Record Keeping / Getting Started for Ward Clerks / then select the calling at the bottom of the screen to view the required videos."

PamelaBonta wrote:From information my mission supervisor posted. . . .
"The training videos to watch in compliance with the semi-annual audits is not really easy to find. . . ."

That's about right. As the stake audit committee chairman, I always sent them a direct link to the page with the videos.

Why is this training so hard to find...???
I kept going round and round trying to locate it.
Am I the only one who couldn't find it?

The hard part is that a lot of the training requires logging in, which means that Google won't find it.