end of year new year

Question was asked of me today if the wards need new flash drives to start the new year and store last years flash drive away. I was thinking they hold plenty of info so we should keep using them. What is the policy as I can't find one?

farwest wrote:Question was asked of me today if the wards need new flash drives to start the new year and store last years flash drive away. I was thinking they hold plenty of info so we should keep using them. What is the policy as I can't find one?

There is no specific policy regarding the end of the year for backup media. The only specific policies are related to offsite backup, and of course security. It might be prudent to burn a CD of the backups and store it away from the flash drive. But as long as you follow the specific policies, it's a local decision.

How long should closing last year take? We started the process today before the meetings started and by the time the block was done it wasn't. It seemed to get hung deleting old batches.

Any thoughts?

PNMarkW2 wrote:How long should closing last year take? We started the process today before the meetings started and by the time the block was done it wasn't. It seemed to get hung deleting old batches.

Any thoughts?

Ours took all of 5 minutes or so. I suppose how to proceed depends on if you interrupted the process or not.

PNMarkW2 wrote:How long should closing last year take? We started the process today before the meetings started and by the time the block was done it wasn't. It seemed to get hung deleting old batches.

That's definitely some sort of malfunction. Finances are definitely simpler at the stake level than at the ward level, but closing our stake's fiscal year took only about one minute. So somehow it was hung.

I'm guessing that with MLS hung, the only choice you would have is to terminate MLS. After doing that, what is the state of your MLS finances now? When you start up MLS again, is there still an urgent task for closing the fiscal year? If so, I would recommend that you try that again. If not, are you able to do any new financial tasks?

You may need to restore your last backup and try again. This is a bit unusual, so you may well need help from your stake clerk and ultimately with Local Unit Support.

The task was interrupted, and in fact MLS allowed us to exit and prompted us to make a new backup. When we restarted MLS the urgent task remained and we are unable to do any financial work at all. Upon trying to close the year it again stopped at the same point.

Talking to our Stake Clerk of Tech Specialist isn't really an option, I won't go into details, but it's not an option.

PNMarkW2 wrote:The task was interrupted, and in fact MLS allowed us to exit and prompted us to make a new backup. When we restarted MLS the urgent task remained and we are unable to do any financial work at all. Upon trying to close the year it again stopped at the same point.

The only thing I can think of -- and it's a long shot -- is to restore your last backup of 2009 and then try to close the fiscal year again. It sounds like you have a backup of your current state, so that won't cause you to lose anything. But you're probably going to have to get help from Local Unit Support.

PNMarkW2 wrote:Talking to our Stake Clerk of Tech Specialist isn't really an option, I won't go into details, but it's not an option.

Well, if you can't get help from your stake clerk, then you should be able to call Local Unit Support directly.

PNMarkW2 wrote:The task was interrupted, and in fact MLS allowed us to exit and prompted us to make a new backup. When we restarted MLS the urgent task remained and we are unable to do any financial work at all. Upon trying to close the year it again stopped at the same point.

Talking to our Stake Clerk of Tech Specialist isn't really an option, I won't go into details, but it's not an option.

Then call Local Unit Support in the morning. It would be helpful to know at which step the closing of the year is stopping, especially if it is hanging up at the same point each time.

You will not be able to do any financial work until this is resolved.

Move along now, nothing to see here...

As reported yesterday when trying to close the previous year the process appeared to stop. No error message, no progress indication, no nothing. We tried exiting MLS, which MLS let us do without any complaint, rebooting the computer, because rebooting almost never hurts, and the urgent task remained, and hung at the exact same point.

Today I come into the office thinking I'll restore a backup and try it again, or just call Local Unit Support as suggested here. But first, being the programmer that I am, lets duplicate the error to verify the problem, and make special note of anything I may have missed yesterday.

The urgent task is still there, so I proceed to close the year. Oh look, we didn't process donations yesterday because the year wouldn't close, so I click the check box to acknowledge that yes, I know we didn't do any donations yesterday. This by the way is the only financial related entry (if you can call it that) I believe possible given the current state of our MLS. At this point it starts working on the year end closing, and as it sits for a minute I start to look up the support number to make my call. By the time I find the support number to call, it's done closing 2009.

So a process that failed to complete after 3+ hours and two attempts yesterday completed without any trouble at all in a few minutes or less.

There were only two changes between yesterday and today.

1) The check box I had to click to acknowledge that we did not process donations yesterday.

2) Out of habit I did a send/receive when I started MLS. Even as I did that I thought it a silly things to do as I might have to restore an older database anyway. But, an ordination had been entered yesterday before we attempted to close the year and I received confirmation that it had been recorded.

So while I can't prove it I believe the state of the database changed because of either of the two items above, and this change allowed the year end process to complete without a problem.

And, of course you rebooted. (I don't know if you did that yet or not.)