Renaming Purpose for Distribution Center Chargers

I am a new ward clerk and doing some cleanup on our budget. We have a number of expenses to the Distribution Center that appear to come in automatically and in the purpose field say something like, "DISTRIBUTION CE******* FOR SERVICE CALL 801-240-****".

It would be great if we could go in and edit that purpose so that we can quickly see what the charges are for, but in MLS I'm not seeing a way to edit that field - it is grayed out. Has this been discussed before or is there any way to update this that I am missing?

You can go in and re-categorize the budget line the charge pulls from (from the View and Edit Expenses menu). However, you will need to figure out what the charge was for first.

For example, I recently ordered manuals for YM and YW. I re-categorized part of the order from the YM budget and the rest from the YW budget. Often, the ones for service calls with a phone number are for copier maintenance in the library. I also recently called and ordered a new ward boundary map for the clerk's office after a boundary change - that one was listed as a service call with a phone number as well.

You should examine (and perhaps print) all IROP statements, from either MLS or from LCR Finance. Every purchase from either Staples or store.lds.org will result in a charge to your Distribution Center budget category, as well as an IROP statement.
When such a charge occurs, I always open the expense item, and change the source of the funds, keeping a zero balance in my Distribution Center budget category. I print the financial transmission report that shows the change, and attach it to the associated IROP, as well as the shipping document that came with the shipment. In a perfect world, I would have the bishop sign each IROP, but that is not required by the auditors, since the bishop reviews and signs the monthly financial statement.

I just logged in to LCR Finance on lds.org, clicked on the Expenses tab, and changed All Categories to Distribution Center Charges. Although I have recategorized most of my IROP expenses, I still have one no-charge IROP there. When I clicked the REF# link, I see the Expense Detail for the selected IROP. Next to "Reference #IROP: ##########", there is a PDF icon, and when you click on the PDF icon, the PDF of the IROP appears in a new tab in my browser.
As far as I know, we cannot yet edit expenses in LCR Finance, so we must still use MLS to recategorize expenses to the correct budget category.

Thank you so much for the responses and helpful advice. I have figured out how to go in and find the IROP to identify the purpose and change the budget category, but I'm not seeing a way to update the purpose section? It is not so much for the bishopric as for when we share the budget reports with the ward council - it seems sort of silly that they put such an unhelpful purpose in and then don't let you edit it?

Yes, I agree, but I don't know of any way to change the description of an IROP.

PhillipsCJ wrote:Thank you so much for the responses and helpful advice. I have figured out how to go in and find the IROP to identify the purpose and change the budget category, but I'm not seeing a way to update the purpose section? It is not so much for the bishopric as for when we share the budget reports with the ward council - it seems sort of silly that they put such an unhelpful purpose in and then don't let you edit it?

When you adjust the category for an expense it asks for a reason. This reason shows up as the description of the expense in the budget report in the new category. So I just put the correct description as the reason for the change.

That makes sense - thanks again to everyone for your help, greatly appreciated!