How do I clear errors

I just finished the Membership audit. I have some errors to clear and I am ready to enter changes into the membership records.

One of the errors that I am seeing frequently is the system has some business logic in there that wants every priesthood holder of 18 or older to be an elder. If they are not, it is an error. Same for Deacons, Teachers, Priests - 12,14,16 respectively. I am also seeing the same error for High Priests at around 50. This is supposed to be low hanging fruit and I can't find anywhere to acknowledge the error and say "This is OK, leave it be".

I am here because of another problem which is when I try to use the "Contact Us" on the help menu, the system logs me out. Great news for the help desk - they don't get to talk to another frustrated clerk. So, here I am.

Thank you all in advance

I haven't done a membership audit recently and I don't have access now, but it used to show you all the members who did not meet the criteria and ask you to mark any who have been ordained and haven't been recorded. If you don't mark anything then there is no audit exception. So it doesn't expect every 18 year old or older to be an Elder but it does show them as the members where the ordination might not have been recorded.

But once you've marked them as 'ordained but not recorded' you can't go back and say that you were mistaken and they haven't been ordained. The only way to clear the exceptions is to run the audit again from scratch and not mark them.

But if there have been changes in how it works, someone with more recent experience may be able to help.

I think there is, or has been, some misunderstanding as to what the purpose of the membership audit is about. "The purpose of the audit is to ensure that important member information has been recorded, including baptisms and confirmations, priesthood ordinations, and marriages."(bold added for emphasis). The membership audit's purpose is not to identify those who need to be baptized and confirmed, ordained to the priesthood, or married.

In each section of the audit the list of member names is to be reviewed to see if the information has been recorded. For example, in the Elders section, if a brother is 19 years old or older or currently married but does not have a Melchizedek Priesthood ordination then his name will appear on the list. The person performing the audit is only checking the list of names to see if any brother listed there actually has been ordained. If a brother has been ordained then his ordination was not recorded and his name should be checked. Performing the audit results in a list of membership record actions that have not been recorded. That list then is a reminder to get those records updated and the information recorded.

A problem that may have occurred in the past is that someone misunderstood that checking names meant the brothers needed to be ordained rather than the ordinations have occurred but not recorded and now those brothers' names continue to propagate as audit exceptions each year. Correcting such errors requires calling the Global Service Department (GSD) to get those names removed from the list of audit exceptions.

The explanations from eblood66 and jdlessley are correct. There isn't much I would add.

Since you haven't submitted the audit, you can go back into the audit and uncheck all of the boxes that were checked incorrectly. If you had completed the audit, you could go back and redo the audit to clean up the incorrectly checked items.

Absolutely agree with all the fantastic answers. When I was stake clerk, I liked to sit with each clerk as they walked through the annual audit, because most of them tended to be confused with the wording of the audit questions. Membership audits are very simple, and I advised the clerks in my stake to run multiple membership audits throughout the year, just to catch any errors that may pop up. They don't have to complete those audits -- just use the audit as a data validation tool.

Thank you! I will keep at this. I think I am going to be on a first name basis with the GSD (again). Last time I was a clerk, we had the new 2600 baud phone modems.