Resolving Donation Names

A member moved into the ward mid year and made a tithing donation but his membership was not yet here. He filled out the slip “John Doe”. We entered that into the computer. He made other donations throughout the year under that name. At some point his membership came in but I'm not sure when. When tithing settlement time came it showed no donations made when settlement reports were printed.


We discovered it was because when his membership records showed up he was “John Joseph Doe” and no donations were made under that name.
The donations for “John Doe” were all accurate and under that name, and a tax receipt will be issued for “John Doe” so there is no tax issue or balancing issue.
Should we somehow merge these names, and if so how, or should we just let it be for the next couple of weeks and start in 2010 making sure they go under his membership name?

punman wrote:A member moved into the ward mid year and made a tithing donation but his membership was not yet here. He filled out the slip “John Doe”. We entered that into the computer. He made other donations throughout the year under that name. At some point his membership came in but I'm not sure when. When tithing settlement time came it showed no donations made when settlement reports were printed.


We discovered it was because when his membership records showed up he was “John Joseph Doe” and no donations were made under that name.
The donations for “John Doe” were all accurate and under that name, and a tax receipt will be issued for “John Doe” so there is no tax issue or balancing issue.
Should we somehow merge these names, and if so how, or should we just let it be for the next couple of weeks and start in 2010 making sure they go under his membership name?

It would not hurt to merge the donor records now before the tax valid statements are issued. The donor record for John Doe is not the same as the donor record for John Joseph Doe because the latter has a member number and the former has only a donor record number. Merging the two is simple enough and will connect all donations to the member number. The procedure is described in the wiki article Donor Recordsin the Merging Recordssection of that article.

jdlessley wrote:It would not hurt to merge the donor records now before the tax valid statements are issued.

The advice is good, but I would note that it's actually required to connect each member donor record with a membership record before you submit the Tithing Declaration Report. If I understand your post properly, there is only one donor record, and it is under the name John Doe, but has no membership record attached. So the procedure you would follow is not actually a merging of donor records (since there is only one), but rather simply updating that donor record to be connected to the member.

Alan_Brown wrote:The advice is good, but I would note that it's actually required to connect each member donor record with a membership record before you submit the Tithing Declaration Report. If I understand your post properly, there is only one donor record, and it is under the name John Doe, but has no membership record attached. So the procedure you would follow is not actually a merging of donor records (since there is only one), but rather simply updating that donor record to be connected to the member.

Yes - there is only one donor record.
The wiki articles are helpful too, thanks.