Fast Offerings expenses over the ward limit

My Stake President just gave me a medical bill, which he has approved for a fast offering recipient. The bishop has already reached the $5,000 limit for this person and the stake president has approved an additional bill which is still within his authorized limits. Do I pay this from the stake MLS system or do I have the ward pay the additional amount and have the stake president also sign the expense form at the ward level?

You might want to review Handbook 1, section 5.1.2 which discusses what to do with medical assistance over certain limits.
I would pay it out of the Ward. The bishop is the one who normally authorizes the use of welfare funds.

I am surprised to hear that any stake could or would pay a fast offering expense. When I was stake clerk, my stake president specifically deferred all such requests to the bishop. Is it even possible for a stake to pay such an expense?

drepouille wrote:I am surprised to hear that any stake could or would pay a fast offering expense.

The only thing the stake can do is authorize the bishop to pay the expense out of ward fast offering funds. The stake cannot pay it. The stake president authorizes the bishop to spend the fast offering funds because the expense exceeds the bishop's limit, but the bishop, with that approval, then makes the payment.

When a fast offerings recipient reaches the $5,000 threshold, does MLS alert the clerk letting him know that they've reached the limit? I know you can track it on the financial statements, but does the system automatically alert us of any recipient receiving more than the allowed amount?

justin.scott wrote:When a fast offerings recipient reaches the $5,000 threshold, does MLS alert the clerk letting him know that they've reached the limit? I know you can track it on the financial statements, but does the system automatically alert us of any recipient receiving more than the allowed amount?

I don't believe MLS has any individual member tracking. You will have to watch that another way. There is a report in LCR/Finance that lets you list fast offering expenses for any time period, but it reports expense by expense and you have to summarize for the recipient manually.

davesudweeks wrote:I don't believe MLS has any individual member tracking. You will have to watch that another way. There is a report in LCR/Finance that lets you list fast offering expenses for any time period, but it reports expense by expense and you have to summarize for the recipient manually.

If you go to the Participants tab in LCR/Finance, click on the fast offering recipient and then on the Recipient Transactions it will show all fast offering expenses for that recipient with a total.

I don't have MLS in front of me but I believe you can group by fast offering recipient in the View/Update Expense section. I think there is a drop down in the upper right side of the screen which gives that as one of the options.