Expense Payee Report - Historical Data

Hello,

I am not sure if someone can help me with this but I am in need of a full history of a Payee Expense report. Here is the problem. I have tried doing this in MLS and the system only lets me go back as far as January 2016. I believe this is occurring because back in 2016, two wards were merged into one and as a result, we are unable to gather any past history for this payee from before the merger of wards as the other ward was dissolved, even though there would be at least 2 years of data for this payee.

Is anyone aware of a way to pull or get the data from before the wards were merged? I called the general support line and they didn't provide any help. There has to be some way someone can run a query to pull this info.

Any feedback or help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

steele7 wrote:other ward was dissolved,

By default, the stake is the custodian of those records. At least, they should retain the data.

Now, if that data will open in the current MLS, (and someone has the passwords), that's a different story.

I wonder if you sent an MLS message to Finance support with the Payee's details (name, membership number, birth date, etc) and the above request, if they would be able to provide that from HQ?

Thanks for the suggestions. I will check with Finance via MLS.

In terms of the Stake question, unfortunately, the Stake was dissolved at the same time as the ward.

I am able to get the finance information from a new move-in in LCR back to Jan 2016 (maximum record retention data U.S.), so it doesn't appear to be a problem with a dissolved unit but rather record retention policy.

It appears your only hope is the Finance dept.

kd7mha wrote:Jan 2016 (maximum record retention data U.S.)

Good point. For local units in the U.S., record retention is 3 years + current. So, as of this posting, that would be 2016, 2017, 2018 + 2019. I'm not sure if CHQ has anything back further than that. You can ask. Outside of the U.S., I've seen 5 years plus current.

You can also root around in the clerks office and see if someone forgot to do the January house cleaning and you still have old paperwork hanging around. But MLS undoubtedly did it's housecleaning when the year was closed out the first time MLS was started in 2019.

You can find details in the second to last paragraph in File and Retain Expense Records in the Help Center.

Now, as far as tithing, in the on-line donations, I can see my donations as far back as 2009.

Hmm...that is interesting and good to know. Seems kind of dumb that you can see all the way back to 2009 for donations but not expenses. They should all have the same time frame in my opinion and the further back the better. We have no old paperwork at this point and in fact were told by the Stake that all information from the dissolved ward should be destroyed. We would have had no where to put that info anyway as we probably had 5-6 years of paperwork.

We have been told by our Stake Auditors to keep paperwork for at least 5 years before destroying it. Not sure if that is standard but that wouldn't sync to the retention MLS uses, which isn't nearly enough in my opinion.

Thanks for the help though. I have reached out to Finance. I'll keep you posted on what they say.

steele7 wrote:They should all have the same time frame in my opinion and the further back the better.

The retention is probably governed by legal requirements. Donations would be governed by tax law, but expenses would be "corporate" law. The church isn't keeping more than they're required to.

steele7 wrote:We have been told by our Stake Auditors to keep paperwork for at least 5 years before destroying it. Not sure if that is standard but that wouldn't sync to the retention MLS uses, which isn't nearly enough in my opinion.

The Help Center has instructions on record retention.