Financial Statements

Is something changing with the monthly review of the financial statements. Under Reports there is now a prompt to review the July financial statement electronically? Are we moving to electronic review as opposed to paper review and signing?

Perhaps it is being rolled out incrementally because I am not seeing that yet.

olafman wrote:Is something changing with the monthly review of the financial statements. Under Reports there is now a prompt to review the July financial statement electronically? Are we moving to electronic review as opposed to paper review and signing?

I saw a post a few weeks ago that indicated the church was working on getting it set up to review electronically, but that post did not give any indication when it might be available. I no longer have a calling that grants access to the financial statement.

I am a stake financial clerk, and I can see it. On the stake level, it looks as though the Unit Financial Statement and the Consolidated Financial Statement have been combined. There are a lot of pages to look at in order to complete an online review, and there is a series of boxes which must be checked to certify completion of each section. Both the clerk and the presiding officer must complete the review, so I am assuming that checking those boxes will satisfy the audit requirement (Question #18/#19) that the clerk and the presiding officer review and sign the monthly statements promptly (much as LUFAS now accepts the presiding officer's online approval of expenses as an affirmative response to Question #9/#12). One thing I do not see, in either the ward or the stake online report, is an Action Items List (in my opinion, a major defect). On balance, the new report looks to be less convenient and more difficult to review, which sort of offsets the convenience of reviewing and signing it online. I do note that the Help Center article on Unit Financial Statements is currently completely vacant, which may mean that it is being updated to provide guidance regarding the new onine review capability.

Unit financial statements are being updated to use an online review process.

So of course this prompted me to take a look, and sure enough July (and now August) financial statements were waiting for review! I actually liked having this online, I was able to follow links to all the various items.

We have a new clerk and the Stake isn't able to train him on this since they haven't received any info regarding online reviews, and as mentioned the Help Center isn't updated yet. I'm sure it's all coming, so for now we're just doing what seems to be correct and we'll see what happens come audit time...

It still is not available in my stake in Texas.

jdlessley wrote:It still is not available in my stake in Texas.

It's still in early beta.

I tried to highlight the online (LCR-F) monthly financial reports for July and August, both of which are asking for a review (August) or second review (July). I cannot "click" on either one and the page freezes up. Menu at the top is inoperative. If we are switching to online review and "signature", please make it work. Customers shouldn't be the Beta testers.

rpeterson88 wrote:I tried to highlight the online (LCR-F) monthly financial reports for July and August, both of which are asking for a review (August) or second review (July). I cannot "click" on either one and the page freezes up. Menu at the top is inoperative. If we are switching to online review and "signature", please make it work. Customers shouldn't be the Beta testers.

As indicated by scgallafent (who is a developer at the church) in the post just before yours, that feature is in beta test. That means it is not available to most stakes and your stake must have agreed to be a beta test site for the next release. Generally new features (especially in Finance LCR) have to be enabled for entire stakes so when as stake agrees to be a beta tester all the wards in the stake are affected.

If you're having problems I'd suggest submitting feedback using the link at the bottom of the page in LCR. Of course, you don't have to use this feature if you don't want to. You can still print out the report and sign it.

I tried again to review the reports and discovered one must be patient (2-4 minutes) to have the reports show up. Hope this time span improves once out of Beta.

The reports have shown up for me with a brief delay, but only about 3-4 seconds.

I have seen the new process and have gone through it to approve the past two months' reports. I've been very excited to have this change until....

Our stake sent out an email today instructing us to still review the online report in person with the bishop. The report is not programmed in a way that this is a requirement. There are other tools in the system that do require two logins when the two people are together, but that is not the case here. I'm guessing this request by our stake is actually not a required procedure.

Anyone know of any instructions related to this new process?

chriswoodut wrote:Anyone know of any instructions related to this new process?

It looks like there are instructions here: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/hel ... t?lang=eng

It doesn't say that the reviews have to be done together but it doesn't explicitly say they don't either (but it certainly allows for it).

This is the second time recently that I read on the forums that units require that the bishop and clerk review the statement together in person. In all my years as a ward clerk and as a finance clerk the finance clerk and bishop have reviewed it separately (as a finance clerk I usually reviewed it first, made notes on it of anything the bishop should pay particular attention to and then I passed it on to him).

I looked in the handbook, in the help center and at the audit questions and I couldn't find anything that said or hinted that this was a requirement. For example, the audit instructions say to ensure the bishop and clerk promptly review, sign and date the statements but there is nothing about the dates being the same.

Is there some statement somewhere that I can't find or is this something that local stake presidents or bishops have just decided to do?

eblood66 wrote:

chriswoodut wrote:Anyone know of any instructions related to this new process?

It looks like there are instructions here: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/hel ... t?lang=eng

It doesn't say that the reviews have to be done together but it doesn't explicitly say they don't either (but it certainly allows for it).

This is the second time recently that I read on the forums that units require that the bishop and clerk review the statement together in person. In all my years as a ward clerk and as a finance clerk the finance clerk and bishop have reviewed it separately (as a finance clerk I usually reviewed it first, made notes on it of anything the bishop should pay particular attention to and then I passed it on to him).

I always review it in advance and separately from the bishop. Until COVID-19 hit, I often reviewed in person with the Bishop mostly to make sure it gets done within the reasonable time frame requirement. Trying to get sit down in person with the bishop is the hard part of the process because of his schedule. The tool solves that problem as it can be reviewed from home on a weekday, etc. Pushing us back to in person with an electronic tool reintroduces the problem of trying to get time with the bishop.

I don't think it's a requirement either.

When I was stake clerk, I would print, highlight, and mark up the financial statements, so the stake president would be aware of anything unusual. He would just sign it and say, "I trust you." I would remind him that his signature indicated that he had reviewed the statement, but ...

drepouille wrote:When I was stake clerk, I would print, highlight, and mark up the financial statements, so the stake president would be aware of anything unusual. He would just sign it and say, "I trust you." I would remind him that his signature indicated that he had reviewed the statement, but ...

This system does allow me to make comments on each section -- it kind of walks through each. I'm guessing the ease of doing it and the ability to do it at a time that the bishop isn't swamped should help in the quality of the review. I like the approach as it can guide the user as to what they should be looking for. I'd been doing this for a couple years before an auditor actually explained what could be reviewed on the paper statement (looking for fraud things).

Does anyone know how to reach out to one of the developers? I know there's no official support here. The new financial statement section does not have a feedback link at the bottom. We're seeing some things about the numbers that are raising questions (not matching). If anyone here is a dev and you are willing to shoot me a private message I'd like to pass along the info. I know this tool is still in development and it would be nice to pass this example along.

You can use any church web page with a feedback link to send feedback. I would at least use a LCR page that has the link rather than any other. Be sure to mention the page with the difficulties.

chriswoodut wrote:Does anyone know how to reach out to one of the developers? I know there's no official support here. The new financial statement section does not have a feedback link at the bottom. We're seeing some things about the numbers that are raising questions (not matching). If anyone here is a dev and you are willing to shoot me a private message I'd like to pass along the info. I know this tool is still in development and it would be nice to pass this example along.

Your best bet would be to call support during their hours. If they see a problem they'll open a ticket in their internal system. That's the best way to put a bug in front of the programmers.

Someone reached out to me, thanks.

chriswoodut wrote:Does anyone know how to reach out to one of the developers? I know there's no official support here. The new financial statement section does not have a feedback link at the bottom. We're seeing some things about the numbers that are raising questions (not matching). If anyone here is a dev and you are willing to shoot me a private message I'd like to pass along the info. I know this tool is still in development and it would be nice to pass this example along.

I wanted to follow up about my comment on why the numbers on the summary page and PDF don't match the category details if you click the link to the next page. The discrepancy is simply the time difference between when a batch is posted to the account versus when the data is entered into MLS. Those can/are different dates and the two pages use different criteria for what data is shown. If the enter/post dates split across an end of month, the numbers won't match up.

The programmers are considering changing this behavior so that they match. Or, I suggested if they don't change it to add a note on the web page explaining the difference.

If the Bishop told me to review the UFS for DEC 2020, what shall I do?

abelian.mabalot wrote:If the Bishop told me to review the UFS for DEC 2020, what shall I do?

You should log in to Leader and Clerk Resources (LCR) and click on the Finance link in the grey bar at the top. You should see the Unit Financial Statement (UFS) somewhere there - I am not sure where it is as I was released as ward clerk before this was available on LCR. I think you are now able to review it and sign it digitally. Then the bishop will do the same.

Finance -> Reports -> Financial Statements
Change year to 2020.
Click Dec 2020 statement and review it.