default assignment to EQ or HP for home teaching, change functionality needed

The default assignment to EQ or HP for home teaching is understandable, but not having the functionality to change the default assignments is creating a problem.
To illustrate:

Our EQ has 22 home teaching companionships, or appx. 71% of total companionships.
Our HP has 9 home teaching companionships, or appx. 29% of total companionships.
Because of the default assignments, 109 households are assigned to the EQ for home teaching,
Because of the default assignments, 155 households are assigned to the HP for home teaching. The assignments are out of balance because of the default.

The result is that 16 households asssigned to the EQ for home teaching have not been assigned home teachers, while
The result is that 111 households assigned to the HP for home teaching have not been assigned home teachers.

There are at least three negative results:
1. Our HP companionships (29% of total) cannot ever assign all 111 (unassigned) households to our 9 companionships in addition to those we already teach (46).
2. The EQ doesn't "see" these 111 unassigned households, they see only the 16 unassigned households assigned to the EQ for home teaching.
3. Reporting will forever be poor for the HP group, as we will always have many more families unassigned, due to our fewer numbers of HP.

Please add a functionality to allow changing households to be assigned to either quorum for home teaching. This can be done without changing the default.

NOTE 1: While the functionality exists to assign home teachers to any household from either quorum, the default assignment of households to the two quorums and NOT allowing the assignment to be altered creates the problems noted above.
NOTE 2: Notice this post is not about "class assignment" of individuals to a quorum, rather it's about he functionality to change households who are not currently assigned home teachers and the resulting problems, as noted above.

Thanks

myronl wrote:Please add a functionality to allow changing households to be assigned to either quorum for home teaching. This can be done without changing the default.

We can discuss this, but that is all we can do in the forum. The recommended method to submit your suggestions and recommendations is to use the feedback link at the bottom of the LCR page for home teaching. Alternatively you can send it up through the priesthood chain starting with your bishop and stake president.

While we would like to think the programmers can take direct input, that is not how it works. Few of the programmers even visit the forum. Even if they all did, they do not establish the priorities for development. That is given to them by the sponsoring department for the site or the program concerned. In the case of home and visiting teaching the Priesthood Department establishes the priorities and the direction.

I totally agree with the initial post. This is a BIG problem where we cannot change assignments of families/individuals to a specific quorum for home teaching purposes. I can change a class assignment, but that is not helpful. I have High Priests that are home teaching Elders/Prospective Elders that are attending Elders Quorum classes. The default assignments are truly problematic with no apparent way to fix this. Has anyone found a workaround for this issue?

myronl wrote:1. Our HP companionships (29% of total) cannot ever assign all 111 (unassigned) households to our 9 companionships in addition to those we already teach (46).
2. The EQ doesn't "see" these 111 unassigned households, they see only the 16 unassigned households assigned to the EQ for home teaching.

ldtod wrote:I totally agree with the initial post. This is a BIG problem where we cannot change assignments of families/individuals to a specific quorum for home teaching purposes. I can change a class assignment, but that is not helpful. I have High Priests that are home teaching Elders/Prospective Elders that are attending Elders Quorum classes. The default assignments are truly problematic with no apparent way to fix this. Has anyone found a workaround for this issue?

The fix is to assign every household to be home taught. You can assign any household to be taught by any companionship, and you can make sure that each companionship is the responsibility of the desired quorum.

Once the assignments are made, all the households will show up on the correct lists. The only issue is for unassigned households, but that should be a very temporary situation.

In some cases, you might live in a ward or branch where the number of households to be taught far exceeds the number of active brethren who will home teach. In that case, you might be tempted to leave some households unassigned, if you think you can't teach all of them. But you still can assign every household. Just assign the extra households that you might otherwise leave unassigned to the EQ President or HPG Leader. That way they will show up in the correct quorum's HT lists.

I don't really see these options as viable for our ward situation. I want to have accurate statistics calculated on the number of families truly assigned to be home taught. I don't want families assigned to me as the HP group leader that aren't being home taught. There are a number of situations where I really appreciate having an "unassigned" option. We have a number of people that we can't seem to get moved out of our ward. They no longer live in the ward, but without a forwarding address we cannot get them moved out. If we send them to the church they are just returned to us. We also have members that have requested no contact and are hostile towards the church. In any regard we need a better way of being able to make specific assignments to quorums in regards to home teaching.

ldtod wrote:I don't really see these options as viable for our ward situation.

The way to recommend changes is through the Feedback link at LDS.org if you feel strongly about this, and I sense that you do. The developers do not frequent this Forum.

The home teaching functionality at LDS.org works according to the instructions the programmers have received from the Priesthood Department. The programmers do not work for us.

With that in mind, some very helpful suggestions have been provided by aebrown in the post just prior to yours that will also go a long way in solving some of the problems you bring up that are not directly related to home teaching.

ldtod wrote:... We have a number of people that we can't seem to get moved out of our ward. They no longer live in the ward, but without a forwarding address we cannot get them moved out. If we send them to the church they are just returned to us. ...

Our ward has been successful in sending records for members that have moved our of the ward boundaries without a forwarding address so that all reports, rolls, assignments are only dealing with those members that are in the ward boundaries (other than temporary situations). If the membership clerk in our ward has done the necessary work to try and locate the member that has moved out and the bishop approved to move the record to "Address Unknown" the bishop has also approved that if/when the record is sent back in the future, to go ahead and just notify him and move the record right back out of the ward to "address unknown". Most of the time, this has resulted in the record not coming back to our ward for at least the next 2 years.
This doesn't address all of the issues brought up in this thread but at least ward leaders are able to focus on and report on just the members located in our ward boundaries.