MLS Move-out Report

I would like to see the MLS "Move-out" report modified to show the address that you used when you moved out members from the ward. This way a financial clerk could have an automatic mailing list of the members that were moved by the membership clerk. This would help the finance clerk when sending out the tithing statements to the members that have moved out and are no longer in the units MLS. Another modification would also have to be made so you would see the whole year. The MLS "Move-in Report" gives you a choice of selecting the time frame of move-ins. This is not so in the move-out screen.

This is an interesting idea. However, the help for this report says that entries are deleted two months after you move them out. I'm not sure how useful this would be for any long-range use unless you periodically printed it and kept it filed somewhere.

smithgw wrote:the help for this report says that entries are deleted two months after you move them out.

I think the request is to change that. At least retain it long enough for the Financial clerk to get the information to send them out. So that's probably about 18 months or so. Or for the US, purge last years move-outs around March or so.

Or, a better plan is to allow members to retrieve that information on-line, then the ward wouldn't have to worry about sending anything to the move-outs.

I should mention that there should be a record of addresses if the membership clerk keeps his hard copy "transaction report in a file. This is the report that the clerk gets at the end of his "Send-Receive" transaction. Right now I'm serving in a Branch for a Retirement and assisted living facility. I was able to go through about 50 Transaction Reports and pick out the move-out address and reports of death. It still would be better if the MLS Program could keep those and add them to the "Move-out report" I should again mention that the move-out report will also have to be modified to let you select how many months to show. For some reason the move-in report let's you select that, but not the move-out report.

Ground Rod wrote:I should again mention that the move-out report will also have to be modified to let you select how many months to show. For some reason the move-in report let's you select that, but not the move-out report.

In the case of the move-in report you have the record of the member, and it contains the date it moved in.

In the case of the move-out report, the member's record is deleted. Somewhere the moveout info is kept, but apparently in two months, it's purged.

I'll bet if you run a move-in report for a time period where someone moved in and then back out, that that name will be missing from the move-in report.

I checked my MLS for move ins and outs today and I was able to find that in the move out list, the program had retained names only back to August 5, 2008. That makes it about a 3 1/2 month retention period. In my move in list I had 14 members that had moved in. The earliest moved in date was 2 January 2008 and the latest was 12 November 2008. None of these members have in turn moved out so I was not able to test Rusell's theory.

Ground Rod wrote:The earliest moved in date was 2 January 2008

Interesting that that is the earliest you found. I would have thought you could find ones clear back to when your ward converted to MLS (if they were still around).

RussellHltn wrote:Interesting that that is the earliest you found. I would have thought you could find ones clear back to when your ward converted to MLS (if they were still around).

Yeah, you can on our machine. I've done a custom time period and been able to see members of our ward back to 2006, when our ward was first established. However, the move ins that show up seem to only be those that are still currently in our ward. And of course the move out list I cannot go back that far.

mkmurray wrote:Yeah, you can on our machine. I've done a custom time period and been able to see members of our ward back to 2006, when our ward was first established. However, the move ins that show up seem to only be those that are still currently in our ward. And of course the move out list I cannot go back that far.

That's interesting. My custom move-in list goes back to 1995.

Mikerowaved wrote:That's interesting. My custom move-in list goes back to 1995.

Very interesting. I don't think MLS is that old. And yet I remember various problems that were created by the MLS conversion, such as not being able to record HT/VT for the month of conversion since the program thought that's when everyone moved into the ward.

Perhaps the move-in dates have been altered to fit the true move-in?

Could there be a field in the membership database we can't see that carries the move-in date and thus it spans back even further than the existence of MLS?

I can't imagine that there's more then one move-in date. But I'm wondering if something has changed so that now that field can reflect a date beyond MLS. It could have happened during one of the membership refreshes.

RussellHltn wrote:I can't imagine that there's more then one move-in date. But I'm wondering if something has changed so that now that field can reflect a date beyond MLS. It could have happened during one of the membership refreshes.

As far as I know, this is how MLS has always worked, and the information about the move-in date has always been present and accessible. When you print or preview a membership record (not the IOS), near the bottom it will list the "date moved from prior unit." That is the date that the Move-in Report uses, and it has absolutely nothing to do with when MLS came online -- it is rather an attribute of the membership record.

I'm remembering the early days of MLS, when we converted from MIS to MLS. It seems like MLS was treating the conversion as a mass move-in. I'm sure a search of the LDSClerks list from that time period would confirm that. Then again, maybe that HT/VT quirk came from something else.

Whatever. But that was then, this is now. If MLS is showing true move-in dates, then that's good.

RussellHltn wrote:. . . that was then, this is now. If MLS is showing true move-in dates, then that's good.

I think there was a quiet behind-the-scenes change from the date MLS thought it received the record to the actual transfer date that is recorded on the permanent membership record. I like the change except for two small things.

If the record travels through the land of the unknown, the move in date is the date the record left the last known ward, not the date it moved out of the unknown to the current world.

And if someone accidentally moves an entire family to school, instead of just the student, then the whole family moved in from a single student ward in the September that school started for their student.

Of course, there is the advantage that the newcomers have no idea when I actually moved here and where I came from. Although it looks a bit odd that a couple with as many children as us came from a single student ward at a Church university neither one of us ever attended. [grin]

Well after reading all the comments above, I went back to check my MLS Move-in report. I now see by Russell's prompting, That the move-in report should technically be called "move-in dates of members now residing in your ward". Russel was right, as soon as someone moved out, their name was removed from the move-in report. Also Mike was right, I hadn't noticed the "custom" at the bottom of the scroll out. When I did that I was able to go back three years when the branch was created. ....... It still would be nice to have the addresses retained that were provided when members records were moved out.

I obtained a form from this site and I cannot locate it now. It was "Membership Record Change Request." Could the offered form/documents that users provide be placed in a central location? I have spent hours trying to locate a form someone else created and cannot find it. Thanks

LTORDUSA1 wrote:I obtained a form from this site and I cannot locate it now. It was "Membership Record Change Request." Could the offered form/documents that users provide be placed in a central location? I have spent hours trying to locate a form someone else created and cannot find it. Thanks

I'm guessing you are looking for the Membership Record Change Request Form, referenced in the wiki article Updating Membership Records.

The wiki is where we are collecting everything that someone deems worthy of archiving. Everything is available there in one central location, as you requested. If you search the wiki for "Membership Record Change Request" (including the quotation marks), you'll find the form right away.

In the future, though, if you're having a hard time finding something, please don't spend hours looking for it. There are plenty of people here on the forum who are happy to help.

I came upon this discussion from a link in the feedback and suggestions section for MLS in the wiki. I wanted to add a comment that it would be helpful for the move-out report to include the member's previous address & phone, as well as their new address & phone. That way, both the new and previous address could be located in one report.

A case in point -- we moved a less-active household's record out of the ward, and later found out the new address info was questionable. By sending a letter to the previous address, we were able to get the correct address from the post office, and pass it along to membership services. The new bishop was also correctly identified and contacted.

It made me wonder why else would we keep a hard copy of membership records after a family had moved? This was the only reason I could think of, and having it in a report would satisfy this need.

Here are a few situations that describes what I would like to see happen:

Situation 1:
We have an active family in our ward.
They pay donations throughout the year.
They move in November.
We move their records to this new ward.
They are still active in their new ward.
We print their donation records in January.


Situation 2:
We have an active family in our ward.
They pay donations throughout the year.
They move in July to a temporary address.
We move their records to this new ward.
They are active in their new ward.
They move again in October.
We no longer have a valid address.
They are still active in their new ward.
We print their donation records in January.


Situation 3:
We have an active family in our ward.
They pay donations throughout the year.
They stop being active.
They move in November and provide no forwarding address.
We move their records to the great black hole
They are not active in their new ward either.
We print their donation records in January.


In all three of these situations, it would be nice if the system could obtain the current address for all three of these families at the time we plan to print the tax forms.

We have the problem that people move and we have no clue what their address is and sometimes it changes several times before the tax receipts need to be printed.

I also agree with a previous posting that says that they would like to have the move-out report indicate their move-out address (from our ward/branch) and their move-in address (the one they just moved to.)

I would even like to see their new phone number on these reports if possible.

collinsmg wrote:In all three of these situations, it would be nice if the system could obtain the current address for all three of these families at the time we plan to print the tax forms.

I agree. But is it not the responsibility of the member to request the tax form from the previous ward if they have moved?

I also know that some clerks will be proactive and send the forms to the bishop of the new ward based on information received when the membership record moves out.

lajackson wrote:I agree. But is it not the responsibility of the member to request the tax form from the previous ward if they have moved?

I also know that some clerks will be proactive and send the forms to the bishop of the new ward based on information received when the membership record moves out.

I also agree. It would be nice (and I'm sure a fairly easy thing to fix) if when the previous ward initiates the move, that the donation records are updated to the new address. It would probably also be fairly easy to update in the case where the new ward requests the records, but the family may have their reasons for not wanting their previous ward to know where they've moved to.

It would be helpful to not have the phone number automatically remove the most recent phone number. With more and more people only using cell phones, by automatically removing the phone number when sending the record out, the information can get lost. Not all clerks know or make sure the phone number is entered in when the record is sent out. This just leads to more work on the new unit and may hinder efforts for activity.