Can I make a report of people who have paid tithing and fast offerings?

My bishop wants a monthly report of people from our ward who pay tithing and fast offerings, but he wants them in separate categories (e.g. a report of all ward members who paid tithing for the month, and a separate report for all ward members who paid fast offerings for the month. I'm not sure how often people would fall into separate categories). In MLS you can search by Details by Subcategory on the Income and Expense Report, but there's not a way to filter or sort by people. It only lists it as a week-by-week thing showing who paid tithing or fast offerings. You can't group people to see all of a person's fast offering donations or anything. I'm just not sure if there's an easier way to generate this kind of report?

Since there is not an easy way to report this data, then perhaps it is inappropriate to do so?

That's entirely possible. Or it's just one of those things that isn't a mainstream idea yet.

I'm not aware of any requirement to pay fast offering, and Handbook 1:14.4.1.3 makes it clear that members can pay tithing annually if they wish to do so. So it seems like a monthly report if not used carefully could cause problems.

Also, some people without an income could be considered full tithe payers even if they never pay tithing.

I'm a bit interested in your Bishop's reasoning for this info. I don't discount it might be helpful, but to me it seems regarding tithes and offerings, the Church focuses more on teaching the correct principles and letting members govern themselves. Granted a Bishop can use discretion in a temple recommend interview if a member says "full tithe-payer" and the Bishop looks at the donation history which indicates otherwise, but otherwise donation regularity and quantity seems quite personal.

In LCR I can see a 3-year-history of Tithing Settlement status, so I can view the year-to-year trend specific to Tithing if desired. Perhaps your ward has a specific situation where having a monthly breakout of both tithing and fast offerings is of unique value?

We want to search to see whether a certain individual whom we have been unable to contact (apparently has a house here but is living abroad) has paid any tithing/offering in the past year online for purposes of trying to determine whether to leave her records in our ward or do something else with them. A way to do a quick search would be helpful.

paulsimonson wrote:We want to search to see whether a certain individual whom we have been unable to contact (apparently has a house here but is living abroad) has paid any tithing/offering in the past year online for purposes of trying to determine whether to leave her records in our ward or do something else with them. A way to do a quick search would be helpful.

How ethical this would be I’m not sure, but I think it would be possible to use the Tithing Settlement > Generate New Statement option for the individual.

paulsimonson wrote:We want to search to see whether a certain individual whom we have been unable to contact (apparently has a house here but is living abroad) has paid any tithing/offering in the past year online for purposes of trying to determine whether to leave her records in our ward or do something else with them.

I'm not sure why that would make a difference. Even if their records are not in your ward, if they contact online donation support, they can continue to pay using a US bank. I would not make that a factor.

General Handbook 33.6 and 33.6.4 gives pretty clear guidance.

russellhltn wrote:I'm not sure why that would make a difference. Even if their records are not in your ward, if they contact online donation support, they can continue to pay using a US bank. I would not make that a factor.

I think you might have misunderstood the question being asked. As I understand it, the poster is asking how to check if the member in question has paid any tithing. My answer was a possible way to check.

Biggles wrote:I think you might have misunderstood the question being asked. As I understand it, the poster is asking how to check if the member in question has paid any tithing. My answer was a possible way to check.

But that information was going to be used to decide "whether to leave her records in our ward or do something else with them". Based on the Handbook, I fail to see how or why that should play a role in that decision.

I didn't answer the question, but I did address the issue that was driving it.

russellhltn wrote:I'm not aware of any requirement to pay fast offering, and Handbook 1:14.4.1.3 makes it clear that members can pay tithing annually if they wish to do so. So it seems like a monthly report if not used carefully could cause problems.

It's 34.4.1.3, and before it says that members can pay tithing annually if they wish to do so, it says "Leaders encourage members to pay tithing as they receive their income". Presumably the OP's bishop qualifies as one of those leaders.

The old wiki on this site seems to have at least contemplated something along the lines suggested in the first post of this thread. That wiki says: "An Income and Expense Report can be run using Details by Sub-Category and choosing Fast Offering as the category. This will show all donations by donor and date. Sorting by Donor will at least group the donations by donor, although any summing of totals per donor would have to be done manually."

Using the unit finance reports would also only show online or paper donations made through a unit. It's also possible to make payments directly to church HQ that aren't visible to the unit- this can be done for reasons of privacy, international payments, in-kind donations, or whatever. In those cases, HQ sends a separate yearly donation statement to the member (because the unit-visible values would be incomplete).