Missionary account over payment

When a Missionaries family overpays and there is a balance in the account for that Missionary. I know they can not get that money back but I know you can transfer those funds to another missionaries account in the ward. But, then what if the family of the missionary receiving the funds wrote a personal check for the amount to the family "giving" the funds? Sounds a little off to me. Thoughts form the community, Thank you.

Sound very off. For starters, that donation will not show up in the year end tax receipt.

One suggestion is to reclassify the donation as tithing and they can adjust future donations accordingly.

The missionary that has the balance is home and has finished his mission and there are not any more planed missionaries serving for that family. It was my understanding that you could only transfer those funds between other missionaries accounts not reclassify it as Tithing. This was presented as a way for the family to get the over payment back.

Donations can be reclassified by going into the donation batch.

Please do not involve people who should never be involved in this problem... such as another family whose donations have nothing to do with this and should continue to have nothing to do with this. Please do not create records that simply are false within MLS... such as records saying that Family A contributed to the ward missionary fund support of Family B's missionary.

In some situations, a family may have contributed enough to support a missionary's entire time in advance and then, oops! That missionary came home after being injured in the MTC. This is among many reasons to discourage anyone from making large donations in advance of when they're needed. If we're talking about a situation like that then we do know that there can be case-by-case exceptions to the "no refunds" policy. Consult your Bishop and church headquarters.

Otherwise, the best option probably will be to reclassify the excess as tithing and then have the donor stop paying tithing until what they "owe" in tithing reaches the same sum as the "excess" amount.

This option was presented as a solution by the Bishop and a member of the Bishopric who has a missionary still serving. I'm sure the intentions are good and that they just want to help the family who has over paid. But my finance alarm just went off a bit when I heard this solution. It sounds like the most appropriate action is to consult with the family who have overpaid & reclassify the donation to tithing as suggested.

Tithing sounds like a good solution. My bishop's first counselor had one missionary arrive home in late July, and another two weeks later. The overlap, and having two children on missions simultaneously resulted in a $400 overpayment. The bishop, the counselor, and I were discussing this yesterday and the counselor decided to just put the payment in the ward missionary fund for a couple of years when he will have his three youngest kids on missions simultaneously. I'm going to suggest the tithing solution.

One problem with leaving the money in the ward missionary account until the family sends out another missionary is that there's no way to keep track of that within MLS. You would have to somehow make everyone who handles finances remember to transfer that money to a sub-category that will be created two years later. As a general rule, I would say you shouldn't create any situations where there's no way to make MLS tell a clear and honest story about where money belongs. So reclassifying the donation into some other category that the donor approves of seems like the best way to make the story clear and accurate.

Yup. That's why I'm going to suggest the tithing option.

I had a bishop in our stake express concern about re-categorizing and asked if I, as the stake finance clerk, would call unit support. I did, and their answer was that it previously had been allowed, but the current policy is that the only option for excess funds are to return them to the Ward Missionary account. From there they can be used for another missionary in the ward or remitted to the stake, who could either transfer them to a needy ward, or return them to church headquarters. They said the ability to re-categorize donations is still in MLS because of the need to correct mistakes, so the ability to do this is still present, but the policy no longer allows it. The financial training page for missionary finances now contains this updated policy (see https://www.lds.org/help/support/missio ... lang=eng#6).

benjamincarleski wrote:I had a bishop in our stake express concern about re-categorizing and asked if I, as the stake finance clerk, would call unit support. I did, and their answer was that it previously had been allowed, but the current policy is that the only option for excess funds are to return them to the Ward Missionary account. From there they can be used for another missionary in the ward or remitted to the stake, who could either transfer them to a needy ward, or return them to church headquarters. They said the ability to re-categorize donations is still in MLS because of the need to correct mistakes, so the ability to do this is still present, but the policy no longer allows it. The financial training page for missionary finances now contains this updated policy (see https://www.lds.org/help/support/missio ... lang=eng#6).

This statement is on the forum under a couple of posts so I'm responding to a couple of them. I called church headquarters today. For the United States, they said it IS allowed if it is in the same tax year. If it's in a previous tax year, call them (they said it is more complicated). You can re-categorize a donation from excess missionary to tithing or fast offerings, for example. This is different than what other posters have stated above. This forum can have outdated info so calling SLC is best. I'm glad I finally called them up and got a more flexible answer.