LCR Finance - Reconciliation Donation Online

I noticed today that under the LCR Finance we are now able to enter donations instead of through MLS. Is this correct that we can submit tithing donations on LCR and not in MLS?

cchang wrote:I noticed today that under the LCR Finance we are now able to enter donations instead of through MLS. Is this correct that we can submit tithing donations on LCR and not in MLS?

This online capability is being rolled out slowly. If you see the option, you should be able to use it. Many units still do not see it online, so they continue to use MLS.

Where does this appear? I have a yellow box that says "Missing Weekly Donations," with today's date. If I click on the date it says, "You are missing donations from the week of 25 Jul 2021. Please select Enter Donations to add any donations you have for this week. If you did not receive any donations please select the No Donations button." When I click on Enter Donations it just gives me donation history and nowhere to enter donations. Maybe, it hasn't been rolled out here fully yet.

brown67 wrote:Where does this appear?

Sorry I cannot help you. I do not yet have the option.

I expect that someone else will chime in fairly quickly though.

My understanding is it is being tested only in certain stakes.

The instructions for doing the LCR 'record donations' are shown as last updated on 28 April 2021 but I only saw the new choice this morning. The wording of the choice as it pops up is a bit awkward as it does not show a choice to 'wait' for later in the day. We have not received any donations from the Bishop yet at 7 am but expect to later in the day. In MLS if you start a batch it is difficult to stop and restart. Today in LCR, I chose the 'enter donations' choice and then when presented with the next screen (which does look correct for me), I just choose a different item from the upper menu (like expenses) and it takes me out of the enter donation screen. When I came back later, it does allow me the same choices of saying 'no donations' for this date or allowing me to start entering donations. Perhaps if I had chosen the 'No donations' for this date, it would still allow me to begin a batch later? The requirement to have both individuals working at the same device is reasonable BUT according to the updated instructions, midway through the batch one person has to log off LCR and the other has to log in to LCR to complete the batch. This is a bit more cumbersome than the dual signoff used in MLS. I haven't tried it for a real batch. I'll try that later today.

larry19810 wrote:midway through the batch one person has to log off LCR and the other has to log in to LCR to complete the batch. This is a bit more cumbersome than the dual signoff used in MLS.

I'm no longer a clerk, but that does seem to be a step backwards (unless the expectation is counselors will log in using their smart phone, if they have one) to complete the batch. Perhaps the church will institute a simple username/password combo to approve the batch in the general release (similar to how MLS works).

The audit system used to just ask for the bishops password to sign the audit. But then they changed it so he has to log in to LUFAS himself to sign it. My guess is that they want to require the 2-factor authentication if the member has set it up. You don't want to scatter various authentication mechanisms throughout an application since it increases the chances that one of them isn't secure so it's better to just have the second authorization log in using the standard login mechanism.

A few weeks back we tried processing a batch of donations using LCR's interface. It failed miserably. Reading the "In-person donation entry in LCR" thread indicated that the LCR method wasn't quite ready for general use.

Yesterday I helped submit donations, and noticed that our MLS software allowed us to choose between continuing with MLS or redirecting to LCR. We used MLS because I wasn't ready to stay and solve problems, but I'm wondering how folks are getting on with using LCR for donation batches. Our big problem was getting the system to accept a second approval, and larry19810's post seems to indicate that the Church may have resolved this glitch.

Thanks, in advance, for any thoughts and insights.

I’m sorry that you have had issues. We have been using the LCR Donations system for the last two Sundays. Keeping our fingers crossed, so far we haven’t run into problems.

I see that you are in the US. Could it be the usual Sunday server issues that seem to affect so many online Church systems?

When we tried we didn't have the instruction Larry saw yesterday. We thought LCR's method would be the same as MLS's, where both approvals are registered while one person is logged in. I'm hoping the revised process works reasonably well.

Sunday server issues continue to slow us down, but haven't been stopping us. Church IT seems to have gradually increased system and server capacities to at least handle extreme loads.

Also, I intended to contact Global Services for help deleting the on-line LCR batch, because we used MLS instead. However, sometime before mid-afternoon the next day it was gone, without any effort on my part.

We've used LCR to enter donations for the past 2 Sundays with no issues other than in the end when you print the batch reports, there is no bank copy of the report to send with the deposit bag to the bank. Other than that we've had no issues. Even with the process of the second approval.

Just a quick follow-up to my reply. I contacted Global Services to get clarification on the reports being printed. The "Deposit Report" that does get printed is considered the bank copy. We no longer need to keep a printed copy of the deposit report in our files since LCR is the system of record and has the report online. I hope this helps anyone having this same question.

q3moondog wrote:Just a quick follow-up to my reply. I contacted Global Services to get clarification on the reports being printed. The "Deposit Report" that does get printed is considered the bank copy. We no longer need to keep a printed copy of the deposit report in our files since LCR is the system of record and has the report online. I hope this helps anyone having this same question.

This is really great news. It would be nice if they could update their documentation to reflect that. I'd really hate to have an audit and get hit multiples for not having a report. I'd have much more comfort having something in writing. But I'm guessing the audit system will do similar to how online reimbursement requests are done, it just skips over the ones when an EFT is done compared to a check.

All in all I love the new system (of course when it's available on Sundays. We had to delay our processing yesterday due to it being unavailable)

Processing unit donations via LCR will be nice because we're essentially back to using one interface again. I've been expecting this feature for a few years. We should be able to mothball MLS relatively soon after.

Though Sunday server capacity has improved and stabilized significantly over years, I still struggle with not being able to fully trust LCR functions/features on those days. However, I'm grateful that somebody is paying attention to this issue, and coordinating development.

Regarding audit exceptions, I kind-of like getting them. After nigh-on 40 years of making mistrakes I haven't been fired, so I don't worry about them. One reason I like getting exceptions is that I learn how stuff should work. Another is I get to complain about resources beyond our control, like this new deposit report change. There have been a lot of changes to LCR that aren't announced, or slip under our radar, which leaves me with a bit of frustration. Clerks have been instructed to help leaders and members learn to use features available on the Church's web pages and in the Church's app', but I tend to find out about new features from "pioneering" friends before some mention arrives from Church IT (if any arrives). Sorry, I guess this would qualify as another topic.

In any case, it's really nice to hear that donation processing via LCR is essentially out of beta testing. Many thanks y'all !!

Our current issue with submitting donation batches through LCR is that for the 2nd approved - the ‘approve’ button doesn’t actually work? Tried on multiple decide etc - and the batch is complete and reconciled okay.

Weird.

dannykos wrote: Sun Dec 19, 2021 6:40 am Our current issue with submitting donation batches through LCR is that for the 2nd approved - the ‘approve’ button doesn’t actually work? Tried on multiple decide etc - and the batch is complete and reconciled okay.

Weird.

I wonder if this is the cookie issue that plagues many church web pages?

We’ll I tried it my phone and an iPad. More likely server load?