Electronic Transfers for UK

I have just been informed that no cheques can be used to reimburse anyone as from today. They must first submit a form to the bishop to be signed-give their bank details to the clerk,who will then do a electronic transfer. I have not yet had the software update to do this yet on MLS. Hopefully before Sunday. Are there any problem I should watch out for. I do have a request form which I used for cheques-is there another one that I should use? If so can anyone send me a copy that I can edit.

Also at the end of the year tithing and donations will be electronic transferred. It already takes me and a member of the Bishopric 2 hours to do tithing,donations and expenses so I suspect this will take even longer.

Will members be able to do there own Transfer at home for tithing and donations? Many members send cheques to Frankfurt as part of the gift aid package rather that do a Standing Order from their bank

I heard they were going to do this August/September time, I haven't seen anything to say it is from now.

Where did you get this information from?

As you pointed out MLS cannot deal with this at present which makes me think this announcement may be premature.

I recieved a email last week from the Chairman of the audit committed here is a copy





Please note the following important message:




Dear Brethren,
We have been informed this week that our stake and ward finances are to be managed in a significantly different way from Monday. Cheque books will become redundant and all payments will be made electronically on M L S . I am reassured that the system will be fairly simple to use.

Members will be required to provide their bank details which we will use to send them payments. They will need to fill out a request form and also provide proof of expenses (usually receipts) as they do now. Payments will be made and reported on MLS and will require two authorised leaders to input in the same way we report tithing and other donations.

In the meantime we suggest the following urgent action tomorrow.

Please write and action all urgent payments by cheque and report them immediately on MLS . Then complete at least two send receive actions on the computer. You should then lock up your cheque book somewhere safe as you will not use it again except for your audit.

During the week your MLS will be updated to Electronic fund transfers (EFTs) which will download at your next send receive. Please complete a couple of send receives during the week or next Sunday before completing any further financial work.

A training presentation will be emailed to you during the week to further explain the system and you can contact myself or our new stake clerk if you have any difficulties or questions.

Our stake President and audit chairman are both on holiday and so we haven't seen any of this. I have sent a message to Frankfurt asking for a bit more info.

Will keep you posted.

Thankfully they are only talking about disbursements and so we shouldn't need to worry about people paying by cheque just yet.

I must say this is the first I've heard of this. Maybe it's being rolled out on a Stake by Stake basis and/or maybe Michaeljefferyjones Stake is the guinea pig for this?

Thanks for your help/
Perhaps our Stake is the the one. Sunderland Stake Leeds Mission. We appear to be guinea pig for all new programs Wo is me.

I have just received the following from Frankfurt:

"Implementation of electronic funds transfer (EFT) started 14 July in one stake in the UK. Another stake is scheduled for this week, and two others the following week. All stakes will eventually be scheduled for August or September.

This only affects disbursements and does not affect donations. Members can continue to donate in cheque, cash, or direct deposit via gift aid unchanged."

I was sent a powerpoint to explain this, including a new payment request form. I think this is the info your audit chairman will send to you this week.

We are going live on the 11th August.

Many thanks for your help Simon,well se how it goes this week.

I asked about the donations going electronic and was told that this facility will be available next year, as you indicated in your original post. Note that it is an option, the facility will be available for children, and others without a bank account, to pay through the ward as they do now.

He did mention that cheques were made obsolete 20 years ago in Germany, I believe this is a hint that they will no longer be accepted as payment into the ward when this is implemented - This is my opinion, I haven't heard anything official regarding this.

It should make doing the tithing on Sunday easier as there will be less to do and once the bank info is entered, for the members, then expenses they should get easier too.

simonawright wrote: then expenses they should get easier too.

It will also mean that we shouldn't get exceptions every month from members who have forgotten to deposit their cheques!

Thanks Simon, you have been a great help
Michael

We've just been notified that training has been arranged for next week and that we go live with the system on August 18th.

We are live already. The ETF Form is A Four size. the member fills it in,staples the receipts to it ,gives it to the bishop who signs it and gives to the Clerk. It will take longer,and you will have to be really carefull in filling in the bank details on MLS.
I have already emailed the form to the Ward Council with an explaination on what to do.No come backs as yet. For those members who cannot afford to pay up front you can transfer monies into their account then wait for the receipts for those who cannot have funds paid into their account ( Large Overdraft)you can pay into another person account say Relief Society President I was advised to be creative. At leasrt I had one piece of good news. Our ward was the first to complete the Audit and no exceptions either.The ETF form was a difficult attachment to open as it was an excel file but being " creative" managed to sort it out.

Oh if you want to see what the form is like I can email a copy my email address is michael.jones2004@blueyonder.co.uk

I've just been sent the form by our Stake Clerk. No problem opening it in Word 2003. Printed it as a PDF file, thus keeping the original intact and able to print new forms as and when needed!

EDIT: Just seen your offer, but as you can see already sorted. Thanks!

I would like to thank everyone for the help give. I am know aware of what I have to do. It was much easier when I was Ward Clerk at London North Ward,there I had a finance clerk

What's a Finance Clerk(?)

Some one you can have if you are lucky. London North was a big Ward then in the egighties. Thats when Somon Dewey the artist was a member then

EFT does not make expenses easier as I have found out. I have submitted the following email to Frankfurt and hopefully the issues will be resolved. I hope that you will find these remarks of interest. The names are fictitious.
The Power Point presentation does not resolve the three issues that I have.

Issue 1.

The EFT went through but not accepted by bank as there was an error by one digit in the account number. Another EFT was started and the correct A/C number was entered,however EFT program issued an error message stating that there is an error in the bank details,and would not allow the EFT to be completed



Issue 2 The payee is say Michelle Brown but the bank account is a joint account and the bank account name is Mr A N Other & Mrs F Other. EFT response is Error in bank details as it appears it will not accept the bank account name even though it is correct. EFT not completed



Issue 3 The payee is say Helen Anguish (who is divorced )(reverted back to her maiden as per her name on the membership records) however her bank account name is still in her married name of Hudspeth,EFT error message stated bank details are in error,yet they are correct. EFT not completed.



The Bishop who has a Masters in IT has not been able to resolve these Issues, so it appears that the EFT software is too inflexible to allow the payee name to be different from the Bank account name

EFT has not made it easier re expenses as you will see from an email I sent to Frankfurt. I have received a reply stating that the 3 issues I have raised will be discussed with SLC Tuesday. I hope this will be of interest to all Ward Clerk, aged 72 and still learning.All names in the email are fictitious,except for the Office of Bishop.
The Power Point presentation does not resolve the three issues that I have.

Issue 1.

The EFT went through but not accepted by bank as there was an error by one digit in the account number. Another EFT was started and the correct A/C number was entered,however EFT program issued an error message stating that there is an error in the bank details,and would not allow the EFT to be completed



Issue 2 The payee is say Michelle Brown but the bank account is a joint account and the bank account name is Mr A N Other & Mrs F Other. EFT response is Error in bank details as it appears it will not accept the bank account name even though it is correct. EFT not completed



Issue 3 The payee is say Helen Anguish (who is divorced )(reverted back to her maiden as per her name on the membership records) however her bank account name is still in her married name of Hudspeth,EFT error message stated bank details are in error,yet they are correct. EFT not completed.



The Bishop who has a Masters in IT has not been able to resolve these Issues, so it appears that the EFT software is too inflexible to allow the payee name to be different from the Bank account name

Thanks for the update, I will keep an eye out for that. Out of curiosity:

Do you still see the old payee list or do you start with a blank list and have to add new payees with their bank details?

When you had 2 entries for one individual (correct and incorrect bank account) did you see both listed when it came to selecting the payee?

We get the download tommorrow, will let you know if we have any issues.

We start next week, so I'm very interested in the outcome to these problems and scenarios!

I had my first go at entering expenses last night, these are the issues I came across and reported to the GSC:

Everytime I was asked to save something I had to click twice on the save button for it to be saved, clicking once seemed to have no effect.

After entering the expenses I authorised them and then they dissappeared, I had no chance to print the report with the expenses listed. It did offer to print a report but it was lacking any expense information. I was able to print a list of the expenses entered by going to view/update expenses and do a custom report with yesterdays date only.

I was advised by the Area office in Frankfurt to enter what the expense was for in the reference number field for any expenses to members. This field only accepts numbers which makes the suggestion impossible. We might have to create our own reference system

I was told that MLS would remember the details entered, I had a look immediately after doing these expenses and the bank details were no longer there, which means that, for now, I will need the members to always send their bank details.