Stake Audit Request

Just finished my Stake Audit and and was asked for a print out for the sub-categories of the "Other" budget.

Is there a default report for this or something else?

I assume you are talking about your financial audit. If so what you do is click on income expense report under the finance category and then change report type to summary by subcategory and then check the box next to "other". it will then select all of the other accounts and display them on one page for the auditor. you can also select the time period so it will be accurate for the audit i.e June 30th or DEC 31st.

1historian wrote:I assume you are talking about your financial audit. If so what you do is click on income expense report under the finance category and then change report type to summary by subcategory and then check the box next to "other". it will then select all of the other accounts and display them on one page for the auditor. you can also select the time period so it will be accurate for the audit i.e June 30th or DEC 31st.

But how do you print it?

kmalone wrote:But how do you print it?

After you do everything in 1historian's post, look at the bottom left corner of the screen and click on the Print button. Click ok when the Windows printer box appears.

Or did I entirely misunderstand the question?

The way it is described above is what I looked for.

I don't recall "Other" being a Sub-category. I think I know what the problem is.

Thanks.

kmalone wrote:I don't recall "Other" being a Sub-category. I think I know what the problem is.

Other is one of the categories, and it usually has a number of subcategories. The auditor is looking for the contents of the Other account and the purpose of the funds in that account. The MLS report is the best way to obtain that information for the audit.

Be sure to change the report type to Summary by Subcategory, and it helps to select a custom period, in the case of this audit, from 1 Jan 2008 to 30 Jun 2008.

MLS > Finance > More
Under Reports/Reconcile select Income and Expense Report

Change Report Type to Summary by Sub-Category
Change Date Range to Custom and pick the start and end dates [1 Jan 2008 to 30 Jun 2008]

Check the box next to Other
(This will also cause all of the Other subcategories to be checked)

Print.

Happy auditing.

If you have a balance in the plain 'other' account it is because something was entered in from a reconcile. This is usually because of an NSF Check, a deposit error, or an incorrect entry. You can find out where the balance came from in your Income and Expense Report. Select 'Details by Sub-Category' and choose the 'other' account. Make sure you show the applicable date range. There shouldn't be any expenses or donations, since MLS will not allow those transactions from other. The transfers portion of the report will show 'other item' entries in the reconcile and transfers done. You can go to the reconcile month shown by the date and adjust the entries out of other.

I appreciate all the help but I have a suspcion that there was an error in budget set up for classifying sub-categories into the Other account.

I need to drop by the WC office to verify this first, I want to be careful here, you never know who at the stake level is reading this. :p


I could be totally wrong and not know what I am looking at.:rolleyes: Probably the case.....

I was also audited today, and asked to print out the other account for the months being audited. Which I did, only to find that the Other balances didn't match the MLS other balances in the monthly reconciliation report.

So, I do the reconciliation report monthly, it has the starting and ending balances from the bank, and then the MLS balance, and then any adjustments, and they adjust to $0.00 which is what I think they are supposed to do.

But then, when in August, when I print the "Other" balance with a custom date of Jan 1 to Jan 31, the balance doesn't match what is in the church finance report, nor what is on my monthly reconciliation for that month. Its like, it matched in January, but it doesn't match running a custom report in August for January.

I don't know if this is clear enough, but I'm really confused. Also, if I go "back" now and look at past reconciliations, I see that at least some of them no longer reconcile. In other words, my printed reconciliation from January 2008 which did reconcile, if I re-run the reconcilation for January, now no longer reconciles.

I think I might be missing something.

I just found this discussed in the forum thread:

http://tech.lds.org/forum/showthread.ph ... =reconcile

If the information here is correct, when our Stake Auditor comes by and asks us to run an Income/Expense report for the month that they are auditing, the auditor should NOT be surprised if the Income/Expense report doesn't match the church finance statement or the reconciliation report for that month.

Basically, if any adjustments were made to things like categories, such as if you are correcting an entry for a member from one category to another, that correction is recorded in the month the transaction was first entered, not in the month you are making the correction.

It is sometime pretty hard for me to follow what is happening on the reconcilations.

Esogs wrote:I just found this discussed in the forum thread:

http://tech.lds.org/forum/showthread.ph ... =reconcile

If the information here is correct, when our Stake Auditor comes by and asks us to run an Income/Expense report for the month that they are auditing, the auditor should NOT be surprised if the Income/Expense report doesn't match the church finance statement or the reconciliation report for that month.

Basically, if any adjustments were made to things like categories, such as if you are correcting an entry for a member from one category to another, that correction is recorded in the month the transaction was first entered, not in the month you are making the correction.

It is sometime pretty hard for me to follow what is happening on the reconcilations.

You are right that it can be a bit tricky, but you the thread you found can help. Indeed you are correct in saying that no one should expect an Income and Expense report that is printed at a later date to match the reconciliation. So you just need to do reconciliations monthly and move forward without an expectation that it will match. If you need it to match, you will have to analyze all the differences that have subsequently occurred, which can be a big job.

But as far as the audit is concerned, you do have to print an Income/Expense report for the 6 months of the audit period and then use the worksheet on the audit form to reconcile it against the financial statement. Hopefully the audit doesn't occur too long after the last statement of the period, so there shouldn't be too many differences from the reconciliation of that statement.

When I complete my monthly financial reconcilliations, I always attach the income and expense report for the "other" and "ward missionary" categories as well as the budget report for the month that is covered by the reconcilliation. That way, ithey will be available for the audit and it will always be correct.