How to delete ward missionary fund account

I am a new clerk and am wondering how to remove Ward Missionary Fund budget categories. The members are no longer on their missions but they still appear in our budget categories.

I may have found my answer:
https://tech.lds.org/wiki/Church_Unit_Banking_Services_(CUBS)
How do I delete my old Ward Missionary subcategories?
Transfer funds to each Ward Missionary subcategory to bring its balance to zero.
To bring the balance to zero, do the following:
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zogjajokem wrote:I may have found my answer:

You did. And that's what you do. Once the missionary has returned and the dust has settled with regard to contributions, you transfer in or out of the subaccount to return the balance to zero. The subaccount will automatically go away within about two months.

lajackson wrote:The subaccount will automatically go away within about two months.

To clarify, "go away" in this context means that the subaccount will be deactivated. You still can run reports on that subaccount. The subaccount won't truly be deleted until the record retention period expires for those transactions (3 years for the US, different lengths in different countries).

So, Elder Smith has been home for a year and he has moved to another ward in another stake to take up a career. His missionary account has a negative $6900 balance. There are other missionaries currently serving from the unit in which Elder Smith served his mission. Some of their accounts have positive balances while others have negative balances and some are current. Transferring in and out will not return the negative $6900 to zero. More details on the process re this situation please.

jerry9989 wrote:So, Elder Smith has been home for a year and he has moved to another ward in another stake to take up a career. His missionary account has a negative $6900 balance.

Well, ideally it shouldn't have come to this - that something would have been worked out when it fell behind. At $6900, we're talking about well over half the mission.

I'd start with talking with the bishop of the time of how this mission was supposed to be funded. Did the family end up donating to the wrong ward?

Either way, after a year, it may be too late to try and recover any funds. I'd ask the stake for help. The only way this is going to be fixed is to put $6900 into that account to zero it out. But that's $6900 has to come from somewhere. You can't make it disappear with some bookkeeping magic.

Thanks. I agree with your answer. In talking to GSS on the topic of managing ward missionary accounts recently. I received a similar answer to yours. Basically, someone needs to write a check to our ward for Elder Smith to balance his account. I appreciate your help.

There might be some funds at the top-level Ward Missionary account that are not assigned to any missionary. You can transfer those into the account to help.

Another part of the puzzle - where was the stake in all of this? Unless there's a large excess somewhere else under the Ward Missionary account (the missing money?), the overall account must have been negative for many months - even years. That should have attracted attention, letters and even phone calls from CHQ.

Part of me wonders if the funds were sitting somewhere else in the account - and perhaps it was only a recent transfer of "excess funds" that turned the entire account negative. Finding out where the money went would give you leverage in getting help.

jerry9989 wrote:So, Elder Smith has been home for a year and he has moved to another ward in another stake to take up a career. His missionary account has a negative $6900 balance.

I think this problem reinforces the need for clerks to watch the missionary account very closely, a point I was trying to make in another discussion here https://tech.lds.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=20379 about what to do when your ward missionary account has far too much money in it. Again, it's very easy on the first day of the month to know exactly how much money will be taken by CHQ from your ward missionary accounts that month. It's very easy to know if you have a problem with too much or too little money in the account and it would be very easy to ask the Bishop and/or the donors what they want to do about it. If we continue to just let the ward missionary account do "whatever" without watching it then I think we're just setting ourselves up for these disasters.

Also, think of the next clerk who might have to solve this problem if you haven't been watching closely enough. When I was first made a ward finance clerk the previous guy had to move away immediately for his employment and there was no overlap at all to allow me to find out about all the little quirky things he may have been tracking separate from the computer record. (This was in the days before MLS, when we were using software called FIS and you didn't necessarily have every bit of financial data in the computer… and the computer didn't print checks for you, etc.) So, on my own, in the evening on weekdays, I eventually discovered all of the tasks that hadn't quite been done before I got there… the things that were messing up my audits. I adopted the attitude that I needed to work as if, at any moment, I would have to turn things over to someone else and that motivated me to not let trouble like this go uncorrected for very long.

Much can be said about the need for training in the Church. It is good to see the great strides in the use of technology in that effort. This forum is a huge benefit as is the Global Service Center accessibility.
I am surprised that there has not been more attention given by the stake and CHQ to situations such as I have described. A quote from Elder Holland keeps me on track though,

imperfect people are all God has ever had to work with. That must be terribly frustrating to Him, but He deals with it. So should we. And when you see imperfection, remember that the limitation is not in the divinity of the work. As one gifted writer has suggested, when the infinite fulness is poured forth, it is not the oil’s fault if there is some loss because finite vessels can’t quite contain it all.10 Those finite vessels include you and me, so be patient and kind and forgiving.

Thank you for your reply.

In theory, the signature of the bishop and the stake president on their unit financial statements imply they have reviewed and approve of the statement. In practice, it is the clerk who must review every statement in detail. It is the clerk's signature that indicates to the bishop or stake president that all is well, or will be after adjustments are made.