Tracking Member Talks in MLS vs Excel/Google Docs

Is there a location in MLS 3.7.x where it can track who gives a talk in sacrament?

I am the new WC and the previous one did a member download and just wrote in dates in a second column of an Excel doc. That didn't account for Youth vs Adult vs Stake speakers or any membership changes in the ward in/out since last March.

Is there a better way?

Thanks,
Bro Larkin,
Roseburg Ward, Roseburg Stake, Oregon

There's no easy way to do this in MLS – a spreadsheet is the best way I know how to track talks. You can add a column to that spreadsheet marking what kind of speaker they were, etc...

When I served as Ward Clerk, I set-up Excel Spreadsheets for both Adult and Youth talk tracking. I would export the MLS data via a custom report to Excel and then transfer the old dates via a formula. I had to enter the new talk dates manually from the Bishop's Conducting sheet. All in all, it took a couple of hours to produce a new list (there was some manual work to reduce the pages by making 2 columns) so I updated it quarterly and the Bishopric Members hand-recorded on their own copy in the interim. We only kept the most recent date - no history.

I can provide a copy of our sheets, along with an instruction on how to manage them that I set-up for the new clerk when I was released (but I'm still doing it because the new clerk has no excel skills). PM me and I will send you what I have if you are interested.

We've accomplished this same thing in MLS using custom fields and a custom report. We use a custom field for Last Date Spoken, then built a custom report to show the member's name with their phone number and last date spoken. And the system lets you filter by age so we have a separate report for adults and youth. Very easy to set up, and only takes a few minutes to maintain each week, entering the date for those that spoke that week.

It's nice to have it all in MLS, then we can print the reports out whenever we want.

Just an alternative if it helps anyone.

I like keeping it in MLS in some respects. However, that can become a 2-edged sword sometimes. We now have a clerk who is not technically savvy. Trust me, I have tried to help him and he doesn't want to learn. He is a great brother, but doing anything on the computer is not in his personality. Other things we had set-up using custom fields have completely collapsed due to lack of updates.

At least as the HPGL I can still export the information and provide the speaker lists to our current bishopric. No, it's not my responsibility, but I also know they rely on it so when they ask I run another set of reports and update for them. As it is beyond the technical expertise of their current clerk and assistant clerks, I don't mind spending 2-3 hours each quarter helping them.