Excess Funds for Missionary

I just got called as the finance clerk. I was going through the funds for my ward missionaries. One of them has about 7 months pre-paid, and only 4 months left on his mission. When this missionary comes home does this money go back into the ward mission fund or does it get reallocated at a higher level? They have another missionary leaving soon, could this money be applied to that Elder's mission funds?

For starters, tell the family to stop donating. It's not a good idea to prepay too far ahead as it can't be refunded.

When his mission is done, I think you'll need to manually transfer the excess to the top-level ward mission fund. If it were me, I'd hold it until the other missionary goes out and then stick it in his account. Until then, you may have to explain the situation to the stake if they start nosing about for missionary funds.

russellhltn wrote: Mon Jun 09, 2025 3:25 pm Until then, you may have to explain the situation to the stake if they start nosing about for missionary funds.

And you may have to try to talk the auditor into not giving you an exception. Any missionary fund balance for a mission who has come home is now an action item on the monthly statement. Any action item older than 90 days that hasn't been resolved is technically an exception. We generally give our auditor's guidance to be flexible if there is a plan for the money but your stake may be different. Since you're new to the calling you may want to check with your stake finance clerk about how to best deal with the situation.

And since you've already been going through the missionary accounts, it might be helpful to also try and determine how the missionary funds got to that point for this missionary. Each situation is unique, but sometimes there are patterns that either can help out with other missionaries currently serving, or perhaps specifically when the same family has their next missionary leave as is your case.

For instance, sometimes families pre-pay (even though that's strongly discouraged), and others continue to donate on their own which effectively multiplies what accumulates in the account. Other times, there's no tracking of who is donating, and various family and ward members are making individual donations that have a cumulative effect of overpaying. And sometimes families actually understand the process and are expecting to apply the overage to their next missionary, but maybe not everyone is aware of this.

In any case, it would also be good to determine if this was something that the ward could have identified a number of months ago, and taken action to help avoid the 3 month overage. And then add that into what you are tracking at regular intervals for missionary fund balances.