Total Membership Number

High all
I have been looking in the quarterly reports and comparing them with the unit statistics and with the exception of 1 ward they are all different in their total members which gives me different numbers for total stake members. Then to make things more confusing i went to the stake membership list and still got a totally different number of total members in the stake. Stake conference is coming and they ask for total number of stake members.
1. How are we getting such different numbers? Is this a result of the wards entering incorrect info.?
2. which one is the one i should use?

With quarterly reports, I believe they are a snapshot in time of just after the end of the quarter. I'm not sure about unit statistics, that might be a "live" number that will change in real-time. Or perhaps it counts members differently. For the quarterly reports, out-of-unit leaders are not counted. Nor do I think unbaptized children over the age of 8.

Ah
so the most accurate running total would be the actual members list.

Thanks for the comments.

So is there a quick way to determine the total number of membership in a stake or is going to the bottom of the membership list to get the total the only way?

brofisher wrote:So is there a quick way to determine the total number of membership in a stake or is going to the bottom of the membership list to get the total the only way?

If you want a current number, I believe Unit Statistics stays up to date as membership records move in and out.

The best way to determine total membership of the stake is to look at the Unit Statistics report. That is based on the most current information. It is cached for a short period of time, so there may be a slight discrepancy if there have been record updates while the data persists in the cache.

There is a discrepancy between the totals at the bottom of the member list and unit statistics because some members listed in the member list are not included in unit statistics. As of this morning, your stake's unit statistics report lists 1900 members. There are 1967 people on your member list. Of those, 67 have an asterisk next to their name, indicating that they are members of record age 9 or older who have not been baptized. These members are not included in unit statistics or the quarterly report.

thank you
Very much appreciated