Quarterly report averages?

Our ward clerk has given me, the membership assistant, the responsibility of filling out the quarterly report. I'm reading instructions and making changes to the status quo. Previously our ward has been collecting everything for every month and averaging it, I read that only the last month of the quarter should be considered. Looking at the form the only time the word average is used is for sacrament meeting attendance. Obviously home and visiting teaching are real numbers but how about all the other attendance numbers, are they meant to be average per week or total? If total would it be total attendance over four weeks or the total of different people attendending? For example a certain young man attends his class four times during the month, is he counted once or is he counted four times?

Do exactly as the instructions say.

wrigjef wrote:I read that only the last month of the quarter should be considered. Looking at the form the only time the word average is used is for sacrament meeting attendance.

Add the sacrament meeting attendance numbers for each Sunday during the last month of the quarter and divide by the number of meetings for the average sacrament meeting attendance.

wrigjef wrote:For example a certain young man attends his class four times during the month, is he counted once or is he counted four times?

For attendance, each person counts once. For example, if you have 25 young men, how many of them showed up at priesthood meeting at least one time during the last month of the quarter? Whether he showed up one time or four, you include his name in the total. One. 24 names to go.

lajackson wrote:For attendance, each person counts once. For example, if you have 25 young men, how many of them showed up at priesthood meeting at least one time during the last month of the quarter? Whether he showed up one time or four, you include his name in the total. One. 24 names to go.

For this, it may be easier to count the number of people who didn't show up at all and calculate from there.

lajackson wrote: For attendance, each person counts once. For example, if you have 25 young men, how many of them showed up at priesthood meeting at least one time during the last month of the quarter? Whether he showed up one time or four, you include his name in the total. One. 24 names to go.

If this is the case wouldn't a more clear way to ask the question on the report be "how many members of (quorum, class, or organization) were in attendence at least once this month (include visitors)?”

wrigjef wrote:

lajackson wrote: For attendance, each person counts once. For example, if you have 25 young men, how many of them showed up at priesthood meeting at least one time during the last month of the quarter? Whether he showed up one time or four, you include his name in the total. One. 24 names to go.

If this is the case wouldn't a more clear way to ask the question on the report be "how many members of (quorum, class, or organization) were in attendence at least once this month (include visitors)?”

The help text (that shows when you click on the label in the QR) says (for example): "Record the number of Melchizedek Priesthood holders who attended at least one priesthood meeting during the last month of the quarter or who attended at least one Sunday Young Men or Primary meeting during the last month of the quarter because of a Church calling involving them in one of those meetings.". So that's pretty much what it says.

But do not include visitors--only members for whom you have records.

eblood66 wrote:But do not include visitors--only members for whom you have records.

I believe sacrament attendance is the only count where you can count visitors.

russellhltn wrote:

eblood66 wrote:But do not include visitors--only members for whom you have records.

I believe sacrament attendance is the only count where you can count visitors.

Correct. For sacrament attendance you do count visitors.

How do we record attendance of Full-time missionaries serving from our wards and branches? Do they get recorded in the wards where they are serving their mission or do we record them in their home unit where we hold the records for them? I am referring to Relief Society Attendance rolls and Elders Quorum/Melchizedek Priesthood attendance rolls. I have had a secretary pose the question to me and I don't know the answer.

mamouneym wrote:How do we record attendance of Full-time missionaries serving from our wards and branches? Do they get recorded in the wards where they are serving their mission or do we record them in their home unit where we hold the records for them? I am referring to Relief Society Attendance rolls and Elders Quorum/Melchizedek Priesthood attendance rolls.

My understanding is that you record anyone as "attending" who is absent due to their calling. I'd think that would go for missionaries as well.

The ward the missionary is attending doesn't have their records, so they can't count them in PH/RS meetings.

Sacrament is a totally different thing.

I get that sacrament meeting is based on a raw count but if organizational attendance is "each person counts once" I wonder why LCR doesn't have organizational lists with radio buttons next to each name so "attended this month" can be entered and tracked by a secretary. If that feature existed then those fields on the report could be auto populated. The HT/VT already could. We just need clear instruction and training so we could count on auxalaries using LCR correctly.

mamouneym wrote:How do we record attendance of Full-time missionaries serving from our wards and branches?

If we have their membership records and they show up on our rolls (which they should), we count them as 100% attenders for Sunday School, Relief Society, and priesthood meeting, as appropriate, just as we do our Primary teachers and Young Men and Young Women advisors. Anyone in a stake calling gets the same treatment.

I suppose it would be nice to have a radio button to click, but would you just put one for the last month of the quarter, or would you put 12 or 13 so you could truly track attendance? That would be a lot of radio buttons. I wonder how many actually would use them.

And for sacrament meeting, I suppose a simple automated method would be to start with the number of folks logged onto the firewall WiFi, add the number of infants, young Primary children, and old grandparents who don't have a smart phone, and then subtract the number of folks with more than one device, i.e., laptop, tablet, iPad, etc. That sure would be a lot more interesting than counting sacrament cups!

But with the way people come and go during sacrament meeting, I find it is challenging enough to get an accurate count just by adding up the physical bodies. Fascinating, those instructions, aren't they? [grin]

We have been told to count ears and divide by two.

I really want to train the auxalaries to track only what is needful to the organization, Bishop, or Church. As a clerk that means that I'm only concerned with the information that is reported. So only one set of radio buttons for that appear for the last month of the quarter that feeds the appropriate field in the quarterly report.

The only thing the Bishop has mentioned that he wants, over and above what's on the report, is a weekly sacrament meeting count. I have a tap counter app on my phone. It clicks so I turn down the volume. Each tap counts so I simply tap as I walk down an isle through the chapel during the meeting.

I try to keep data collection as simple as possible. I open the quarterly report, click on each "potential" link to open the list of members in each group, and copy/paste their names into an email. I simply ask, "How many members in this list attended the meetings of your organization in March?" Six out of nine young women -- check.
It gets a little tricky with the EQ and HP groups, but I break those out into elders, prospective elders, and high priests. We only have one active prospective elder, so that answer is always easy.

Great idea ! I wish there was something like that on LCR. A tab under organizations for each organization which read "quarterly report data". It would simply be a list of members with a yes no selection and a question heading saying "did this person attend at least once during the last month of the quarter?" and showing the total at the bottom (feeding the appropriate field in the report). It would be doing the same thing as you do only without the step of a clerk sending an email or dependency of someone at the other end checking and responding.