CUBS Concerns

I anxiously await having CUBS activated, but have a few questions that I wonder if anyone has thought about:

1. Will stakes be able to allocate a fixed dollar amount for budget funds or will they be stuck using the attendance figures? Attendance figures in our stake do not always represent actual budget needs for the units in our stake. In addition, we have already assigned an annual allocation to each ward in our stake and would like to stick with those amounts.

2. In my experience, most units use up a signficant portion of their annual budget by the end of summer due to camps, etc. Under the current system, this is not a problem as long as they stay within their budget allocation for the year. Under CUBS, this practice will cause them to go negative in their budget category until the 3rd or 4th quarter allocations are assigned to them.

mlh78 wrote:1. Will stakes be able to allocate a fixed dollar amount for budget funds or will they be stuck using the attendance figures? Attendance figures in our stake do not always represent actual budget needs for the units in our stake. In addition, we have already assigned an annual allocation to each ward in our stake and would like to stick with those amounts.

The MLS finance transition wiki article (which is almost exactly the same as the MLS message sent over the weekend to stakes) says that stakes will manage the budget among the stake and wards "by assigning budget distribution percentages." So it doesn't sound like a fixed dollar amount will be an option.

The instructions say that there will be separate distribution percentages for sacrament meeting, YM, YW, Primary, and YSA. But it's not clear to me what those percentages will be based on. I could imagine that they are a percentage of the amount contributed by that ward's attendance numbers (e.g., this ward keeps 80% of their sac mtg attendance and 20% goes to the stake), or that it is a percentage of the total stake budget for each ward (e.g., Ward A gets 10%, Ward B gets 12%, stake gets 18%, etc.). My guess is that it is the latter, but the documentation is somewhat vague on this point. I'm sure it will all become clear when CUBS is activated. Perhaps someone from Canada (which has already switched over) can illuminate.

mlh78 wrote:2. In my experience, most units use up a signficant portion of their annual budget by the end of summer due to camps, etc. Under the current system, this is not a problem as long as they stay within their budget allocation for the year. Under CUBS, this practice will cause them to go negative in their budget category until the 3rd or 4th quarter allocations are assigned to them.

Currently, negative balances in a category don't get a lot of attention unless the whole ward account (Missionary + Other + Budget (now) ) has a negative balance. I've always assumed that there was a fair amount of leniency for temporary situations. I would assume that the same will be true in the future. Since allocations arrive at the beginning of the quarter, you should have 3/4 of the annual allocation by July 1, which I would think would cover expenses pretty well. There might be a temporary negative condition in August, but by the end of September, the final installment will be delivered.

The email and wiki details say the CUBS system will be setting up subaccounts for each missionary:

"Additionally, a subcategory for each missionary will be automatically set up in MLS for missionaries serving from the ward as indicated from the Missionary Department. Wards should not set them up manually. If donations for a particular missionary are received prior to having a subcategory for the missionary set up through the Missionary Department, the ward should record those donations in the Ward Missionary category. Such donations may be later transferred to the specific missionary's subcategory after it has been automatically set up."

I am a stake financial clerk with several units with missionaries out in various stages (some out a long time, one just left a couple days ago, etc). Most if not all of them, including the guy that just walked out the door already have subaccounts set up in their names. Are we supposed to get each unit to run transfers to push each missionary's funds to the top level Ward Missionary account, then locally run a paper ledger for each missionary until the church re-established their subaccounts and them transfer them back in? Or is that only to occur for those that just left and an account has not yet been setup? The wiki does not seem exactly clear, it just says do not manually create new ones. What about the existing ones? Is the subaccount set up by the missionary department spoken of in the wiki the one we will see in CUBS or are they just talking about the name line we see tagged to normal monthly $400 per month charges per missionary?

If we have to transferring the all existing missionary subaccounts it sounds pretty scary as we have over a dozen units spread over a several thousand square miles and some of them are struggling in the clerical area. The distances involved along with some units only being reachable on Sundays (only two Sundays left), makes it hard for us to run to each one of them and assist them each week until the subaccounts are established by CUBS or the Missionary Dept.

I fear if the struggling local units try to transfer the funds for individual missionary's to the top level account on their own we may not be able to properly account for those funds in the future because (1) They may lose the paper trail and forget how much money was in each subaccount, (2) They may transfer them to the wrong account, (3) They may not transfer them at all, (4) They may transfer them to some other account by mistake, (5) They may loose track of donations made to that missionary in the interim.

Even some of our larger, more trained staff units often struggle when the clerk sick, or is gone a few weeks on summer vacation.

My questions are:

1. Exactly what are we really supposed to do? (Transfer every missionary's funds to the top level Ward Missionary Account by August 15? Only move funds to top level for those who just left and have not yet been billed the first time by the church? Only deposit funds in the top level account for missionaries leaving after August 15th?)

2. Any tips for stakes in our situation (those with concerns about the ability of the local clerks to transfer the funds and properly account for them without a little help and oversight that is difficult for us to provide given the distances and timeline, and some language barriers)? Yes I know we can try to use the MLS email system, but the units that struggle are the same units that do not respond to MLS emails.

3. We have a few returned missionaries with a few bucks in their subaccount or a negative balance. I know the positives need transferred to the top level account. Are we supposed to do that with the negatives now too? Our local bishops are still visiting with some families about contributing the remaining funds to bring their returned missionary up to zero. Seemingly, CUBS would not be creating a subaccount for them.

4. We have some missionaries in the field whose families have moved into or out of our stake and their accounts are either negative here (on of our units is still being tagged for the monthly $$400 till we get it changed) or positive here (a unit in some other stake is still getting tagged for the monthly $400 till we get it changed). We understand how to change which unit should be billed the $400 charges, but are we supposed to move the subaccounts for missionaries whose family recently moved into or out of our stake and the wrong unit/stake is still being billed to the top level account too?

We are getting out and training and working with our clerks and will try to rise to the occasion, but we need to know a little more specifically what it is we are supposed to do so we do not create more confusion.

Thanks
chartman

We understand the stake is to enter local unit budget allotments as a percentage of the stake allotment or as a percentage of the various categories.

Does that have to be done by August 15, by August 22, or just
whenever we get around to it?

We have traditionally entered the unit budgets as a fixed dollar amount and our Stake President would like to think about how best to replicate our current methods using the new system for a little while.

There also appears to be a bit of confusion about those percentages (do they mean a fixed percent of all funds the stake receives from that category OR do they mean that specific unit gets the fixed percentage back of their own contribution to that specific category).

For example if we put 10 percent in the Sacrament category for one unit do they get 10 percent of all funds the stake receives for sacrament attendance OR do they just get 10 percent of the funds back the stake will receive for their particular unit's contribution to the sacrament attendance portion of the quarterly allotment for the state and the stake gets the other 90 percent?

How long do we have?

And how is the percentage calculated?

Thanks
chartman

chartman wrote:Exactly what are we really supposed to do? (Transfer every missionary's funds to the top level Ward Missionary Account by August 15? Only move funds to top level for those who just left and have not yet been billed the first time by the church? Only deposit funds in the top level account for missionaries leaving after August 15th?)

I don't think we know yet exactly what we are supposed to do. You don't need to do anything on August 15 (except make sure you do a Send/Receive).

Although it's nice to be proactive, once we transition to CUBS, we will have time to actually use the system and figure out what we need to do. Nothing will have to be done the day CUBS is activated (except to do Send/Receive to get the new finance file down to our individual MLS installations).

My plan is to jump in as soon as I can see how MLS works with CUBS on August 22. Then I will create documentation that I will post on the wiki, and link to from here on the forum. I have to help the units in my stake anyway, so I'll share that info as a starting point for the community to work out these issues.

chartman wrote:Does that have to be done by August 15, by August 22, or just whenever we get around to it?

My guess is the answer is none of the above. You can't do it on August 15, you don't have to do it on the first day CUBS is active, but you'll need to do it sometime before the Q4 allocations are transferred.

We'll have to see exactly how the process for allocating from the stake to the wards works. But again, we should have some time to do this, and I'll create wiki articles and forum posts once I can actually see how it works.

Thanks Alan for both your quick responses. The instructional MLS emails we received earlier seemed to indicate some level of urgency to get these steps done before the CUBS transition. Its great to hear we still have a little time to prepare for the storm.

chartman

chartman wrote:The instructional MLS emails we received earlier seemed to indicate some level of urgency to get these steps done before the CUBS transition. Its great to hear we still have a little time to prepare for the storm.

The email dated 25 Jul 2010 said (my emphasis added):

The following instructions are to be used after being notified that the new Church Unit Banking System (CUBS) has been enabled.

And CUBS won't be enabled until August 22 for those units who received the recent announcement. So we do have a little time.

I hopefully am not alone in my feelings of being in the dark on the whole CUBS transistion. I cannot help but notice the lack of training in any real form save for the rather terse messages received via MLS. Knowning how thorough the church is I can only assume that the new system is so easy to use that training is not required or it is totally transparent to the users and our finance clerks will just merrily go about their business as if nothing has happened.
Am I off base? Or will there be some more communication once our system is activated?

BTW our stake also got the notice of the "quiet period" of Aug 15-22.

-Jeff Papke
Stake Clerk

jpapke wrote: I can only assume that the new system is so easy to use that training is not required or it is totally transparent to the users and our finance clerks will just merrily go about their business as if nothing has happened.

I think that's mostly the case. The bulk of everything we do in the finance area will be exactly the same. We'll still write checks and make deposits just like we always have. Tithing, Fast Offerings, and Other are completely unaffected. Ward Missionary gets easier because we don't have to enter in the expenses for each missionary each month, although we'll have to sort out the new categorization. The zero-based way of handling Budget funds goes away, and now Budget is handled more like Ward Missionary and Other. Reconciliation goes away.

The stake will have to figure out how to do the new allocations of Budget funds to the wards, but that should be fairly straightforward once we can see it. So although I'd love to know exactly how everything works ahead of time, I really don't think it will be very hard to adjust to when it arrives.

Watch this forum and related wiki pages that will be posted soon after the conversion, and we'll all help each other handle any issues that may arise.

I have been informed that the implementation dates of CUBS has been pushed back. There is not a date yet, but this means that you can use your finances as normal next week. You should be getting an edoc stating this anytime.

There have been some issues raised from the implementation in Canada. The CUBS team is analyzing these issues. I will post the new date as soon as I get it.

I know there is not a great deal of training on this. As Alan stated, most financial functions will work exactly as they do now. This is more of a backend system change, but it does allow the United states and Canada to now have a two way communication with the backend system. This couldn't happen previously. Any changes that a clerk would see can be found in the wiki article Alan referenced in the previous post.

I hope this helps.

DJC wrote:There have been some issues raised from the implementation in Canada.

Thank you for keeping us updated. Is it true that CUBS will require two people to print checks? If this is so, can we load all the expenses at one session, exit MLS, and then come back later to print the actual checks?

This will be a real challenge for us. With those we currently have in these callings, we will have to change travel arrangements between cities, rework our procedures, and learn a totally new way of doing business.

We already struggle to get our phone bills paid on time each month.

lajackson wrote:Is it true that CUBS will require two people to print checks?

Currently, yes. But it appears they've heard the complaints and are working on removing that.

lajackson wrote:Thank you for keeping us updated. Is it true that CUBS will require two people to print checks? If this is so, can we load all the expenses at one session, exit MLS, and then come back later to print the actual checks?

This will be a real challenge for us. With those we currently have in these callings, we will have to change travel arrangements between cities, rework our procedures, and learn a totally new way of doing business.

We already struggle to get our phone bills paid on time each month.

See this post.

While this appears to be resolved, I'll add my experience. In response to this post, I (along with a few other members of the forum) did some testing on the new CUBS yesterday. It does not require two people to authorize the printing of a check.

Alan_Brown wrote:The instructions say that there will be separate distribution percentages for sacrament meeting, YM, YW, Primary, and YSA. But it's not clear to me what those percentages will be based on. I could imagine that they are a percentage of the amount contributed by that ward's attendance numbers (e.g., this ward keeps 80% of their sac mtg attendance and 20% goes to the stake), or that it is a percentage of the total stake budget for each ward (e.g., Ward A gets 10%, Ward B gets 12%, stake gets 18%, etc.). My guess is that it is the latter, but the documentation is somewhat vague on this point.

I now know that my guess was wrong. It is indeed the former option. Upon further reflection, I think that is a good choice. If a stake just wants to keep 20% of the allocation, they can simply enter 80% for every ward for every category and might never need to adjust it again. That way the wards and stake share in the ups and downs of changes in the budget allocation, but the ward is the most affected by their actual attendance figures, which seems to be appropriate. But there's also enough flexibility that a stake president can allocate the funds to the wards however he sees fit.

Again, after having had an opportunity to pose questions as well as test out some of the features of CUBS yesterday, here's some more perspective. I expect some of the others who were there will comment as well. Here goes:

mlh78 wrote:1. Will stakes be able to allocate a fixed dollar amount for budget funds or will they be stuck using the attendance figures? Attendance figures in our stake do not always represent actual budget needs for the units in our stake. In addition, we have already assigned an annual allocation to each ward in our stake and would like to stick with those amounts.

Part 1 - will you be able to assign fixed dollar amounts? No. Currently the stake receives a disbursement report every quarter that indicates the budget disbursement contributions of each ward in the stake. It breaks out the amounts by sacrament attendance, primary, YM, YW and YSA. These numbers come from the quarterly report.

After the conversion, stakes allocate budgets by indicating what percent of the ward's disbursement in each of these categories the ward will actually receive. The percentages are percent of the budget disbursement/contribution from that ward only and not the total disbursement. The remaining balance is the stake's take. Sum up the remaining balance for each ward and that is the stake budget.

If you want to still keep your wards at set dollar amounts, you will have to reverse calculate to determine the percentages necessary to assure your wards get the correct dollar amount. One month before the disbursement arrives, you can play with the budget percentages on the Stake MLS and preview the budget disbursement (at least that's what I understood). So you can either pick percentages and let the disbursements occur, or you can put a lot of effort into playing with the percentages to keep the yearly dollar amount the same.

Part 2: We have already assigned an annual allocation to each ward in our stake and would like to stick with those amounts. - This was one of my questions as well. The budget in CUBS will start at 0 the day it is implemented. The way it is set up makes it so the first budget amount they get is only what they can spend for the remainder of the quarter. It will begin from the day it is initiated and move forward. So from my understanding, you will not see a YTD budget total. It will begin with a remaining budget through the end of the current quarter.

All future disbursements will occur quarterly, and budgets are now local to the units. This means the stake can't simply tell the ward to adjust their budget up or down as desired. Instead, money is moved either through the automatic budget disbursements or by check only. So to set up the ward budgets initially, all the money does reside in the stake. The stake would cut a check to each ward to disburse out the remaining budget balance as desired (look at SFS to get this amount). From that point on, all future budget disbursements occur automatically according to the percentages as described above.

So if this happened today, you would split up the remaining balance from any OTA, carryover and the first 3 quarter disbursements as desired between all your units and the stake and cut checks to all the wards/branches to transfer the money to them. The fourth quarter disbursement would automatically be split up based on the percentages entered in the budget screen in the stake MLS.

mlh78 wrote:2. In my experience, most units use up a signficant portion of their annual budget by the end of summer due to camps, etc. Under the current system, this is not a problem as long as they stay within their budget allocation for the year. Under CUBS, this practice will cause them to go negative in their budget category until the 3rd or 4th quarter allocations are assigned to them.

This is correct. The nice thing, however, is that budgets are now local. A ward going negative does not hit the stake budget, other ward budgets, or any surpluses. It only hits the future ward budget. All checks will still be covered, of course, but CUBS does NOT automatically zero the budget at year end. The system will allow wards to carry their remaining balance forward. It is up to the stake to determine a budget policy and, if they desire wards to start each year at $0, they would have to have the wards cut checks to the stake to return any excess balances at the end of the year. So again, a negative balance will reduce the next quarterly disbursement, but as long as the ward manages their expenses, it should not be a problem.

As an aside, this currently happens anyway, it's just the ward does not see it. Budget is disbursed to the stake quarterly already and, if the ward expenses exceed disbursements, the stake as a whole could be negative for a bit. Given a little training, it shouldn't cause any problems.

Thanks, crislapi, for that summary. I would only make two clarifications based on what I heard yesterday.

crislapi wrote:One month before the disbursement arrives, you can play with the budget percentages on the Stake MLS and preview the budget disbursement (at least that's what I understood).

The way I understand it, I agree that stakes will receive a notification as to what the budget allocation will be for the coming quarter a month before the quarter begins. But I thought it was just going to be an MLS message giving the amounts, rather than an actual set of data that you can play with in Stake MLS. However, I might have missed that point.

crislapi wrote:A ward going negative does not hit the stake budget, other ward budgets, or any surpluses. It only hits the future ward budget. All checks will still be covered, of course, but CUBS does NOT automatically zero the budget at year end. The system will allow wards to carry their remaining balance forward. It is up to the stake to determine a budget policy and, if they desire wards to start each year at $0, they would have to have the wards cut checks to the stake to return any excess balances at the end of the year. So again, a negative balance will reduce the next quarterly disbursement, but as long as the ward manages their expenses, it should not be a problem.

I would word this somewhat differently. Being negative doesn't really "hit the future ward budget" and it certainly doesn't "reduce the next quarterly disbursement." The disbursements will happen as determined by the stake, regardless of whether a particular ward is positive or negative on their current budget balance. But wards that run a negative balance will obviously have a new balance after the quarterly disbursement that is less than the total disbursement.

Suppose a ward is scheduled to get a $2500 allocation on October 1st. If on that scheduled date they have a budget balance of -$1000, they'll still get the $2500, but their new balance will only be $1500, and so they should tighten their belts and live on $1500 for the quarter. If they keep spending the full $2500, they'll always be negative at the end of the quarter, and the stake president will probably have a chat with the bishop about that.

crislapi wrote:Part 1 - will you be able to assign fixed dollar amounts? No. [. . .] If you want to still keep your wards at set dollar amounts, you will have to reverse calculate to determine the percentages necessary to assure your wards get the correct dollar amount.

I don't understand why it won't include a feature to allow dollar amount allocations. I am pretty sure that the existing ward budget allocation tool in MLS allows this (though I found it cumbersome and never used it). What is the downside?

Although I relish the opportunity to create a fancy spreadsheet to work out these calculations each quarter, this could be a real burden on clerk's who do not share my enthusiasm for numbers. I also think that requiring the stake to back into a dollar amount allocation, though doable, is a barrier to the Stake President exercising discretion in allocating the budget.

mlh78 wrote:I don't understand why it won't include a feature to allow dollar amount allocations. I am pretty sure that the existing ward budget allocation tool in MLS allows this (though I found it cumbersome and never used it). What is the downside?

Although I relish the opportunity to create a fancy spreadsheet to work out these calculations each quarter, this could be a real burden on clerk's who do not share my enthusiasm for numbers. I also think that requiring the stake to back into a dollar amount allocation, though doable, is a barrier to the Stake President exercising discretion in allocating the budget.

To me this seems to move towards a more fair distribution. When I was previously involved with budgets our stake would take a fixed amount off the top and then distribute the rest based on the attendance percentages. It sounds like some operate the other way around. But why not have both the stake and the ward's budget allocations vary with the actual attendance? That way if the attendance varies from what it has historically been there both the stake and the ward have an interest in addressing the problem (assuming the variance wasn't extra attendance ).

crislapi wrote:A ward going negative does not hit the stake budget, other ward budgets, or any surpluses. It only hits the future ward budget. All checks will still be covered, of course,

So, is there a downside to being in the red? I've worked with people in the past who don't care what the balance is as long as they can write checks and they'll be covered.

mlh78 wrote:I don't understand why it won't include a feature to allow dollar amount allocations. I am pretty sure that the existing ward budget allocation tool in MLS allows this (though I found it cumbersome and never used it). What is the downside?

The downside is that it is yet another feature for both the CUBS and the MLS developers to implement, when stakes have already been given quite a bit of flexibility.

If a particular stake determines that fixed dollar amount budgeting is best, then they can do that quite simply. All they do is set every budget allocation number to 0. That way all budget money will come to the stake. At the beginning of each quarter, they send a check to each ward for whatever amount the stake president has chosen. That seems to me to be a much simpler solution than trying to jigger the percentages every quarter to try to get a specific dollar amount.

mlh78 wrote:Although I relish the opportunity to create a fancy spreadsheet to work out these calculations each quarter, this could be a real burden on clerk's who do not share my enthusiasm for numbers. I also think that requiring the stake to back into a dollar amount allocation, though doable, is a barrier to the Stake President exercising discretion in allocating the budget.

It's only a burden if a stake wants to control budget dollar amounts tightly. But if you just work with the new system (instead of trying to force it to work like the old system), life will be much easier.

I plan to propose to my stake president a very simple plan (which is already quite similar to what we are doing anyway). We will determine a percentage to take from the wards. Suppose it is 20%. Then we will set all the budget allocation numbers for each ward in each category to 80%. We're done. We'll monitor how each ward is doing, of course, but their budget allocation will be tied directly to their attendance figures, which is ultimately what the stake as a whole experiences. So it's entirely appropriate that the wards experience that as well.

RussellHltn wrote:So, is there a downside to being in the red? I've worked with people in the past who don't care what the balance is as long as they can write checks and they'll be covered.

From what I understand, the stake president still has responsibility for how he manages that issue for particular wards. If the stake as a whole goes in the red, then the stake president gets to answer to higher authorities, but if the stake as whole stays in the black, no one will question him.

When this happened, the SP threatened to take away the checkbook. But this was back when we had physical checkbooks.

I think it would be nice if MLS stopped writing budget checks if the balance went negative.

Alan_Brown wrote:
It's only a burden if a stake wants to control budget dollar amounts tightly. But if you just work with the new system (instead of trying to force it to work like the old system), life will be much easier.

The problem is that for many of our units, attendance-based allocations fail to properly reflect the needs of the units. I can't imagine that we are unique in this respect.

Also, in my experience, units budget on an annual basis. The new system requires wards using an annual budget to project their allocation for the entire year and hope for the best. Generally, ward's are not as able to absorb allocation fluctuations as the stake is (which can maintain a cushion to smooth out the variations). I think the units appreciate a guaranteed allocation for the year.

mlh78 wrote:The problem is that for many of our units, attendance-based allocations fail to properly reflect the needs of the units. I can't imagine that we are unique in this respect.

It works well for our stake, but I wouldn't doubt that other units may need another approach.

mlh78 wrote:Also, in my experience, units budget on an annual basis. The new system requires wards using an annual budget to project their allocation for the entire year and hope for the best. Generally, ward's are not as able to absorb allocation fluctuations as the stake is (which can maintain a cushion to smooth out the variations). I think the units appreciate a guaranteed allocation for the year.

All units are supposed to budget on an annual basis. You're right that either the wards or the stake have to absorb the quarterly fluctuations that will occur, and it may well be true that the stake will more easily be able to do this.

But during my 5-year stint as a ward financial clerk a few years back, we received quarterly allocations from the stake, and although it required some estimation, and some contingency planning, everything always worked out fine. We had a reasonably stable membership, so the fluctuations were small. In some wards with a more transient membership, that could be a much bigger challenge.

Nonetheless, as I indicated previously, if a stake wants to guarantee wards an annual allocation, the CUBS system will allow them to do so write checks to the wards for any amounts they choose. The stake will most likely not be able to deliver the full amount at the beginning of the year to all the wards, but as long as the total is guaranteed, delivering one fourth of the allocation each quarter shouldn't have any effect on how wards operate.

If wards are allocated budget funds as a percentage of their attendance, I can see it being a huge temptation for wards to "bump up" their attendance figures knowing it will get them more money. Right now a clerk completes the quarterly report without regard to the attendance because they know they are going to get the allocation of funds from the stake. But if the clerk knows their budget allocation is directly tied to the number they enter, adding 5, 10, or 15 to the attendance total might not set off any flags but it would get them a few extra dollars each quarter.

I understand that the whole idea is to have more equality but it could also get out of hand quite easily. If the stake can allocate fixed dollar amounts then wards would not be tempted to overstate their attendance numbers. In my opinion, allocating based on percentages takes away some of the stake president's control of the unit budgets.

mlh78 wrote:I don't understand why it won't include a feature to allow dollar amount allocations... What is the downside?

I imagine the main problem with fixed amounts is that the stake can't guarantee delivery of a fixed budget amount. As of January 1, you can estimate 2 disbursements from quarterly reports, but the second half of the year is unknown. Perhaps some of your stakes/wards are more stable than mine and perhaps you do better at estimating the yearly budget than we had in the past, but just as I came into the stake the stake as a whole had overspent the budget by quite a large amount. However, not a single ward went over their allotted budget. The problem was that attendance took an unanticipated dive during the year, drastically reducing the disbursements we received. The clerks at the time didn't catch this and the result was a nice letter to the stake president. This approach "covers your back" by never promising the wards money it can't deliver.

If you are good at estimating, I think you could still give your wards a good estimate of what their total disbursements for the year will be and you'll be close enough for them to plan the year with. If you insist on them receiving an exact amount, then following Alan_Brown's suggestion of setting all percentages to 0 and writing checks is the easiest solution.

mlh78 wrote:The problem is that for many of our units, attendance-based allocations fail to properly reflect the needs of the units. I can't imagine that we are unique in this respect.

Also, in my experience, units budget on an annual basis. The new system requires wards using an annual budget to project their allocation for the entire year and hope for the best. Generally, ward's are not as able to absorb allocation fluctuations as the stake is (which can maintain a cushion to smooth out the variations). I think the units appreciate a guaranteed allocation for the year.

Again, I think if you are good at estimating the amount of money you will receive for the entire year (and it sounds like you are - this is the current approach) you could still give your wards an idea of what the disbursement totals for the year will be. Your estimate and the actual shouldn't be too far off. If you need to give them an exact amount, tell them the amount to plan on, set the disbursement percentages to 0 and cut them checks quarterly until they have received the total you wish for them to receive.

I agree that a guaranteed amount for the year is great, but as I stated above, we really can't guarantee with any more certainty right now the amount - we can tell them to expect a certain amount, and if the disbursements go as expected, we don't have to adjust their budget. However, if attendance drops and disbursements are less than expected, you still have to either reduce their current budgets or take the hit at the stake level.

buster9750 wrote:If wards are allocated budget funds as a percentage of their attendance, I can see it being a huge temptation for wards to "bump up" their attendance figures knowing it will get them more money... But if the clerk knows their budget allocation is directly tied to the number they enter, adding 5, 10, or 15 to the attendance total might not set off any flags but it would get them a few extra dollars each quarter.

I understand that the whole idea is to have more equality but it could also get out of hand quite easily. If the stake can allocate fixed dollar amounts then wards would not be tempted to overstate their attendance numbers. In my opinion, allocating based on percentages takes away some of the stake president's control of the unit budgets.

While I don't doubt their is potential for the abuse you mention, I will naively state that I think most clerks try to fulfill their callings honestly. I don't expect widespread abuse. I think Alan_Brown's suggestion makes fixed-dollar amount budgets very feasible and simple. If a stake chooses to stay with fixed-dollar budgets, it would be easy enough to do.

RussellHltn wrote:When this happened, the SP threatened to take away the checkbook. But this was back when we had physical checkbooks.

I think it would be nice if MLS stopped writing budget checks if the balance went negative.

Hmmm. There's a good feature request! Allow the stake MLS to disable check printing for specific wards! In the meantime you could still take the checks...

Of course, the downside is it's the members who should be receiving reimbursements who are being punished. I wouldn't expect members to have to start paying out of pocket because the ward doesn't know how to manage expenses. Involved financial clerks and intervention by the SP would hopefully curb this.

This reminds me of two more nice features about the switch that hopefully will help. First, the SFS will be delivered electronically to the stake in PDF format, I assume similar to the CUFS. This means it arrives quicker and directly to you, allowing you to keep on top of ward expenses.

Second, and this is the one I hope I heard correctly, ward expenses will automatically be entered as expenses in the stake MLS. I assume this means that each ward will automatically exist as a sub category in your budget, and disbursements will automatically show up. That way you can monitor the status of the budget real time. Again, if i heard correctly, the finances are processed every time a send/receive is done. So the stake MLS shows real-time ward budget status. I think I'm going to check in on this to make sure...

I should clarify that "real-time" probably more realistically means a day or two behind. Better than the month it's been, though!

crislapi wrote:Hmmm. There's a good feature request! Allow the stake MSL to disable check printing for specific wards!

I'd settle for simply having MLS not print checks that are more then the remaining balance.

Not so much in the church, but I've seen people that really don't seem to mind a "rug dance" in front of their superiour. If getting yelled at by the boss is what it takes to get more the spend, they'll do it. It doesn't bother them. But if they knew the checks stopped - well, that's a different story. (Although one could always use the emergency check writing procedure....)

crislapi wrote:So the stake MLS shows real-time ward budget status.

That's one of the questions I had - if the stake could still see the ward's spending.

RussellHltn wrote:I think it would be nice if MLS stopped writing budget checks if the balance went negative.

This is definitely not planned, and I think it would not only be unnecessary but could potentially cause problems. I don't think the Church has any problem at all with some wards having a temporary negative budget balance; this can certainly happen when a ward is acting quite appropriately.

Consider a ward that is having a youth conference that is their biggest expense of the year. The payment for the conference might be due in the first quarter. I've seen youth conferences that cost more than one fourth of a ward's annual budget all by themselves, and of course there will be other expenses in Q1 as well. In the most common budget allocation scenarios, such a ward will then have a negative balance sometime in Q1. It might get positive in April, or perhaps it won't get and stay positive until October.

If MLS were to prohibit such a ward from writing checks, it would be a huge problem. Just because there are additional controls possible under the new system, doesn't mean it is wise to put them in place. There's no reason to change from the current procedure, where the bishop monitors finances at the ward level, and the stake president monitors finances for all the units in the stake. They counsel together to discuss any issues that may arise, and take prudent actions to make corrections only when necessary.

crislapi wrote: This reminds me of two more nice features about the switch that hopefully will help. First, the SFS will be delivered electronically to the stake in PDF format, I assume similar to the CUFS. This means it arrives quicker and directly to you, allowing you to keep on top of ward expenses.

Second, and this is the one I hope I heard correctly, ward expenses will automatically be entered as expenses in the stake MLS. I assume this means that each ward will automatically exist as a sub category in your budget, and disbursements will automatically show up. That way you can monitor the status of the budget real time. Again, if i heard correctly, the finances are processed every time a send/receive is done. So the stake MLS shows real-time ward budget status. I think I'm going to check in on this to make sure...

This is wonderful news! Let's hope it happens. I wonder if having ward budgets as sub categories in the Stake's MLS would allow the Stake to tinker with the wards' budget category (i.e., will the Stake be able to use the transfer function to move funds between the ward subaccounts and its own budget account?) . I can't imagine that would be the case.

buster9750 wrote:If wards are allocated budget funds as a percentage of their attendance, I can see it being a huge temptation for wards to "bump up" their attendance figures knowing it will get them more money.

I think most wards (at least in my stake) already believe - and to some extent correctly - that their attendance directly impacts their allocation, so I wouldn't expect them to act any differently. I would hope that if wards have temptations to bump up their attendance figures they do it the old fashioned way by doing their missionary work and fellowshipping inactive membeers.

RussellHltn wrote: But if they knew the checks stopped - well, that's a different story. (Although one could always use the emergency check writing procedure....)

Speaking of emergency procedures, I am sure we would see a sharp increase in mysterious other category subaccounts.

Alan_Brown wrote:I don't think the Church has any problem at all with some wards having a temporary negative budget balance; this can certainly happen when a ward is acting quite appropriately.

Consider a ward that is having a youth conference that is their biggest expense of the year. The payment for the conference might be due in the first quarter. I've seen youth conferences that cost more than one fourth of a ward's annual budget all by themselves, and of course there will be other expenses in Q1 as well. In the most common budget allocation scenarios, such a ward will then have a negative balance sometime in Q1. It might get positive in April, or perhaps it won't get and stay positive until October.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the current system, does anyone above the stake level know if a ward goes in the red? I didn't think anyone above the stake knew what the ward's allocation is. They would only know if the stake as a whole goes negative. In your experience, does it happen that the stake goes negative, or is that covered by the stake's carry over from a prior year?

Here's my point(s): The new system may expose "a problem" that the stake previously had the power to ignore. Is there any guarantee that the new system will allow a ward to carry a negative balance?

RussellHltn wrote:Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the current system, does anyone above the stake level know if a ward goes in the red? I didn't think anyone above the stake knew what the ward's allocation is. They would only know if the stake as a whole goes negative.

That is correct. Since no one outside the stake know what each ward's allocation is, they can't possibly know if a ward is in the red.

RussellHltn wrote:In your experience, does it happen that the stake goes negative, or is that covered by the stake's carry over from a prior year?

I've never seen a negative stake balance in my experience as a financial clerk in three different stakes. Each had a fairly large carryover, which easily cushioned the stake against any temporary issues. Of course that leaves over 2800 stakes unaccounted for, and I can't speak for them. But I would imagine it is extremely rare for a stake to go negative overall.

RussellHltn wrote:Here's my point(s): The new system may expose "a problem" that the stake previously had the power to ignore. Is there any guarantee that the new system will allow a ward to carry a negative balance?

There is no "guarantee." But the people on the CUBS team that Crislapi and I spoke with on Wednesday made it quite clear that this particular policy will not change under CUBS -- higher authorities will not raise any red flags unless an entire stake is in a deficit. As long as the stake overall has a positive balance, the stake president deals with any negative balances in any of his units. The system will certainly not prohibit a ward from having a negative balance. It won't even prohibit a stake from having a negative balance, but it was mentioned that such an event is likely to receive action in the form of a letter from some higher authority.

Allowing wards to have a negative balance makes a lot of sense. I can envision any number of scenarios where there will be temporary deficits in a unit. Some might simply be a result of wards being slow to process funds transferred from the stake. In fact, my guess is that a huge portion of the wards in the US will have a temporary deficit in the week they move to CUBS. Almost every single ward that writes a check on the first Sunday that CUBS is active will have a deficit, since the stake won't get its funds until that day, and will then have to cut checks to each ward and deliver them to the wards; the wards will then have to deposit those checks before they have a single penny in their Budget category. That's not likely to happen on the first Sunday, but writing a budget check on that Sunday is fairly likely, which will then create a negative budget balance.

mlh78 wrote:This is wonderful news! Let's hope it happens. I wonder if having ward budgets as sub categories in the Stake's MLS would allow the Stake to tinker with the wards' budget category (i.e., will the Stake be able to use the transfer function to move funds between the ward subaccounts and its own budget account?) . I can't imagine that would be the case.

We did ask. The transfer function would not work. Moving funds would have to be done by check. I suspect this is because the funds don't reside in the stake anymore, and that the stake MLS has no capability of entering financial transactions into the ward's MLS.

RussellHltn wrote:Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the current system, does anyone above the stake level know if a ward goes in the red? I didn't think anyone above the stake knew what the ward's allocation is. They would only know if the stake as a whole goes negative. In your experience, does it happen that the stake goes negative, or is that covered by the stake's carry over from a prior year?

Here's my point(s): The new system may expose "a problem" that the stake previously had the power to ignore. Is there any guarantee that the new system will allow a ward to carry a negative balance?

In the current system, no one outside the stake knows what the ward balances are. The stake has to monitor that. In the new system, we were told local negative balances are the stake's problem to deal with and letters would be sent only if the stake as a whole goes negative.

In my experience, it does happen that a stake goes negative. I became a Stake Clerk shortly after my stake as a whole had overspent our entire budget - OTA, tax return, carryover/surpluses, and the 4 quarterly disbursements - by about $13,000. We had a negative balance at the end of the year. That prompted a strongly worded letter to the stake president. That negative was our starting balance for the new year and most of the first disbursement was spent on putting the stake back in the black.

At this point, the only guarantee I can offer is what we were told in the meeting but yes, the new system will allow wards to carry negative balances.

crislapi wrote:We did ask. The transfer function would not work. Moving funds would have to be done by check.

Maybe we are moving over a new financial system as well?
Here in Italy the Church is setting up a procedure to tranfer money, and pay rembursements, through bank transfer.
So I'm thinkg that this procedure could be spread out to the world:).
Imagine. Italy as new financial procedures pioneer. A realy miracle from our (Italian) point of view!:D

marianomarini_vi wrote:Maybe we are moving over a new financial system as well?

Yes, that is true. The US and Canada have been on one back-end financial system called CFAR, and the rest of the world on a system called LURBS. One of the goals of the CUBS project is to get the whole world on the same modern financial system.

The CUBS system has to accommodate a wide range of differences in policies and procedures for various countries' regulations and various banking systems. But once the project is completed, every unit in the Church will be using the same back-end financial system.

marianomarini_vi wrote:So I'm thinking that this procedure could be spread out to the world:).
Imagine. Italy as new financial procedures pioneer. A real miracle from our (Italian) point of view!:D

Well, the very program we are discussing, MLS, originated outside of the US and Canada. After it was tested and functioning internationally, it was imported into North America.

lajackson wrote:Well, the very program we are discussing, MLS, originated outside of the US and Canada. After it was tested and functioning internationally, it was imported into North America.

We're not actually talking about MLS. We're talking about the back-end financial system called CUBS. MLS certainly interacts with CUBS, but CUBS can process financial transactions completely independent of MLS as well.

I may need Alan_Brown to correct me if I get this wrong, but I just remembered one more cool feature of CUBS that was mentioned just as our meeting was wrapping up. It has to do with year-end tax statements and donor records. The new system will recognize donations associated with membership numbers and, at the end of the year, the entire donation history will print on the donor/tax statements.

I do not know the nuances of how this will work, but I asked enough times in enough different ways to make sure I wasn't just hearing what I wanted to hear. I assume this system will only work when donor records have been merged to membership records containing a valid membership number and will involve some background linking on the financial department's side. The end result - at the end of the year, statements that truly have all your donations on it!

As long as every ward you donated in 1) had you membership record while you were there 2) successfully linked your donor record to your membership record, then you shouldn't have to go chase down your statements from each ward individually any more!

crislapi wrote:I may need Alan_Brown to correct me if I get this wrong, but I just remembered one more cool feature of CUBS that was mentioned just as our meeting was wrapping up. It has to do with year-end tax statements and donor records. The new system will recognize donations associated with membership numbers and, at the end of the year, the entire donation history will print on the donor/tax statements.

I do not know the nuances of how this will work, but I asked enough times in enough different ways to make sure I wasn't just hearing what I wanted to hear. I assume this system will only work when donor records have been merged to membership records containing a valid membership number and will involve some background linking on the financial department's side. The end result - at the end of the year, statements that truly have all your donations on it!

As long as every ward you donated in 1) had you membership record while you were there 2) successfully linked your donor record to your membership record, then you shouldn't have to go chase down your statements from each ward individually any more!

I can confirm that this was indeed stated. But I would repeat the statement about not knowing the nuances.

• I didn't ask at the time, but I wonder how payments made to CHQ, either in-kind offerings, or other donations made directly to CHQ, will show up. Donors often make such donations because they don't want the local unit to see those donations. Will that continue?
• And what about errors that the donor may find on the statement? Will it clearly be stated which unit received which payments? The unit at the end of the year doesn't have the source records to track down errors which occurred in previous units.

The new instructions for CUBS will say something along these lines:
"[font=&quot]They will receive a statement from their Area Office if they donated to more than one unit."[/font]

I manage IT projects professionally and am very concerned about the lack of communication about CUBS. What functionality will it deliver? What changes will it introduce. Why were ward budgets zeroed out and then not restored when the CUBS implementation was delayed? I am a stake financial clerk and have little to no information to share with my ward financial clerks. I know there has been a delay but little more. I can deal with project problems and delays but basic project management includes communication, communication, and when you hit a snag communicate more.

CarmichaelFinanceClerk wrote:What functionality will it deliver? What changes will it introduce.

This has been communicated in a couple of MLS messages. The basic content of the main message is in the wiki under MLS Finance Transition. Did you get those messages?

CarmichaelFinanceClerk wrote:Why were ward budgets zeroed out and then not restored when the CUBS implementation was delayed?

The CUBS implementation did not happen, and thus no ward budgets were zeroed out because of its implementation or delay. If your stake had some zeroing of ward budgets, I don't see how it can be related to CUBS. I'm sure we would have heard about such a thing if it were a widespread issue, but your message is the only thing I've heard along those lines. So if that did happen to your stake, you need to look for a source other than CUBS.

CarmichaelFinanceClerk wrote:I manage IT projects professionally and am very concerned about the lack of communication about CUBS.
...
I am a stake financial clerk and have little to no information to share with my ward financial clerks. I know there has been a delay but little more. I can deal with project problems and delays but basic project management includes communication, communication, and when you hit a snag communicate more.

Some additional details have been posted in this thread. I also know that the CUBS team is working diligently on improving the documentation, which will be delivered before the transition. So at this point, there's really no reason to be concerned. You'll receive the information you need before the transition happens.

crislapi wrote:Second, and this is the one I hope I heard correctly, ward expenses will automatically be entered as expenses in the stake MLS. I assume this means that each ward will automatically exist as a sub category in your budget, and disbursements will automatically show up. That way you can monitor the status of the budget real time. Again, if i heard correctly, the finances are processed every time a send/receive is done. So the stake MLS shows real-time ward budget status.

Another helpful tool for the stakes would be to be able to view each ward's other subaccounts. These subaccounts are a constant source of problems and it would be helpful to be able to diagnose them before audits or before things get out of hand.

mlh78 wrote:Another helpful tool for the stakes would be to be able to view each ward's other subaccounts. These subaccounts are a constant source of problems and it would be helpful to be able to diagnose them before audits or before things get out of hand.

I'm quite certain this level of detail will not be available to stakes, even under CUBS. It's quite clear that all information about subaccounts is held locally, and is not communicated to CHQ, either on the current CFAR system or the coming CUBS system.

I agree that it would be nice, but it's not happening any time soon.

CarmichaelFinanceClerk wrote:What functionality will it deliver? What changes will it introduce.

This is what we know about:

• Interest, EFT payments (DC, Staples, etc), missionary payments, and other transactions that used to be in the Miscellaneous section of the CUFS and were manually entered by clerks will now automatically be entered. The benefit of this is that your expenses will always be up-to-date where as before they relied on the clerk to enter these.
• CHQ will automatically take care of NFS checks
• Adjustments made in MLS will automatically be sent to CUBS
• Adjustments made in CUBS will automatically be sent to MLS
• Some new budget categories will appear. These are not editable/removable.
• Budgets will now be distributed quarterly directly to the units. There has been significant discussion previously in this thread about how that will work. I'll refer you there for more info.
• CUBS will automatically create subcategories in the ward missionary category for each missionary the unit is supporting. Units will not longer have the capability of creating/editing these categories.
• If you live in UT or NC, entering expenses changes slightly. The subtotal and tax are specified separately (at least 2 rows for each check). The budget category is charged the subtotal, and a new budget category is charged the tax. The local budget is only hit for the subtotal. CHQ will cover the tax. As part of this switch, stakes in these states will no longer receive tax refunds in mid July.
• New CUFS. The layout is new, making them more readable (in my opinion) for leaders. It'll take the clerks a little while to get used to them, but I find the info is presented much better for the bishop to get an idea of how things are "at a glance".

CarmichaelFinanceClerk wrote:Why were ward budgets zeroed out and then not restored when the CUBS implementation was delayed?

Good question. I am also a stake financial clerk, and this has not happened in my stake. As a matter of fact, nothing was ever sent so if this has happened, CUBS can't be blamed. To me it sounds like something your stake did anticipating the switch. Perhaps if you can provide more details on exactly how they were zeroed, we can help.

In the current system, the money all resides in the stake. You merely tell the wards how much of it they can spend. Where CHQ/CUBS have not taken any of it (and won't when you switch, by the way), all the money is still there.

CarmichaelFinanceClerk wrote:I am a stake financial clerk and have little to no information to share with my ward financial clerks. I know there has been a delay but little more.

While I understand your frustration, this is a bit like singing to the choir. We are all in the same boat. This is a community forum - those commenting are likely just ward/stake clerks from around the world sharing their experiences. There is very little if any official church participation in the discussions.

crislapi wrote:CHQ will automatically take care of NFS checks

It will be interesting to see how that works. I assume you are talking about donations (tithing, etc).

RussellHltn wrote:It will be interesting to see how that works. I assume you are talking about donations (tithing, etc).

Yes, I'm referring to donations. I'm sure they will have some protocol of how to adjust if there are multiple checks, and if they get it wrong, it'd be up to the member to review the notice they receive and correct it with the ward clerk, but I'd be willing to bet the vast majority of the time they'll get it right.

crislapi wrote:but I'd be willing to bet the vast majority of the time they'll get it right.

It's been too long since I've handled the finance side of things. So maybe I'm worried about nothing. Yes, the first challenge is to correctly identify the donation.

The second is to leave something in the records that would allow a clerk to know what has happened when they are asked questions. If CHQ does it, then there will be nothing in the paperwork that was filed with that donation batch.

RussellHltn wrote:The second is to leave something in the records that would allow a clerk to know what has happened when they are asked questions. If CHQ does it, then there will be nothing in the paperwork that was filed with that donation batch.

Even in the current process, the clerk has to print out a corrected batch report and file it with the donation batch. That's not automatic.

Under the new process, the clerk will receive some sort of notification of the correction (on the finance statement at the very least). If it's desirable to file the adjustment with the donation batch (and I would think that it should be standard operating procedure), then the clerk can react to that notification by printing and filing an updated batch report.

Yes, it's a bit different, but it should not be difficult for clerks to adjust to the new procedure.

Notices about NSF checks will now be sent directly to the donor. It would be up to the donor to bring this with them when they talk to the clerk.

This presents a huge challenge. The address in the donor record is going to have to be up-to-date. If your ward is very stable, it's probably not a problem, but if a member moves but stays w/in the ward boundaries, the address associated with the donor record does not update when the membership record address is updated. Clerks are going to have to keep up on that or the notice will be sent to the wrong address.

I'm not sure if they are able to view specific donation info in the new system but I'd assume so. Otherwise, there is not way they could possibly do this.

I imagine if CHQ makes changes to a donation batch, the unit will be notified with a message and hopefully will be prompted to reprint the updated batch report.

crislapi wrote:The address in the donor record is going to have to be up-to-date. If your ward is very stable, it's probably not a problem, but if a member moves but stays w/in the ward boundaries, the address associated with the donor record does not update when the membership record address is updated.

One of the changes that is coming with CUBS is the elimination of donor records for members -- the name and address of member donors will come straight from the membership record, eliminating the possibility of the donor record address not matching the membership record address.

There will still be separate donor records for miscellaneous and "other unit" donors, of course.

Alan_Brown wrote:One of the changes that is coming with CUBS is the elimination of donor records for members -- the name and address of member donors will come straight from the membership record, eliminating the possibility of the donor record address not matching the membership record address.

There will still be separate donor records for miscellaneous and "other unit" donors, of course.

Ah, now that section makes more sense. Of course, being a student stake, it's not uncommon for our members to donate before their membership records arrive. I imagine that means most will have to have separate donor records created to handle those first donations and will therefore require clerks to be on top of linking the donor records to membership records. No worse than how it currently is.

crislapi wrote:As long as every ward you donated in 1) had you membership record while you were there 2) successfully linked your donor record to your membership record, then you shouldn't have to go chase down your statements from each ward individually any more!

This sounds great. That combined with CHQ creating sub-accounts for FT missionaries, maybe now (or soon) we would be able to donate in our home ward to a missionary in another ward and it would be able to credit the responsible wards missionary account?

sls wrote:

crislapi wrote:As long as every ward you donated in 1) had you membership record while you were there 2) successfully linked your donor record to your membership record, then you shouldn't have to go chase down your statements from each ward individually any more!

This sounds great. That combined with CHQ creating sub-accounts for FT missionaries, maybe now (or soon) we would be able to donate in our home ward to a missionary in another ward and it would be able to credit the responsible wards missionary account?

As far as we have been told, these new donor statements for multiple units are only available for people who have actually been members of multiple wards during the year. So I don't see how donations you make to another ward that you are not a member of would show up on such a statement. I'm sure the reporting mechanism depends on linking donations to your membership record number, and that other ward would not have your MRN (and would have no way to enter it into the finance side of their MLS even if they did have it).

Perhaps that capability will appear in the future, but it's not available under this first iteration of CUBS.

Alan_Brown wrote:As far as we have been told, these new donor statements for multiple units are only available for people who have actually been members of multiple wards during the year. So I don't see how donations you make to another ward that you are not a member of would show up on such a statement. I'm sure the reporting mechanism depends on linking donations to your membership record number, and that other ward would not have your MRN (and would have no way to enter it into the finance side of their MLS even if they did have it).

Perhaps that capability will appear in the future, but it's not available under this first iteration of CUBS.

Was thinking that the donors home ward would have the MRN, and because CHQ was creating/maintaining missionary accounts, then account names would all be unique thus hoping that its not to much of a stretch to think that if you new the missionary's account name it could pass though from the donors home ward to the missionaries ward without really even needing to track who/where it came from (That being done at the donors ward. But maybe in the future:)