Moving Missionary money from one son to another

We have a family who sent a son on a mission, he served 24 months, came home, then a second son has now gone out. I noticed in the Income and Expense Report, that there is a fairly large balance listed under the son who has already returned home. Can I transfer these funds from the "returned" son, to the "serving" son?

Technically, it can be done.

The rationale is that the donations made
on behalf of a specific missionary are actually
donated to support any ward missionary.
This is why the donations are tax-deductible.

The use of the ward missionary funds are at
the discretion of local priesthood leaders, so
be sure to clear such a transfer with them
prior to doing one.

- Atticus Ewig

rexgj wrote: Can I transfer these funds from the "returned" son, to the "serving" son?

Yes. If they didn't have a second son serving a mission, you could transfer it to the Ward missionary fund to be used for others serving from the ward. Eventually, if it is determined that there are excess missionary funds, they are remitted to the stake, who then remits their excess funds to the Church.

In no case should the funds be "refunded" to the member which could cause tax issues.

Among other "annoyances" this "returned missionary" shows up every month, and in every missionary screen (because he has funds associated with him), and I would like to get him out of the system. Just wanted to make sure I can make that kind of transfer; I thought I could, but couldn't find documentation on it.

Thanks,

rexgj wrote:Among other "annoyances" this "returned missionary" shows up every month, and in every missionary screen (because he has funds associated with him), and I would like to get him out of the system. Just wanted to make sure I can make that kind of transfer; I thought I could, but couldn't find documentation on it.

That subcategory will persist for the retention period - 3 years plus current from the time of the last transaction. See here.

rexgj wrote:Among other "annoyances" this "returned missionary" shows up every month, and in every missionary screen (because he has funds associated with him), and I would like to get him out of the system.

Once you have set the balance for that missionary's subcategory to 0 by transferring that balance to Ward Missionary or to another subcategory of Ward Missionary, you can go to Finances > Add/Update Categories and deactivate that subcategory. Then it won't show up in the list of categories as you select a missionary subcategory when you are processing donations.

The category will stick around for the Record retention period, but you won't see it in most places (especially starting next year, when there will be no activity or balance to cause it to show up on reports), so the annoyance will be minimal. But it's important to set the balance to 0 as soon as possible, because you don't start the clock on the time the subcategory will finally go away until you do.

Thank you for your responses. I'm now clear on how this works, and what I need to do.

Since my last login, I went to the clerk's office and found there are other "sub-categories" in both "Ward Missionary" and "Other" which have not been used in years (missionaries long since returned, etc), but MLS will not allow me to delete that sub-category because "it is in use." How is it in use? In what way is it being used? Is there a way to know what that "use" is?

rexgj wrote:Since my last login, I went to the clerk's office and found there are other "sub-categories" in both "Ward Missionary" and "Other" which have not been used in years (missionaries long since returned, etc), but MLS will not allow me to delete that sub-category because "it is in use." How is it in use? In what way is it being used? Is there a way to know what that "use" is?

'In use' means that the category has financial transactions that fall within the retention period for records. Until the last financial transaction date exceeds the retention period the category will be 'in use.' If the balance of the category is 0 you can only deactivate the category.

rexgj wrote:Thank you for your responses. I'm now clear on how this works, and what I need to do.

Since my last login, I went to the clerk's office and found there are other "sub-categories" in both "Ward Missionary" and "Other" which have not been used in years (missionaries long since returned, etc), but MLS will not allow me to delete that sub-category because "it is in use." How is it in use? In what way is it being used? Is there a way to know what that "use" is?

A subcategory is "in use" if it has any data (meaning a non-zero balance, or any transactions in or out) in the entire data set. MLS retains data for the Record retention period. In the US this is three years plus the current year, and we are in 2009, so that means if there is any activity in 2006, 2007, 2008, or 2009, the category is in use.

Another way of looking at it is: if you do the appropriate transfers in 2009 to get the balance to zero, you can deactivate the subcategory. Then as MLS rolls into 2013, that category can then finally be completely deleted. (Of course these dates would be adjusted for countries with longer retention periods.)

You can run an Income and Expense Detail Report on any subcategory of interest, specifying a custom range of 1 Jan 2006 to the present. Then you'll see precisely what transactions are making it "in use."

rexgj wrote:We have a family who sent a son on a mission, he served 24 months, came home, then a second son has now gone out. I noticed in the Income and Expense Report, that there is a fairly large balance listed under the son who has already returned home. Can I transfer these funds from the "returned" son, to the "serving" son?

You might also dig into the original donation envelopes and make sure the clerks credited the donations to the correct Ward Missionary subcategory. (Maybe the new subcategory was not created in time, and the clerks erroneously used the old one?)

If the parents' intent was really to donate to support Number Two Son, I think those can be corrected retroactively in the closed batches. It seems odd that the parents would deliberately contribute more than was necessary for Number One Son and not contribute to Number Two.

boomerbubba wrote:If the parents' intent was really to donate to support Number Two Son, I think those can be corrected retroactively in the closed batches. It seems odd that the parents would deliberately contribute more than was necessary for Number One Son and not contribute to Number Two.

I don't think THEY did, I think it was someone else who donated, another family relative, or someone who like the kid and wanted to help him on his mission, but the parents not knowing this continued to make their monthly $400 payments to the ward. Nor do I think they thought they were supporting the second son, these funds were all contributed before the second son ever left on his mission.

rexgj wrote:...but MLS will not allow me to delete that sub-category because "it is in use."

I know the others answered your question with a discussion of financial retention periods, but I wanted to point out that Alan_Brown carefully selected the word "deactivate" as the appropriate action for such sub-categories you no longer have use for. Again, this is because of the retention period, and "deletion" can only happen after said waiting period has elapsed.

boomerbubba wrote:You might also dig into the original donation envelopes and make sure the clerks credited the donations to the correct Ward Missionary subcategory. (Maybe the new subcategory was not created in time, and the clerks erroneously used the old one?)

If the parents' intent was really to donate to support Number Two Son, I think those can be corrected retroactively in the closed batches. It seems odd that the parents would deliberately contribute more than was necessary for Number One Son and not contribute to Number Two.

You may also find by looking at who the donation was from that other ward members may have donated to the first son's account. If that is the case you may want to check with them about having that portion of their donation changed to the second son or to the Ward account. After consulting with our Bishop we transfered all excess funds from returned missionaries to the ward account then transfered to individual missionaries as needed from the ward account. This created a neater paper trail for auditing purposes.