Linking donor records

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!

Meanwhile - and I know this isn't CUBS-related - my ward has a situation where members have moved out, married, and then moved back in under their married names. The ward financial clerk hasn't been able to add or change them in MLS.

JTaber wrote:Meanwhile - and I know this isn't CUBS-related - my ward has a situation where members have moved out, married, and then moved back in under their married names. The ward financial clerk hasn't been able to add or change them in MLS.

[Alan_Brown: I moved this to a new thread, since it really wasn't related to the original thread]

Could you clarify what you mean by "hasn't been able to add or change them in MLS"? What is stopping him from making the change? What error messages does he see?

The process of linking donor records to member records really should be quite straightforward as long as the financial clerk understands some basic principles:

• Each donor record that is of type "Member" should be linked to one membership record number (you'll get an Urgent Task asking you to link the donor record until you do).
• A membership record number can be linked to no more than one donor record.
• If a donor record exists which is linked to a member record, and the member's name changes (e.g., by marriage), the donor record should be edited -- don't create a new donor record.
• Even though you can create a donor name that looks like "Doe, John and Jane", it can only be linked to one member record number (typically the husband's).

JTaber wrote:Meanwhile - and I know this isn't CUBS-related - my ward has a situation where members have moved out, married, and then moved back in under their married names. The ward financial clerk hasn't been able to add or change them in MLS.

My thoughts are you have two options.
1) Go to Finances > View/Update donors, find the original donor name in the list and edit the name to be what the married name is. Member number didn't change so you don't have to re-link.
2) Create a new donor using the married name, then go to View/Update donors and merge the original (maiden name) donor record into the new, married donor record.