Membership Clerk Donation Privileges in MLS

My ward would like each of the clerks (1 ward clerk, 1 financial clerk, 1 membership clerk) to take turns helping a member of the bishopric to verify/process/enter donations into MLS. The ward clerk and finance clerk are able to enter their usernames and passwords to verify donations in MLS, but the membership clerk's username does not appear as an option for verifying donations in MLS. The ward clerk has been unable to find a way in MLS to grant donation permissions to the membership clerk's MLS account. Is this not supposed to be permitted? I just checked Handbook 1, and found (in 14.6.2) a description that would seem to permit a membership clerk to assist a member of the bishopric in verifying donations: "Two persons—a member of the bishopric and a clerk, or two members of the bishopric—open each envelope together to verify..." If this is permitted, does anyone known why the membership clerk's username would not appear as an option for verifying donations? If this is not permitted, could someone direct me to the documentation that explains as much? Thank you!

I don't know of any documentation but they've been slowly making the financial privileges in MLS calling based and membership clerk does not have permission to authorize a donation batch.

If the bishop wants the membership clerk to help with donations you will need to (with permission of the stake president) record an additional calling of financial clerk or just assistant ward clerk. There is no way to grant that right except to give them one of these callings.

Similarly, Assistant Ward Clerks—Finance do not have access to membership functionality on Leader and Clerk Resources.

In my ward the bishopric has stopped calling "Assistant Ward Clerks—Membership" and "Assistant Ward Clerks—Finance" and instead are calling generic "Assistant Ward Clerks" who receive training on each aspect of the work. Depending on how your stake deals with these kinds of things, note that if he was sustained and set apart as a membership or financial clerk, he may have to go through the approval process again to switch to a different type of assistant clerk – since clerks are not called on the ward level independently. My recommendation is to only call Assistant Ward Clerks unless you only want a person to have access to certain roles.

I believe a person can be both "Assistant Ward Clerks" and "Assistant Ward Clerks—Membership". It will double-list them, but then members know the primary contact for membership issues.

While I do believe you should have enough clerks to cover for vacations and absences, too many clerks and you have little to no accountability for the condition of the records. So I'm of the belief that one assistant needs to have primary responsibility over each category of records.

Why is the membership clerk doing finances? Is the Fiance clerk doing membership stuff?

They are different roles. You give permissions in MLS based off what there roles are. So yes, you could add the financial permissions to any user the bishop wants. He would need to know what he is doing. (Go through the training), and even take part in the finical audit that happens twice a year.

tubaloth wrote:Why is the membership clerk doing finances? Is the Fiance clerk doing membership stuff?

Finance Clerk on vacation?

tubaloth wrote:So yes, you could add the financial permissions to any user the bishop wants.

This will give access to finance in MLS but he will NOT be able to process donations. Only the bishopric members, clerk, assistant clerk, and assistant clerk - finance are able to process donations. The point where there becomes a problem in processing donations is the two e-signatures required when closing out the batch. Only those positions identified above will be able to e-sign the donation batch, provided they have either administrator permissions or finance permissions in MLS.

sbradshaw wrote:In my ward the bishopric has stopped calling "Assistant Ward Clerks—Membership" and "Assistant Ward Clerks—Finance" and instead are calling generic "Assistant Ward Clerks" who receive training on each aspect of the work. Depending on how your stake deals with these kinds of things, note that if he was sustained and set apart as a membership or financial clerk, he may have to go through the approval process again to switch to a different type of assistant clerk – since clerks are not called on the ward level independently. My recommendation is to only call Assistant Ward Clerks unless you only want a person to have access to certain roles.

According to the handbooks, there is really no such calling as membership clerk or financial clerk. See HB 1, 13.4.3 or the chart of callings in HB 2, Chapter 19. Those are simply assignments that may be made. So assistant clerks should be sustained and set apart as such, and then given assignments as the stake president (for stake assistant clerks) or bishop (for ward assistant clerks) determines. Of course, there are standard callings such as Assistant Ward Clerk-Finance, but those exist for granting (and/or restricting) permissions to various systems. They are not callings that ever appear in the handbooks.

In our stake, assistant clerks are called and sustained simply as "Assistant Ward/Stake Clerk" and then given assignments as needed. It's similar to the way Primary Teachers or Sunday School Teachers are called. They should not be called, sustained, and set apart as (for example) "The CTR 6 Primary Teacher" -- they are called, sustained, and set apart as "Primary Teacher", with perhaps an initial assignment being mentioned.

So if a bishop (or stake president) wants a clerk to perform multiple roles, then that clerk will need to be designated simply as an assistant clerk, or be given multiple standard callings, depending on how the unit leader wants permissions to be restricted or roles to be published in the Directory. In situations where clerks may be absent because of work or travel schedules, it can make a lot of sense to do cross training so that other clerks can fill in for roles that are not their primary assignments.

MY problem is Similar except I have a 2nd counselor who is a admin in MLS yet he cannot authorize donations. Am I missing something

crookston2014 wrote:MY problem is Similar except I have a 2nd counselor who is a admin in MLS yet he cannot authorize donations. Am I missing something

You need to make sure his position is showing correctly in MLS. If it is not and it is correct in LCR then you can request a refresh from within MLS.