CUBS Additional Clarification

The attached pdf file has been created to hopefully clarify a couple of questions that are coming in concerning the CUBS transition from calls and this forum. This document will also be sent via email to stake clerks.

I hope this clarifies a couple of questions.

Thanks.

Hi DJC,

Thanks for posting this. It clarifies some of the questions in my mind.

I note that it says not to transfer old expenses from Budget:Admin - that makes sense. How about transferring the equivalent old expense amount from the previous subcategory (under Budget Allocations) to Budget Allocations in order to provide a Y-T-D summary of expenditures?

For example: we spent $1000 on widgets, charged to Budget:Widgets, prior to the changeover. After the change over we spent another $1000 on widgets (high use item) but the budget report only now shows a Y-T-D expenditure of $1000 instead of $2000. transferring $1000 from Budget:Budget Allocations:Widgets to Budget:Budget Allocations allows the budget report to show the Y-T-D spending of $2000.

I checked with CHQ before doing this with the stake budget and was told to go ahead but this document has raised a question mark in my mind.

Thanks for your time.

I think the thing I'd look at it how moving an expense would affect the resulting balance for the ward. Keep in mind that the budget has been zeroed out and the stake is only going to transfer the remaining budget (and not the year's allocation).

If one is going to move all the expenses to their proper place, we need to have some kind of "income" to offset those expenses, or else the results will mess up our balance.

It's just I'm not sure if moving the expenses will "break the magic" that zeroed the balance.

I suppose you could make a back up and try it. If the ward's balance changes when you move things around, then restore.

Thanks. This is so helpful, and it makes me glad we waited before doing anything. It looks like the only accounts we will need to clean up are the Missionary accounts and the "other" accounts.

We can safely leave the "Budget" categories alone until we get a check from the stake.

O.k. I read the document but still have a few questions. It sounds like we are supposed to leave all the expense history charged to the Budget:Administration category? We can't go in and change the Budget Category to the correct "New" Category? I am looking ot have more accurate expense trending. Please advise.

Also, For the budgets being reset to 0. I understand that they needed to be zeroed; however, what about the stake allocation amounts that were there as well as the budgeted amounts. Why would that get wiped out? How is the wards and stake supposed to know where there at in there budgets if they don't have the figures anymore?

Also also, When is the stake going to get more detailed information on doing budgets this new way for the wards? I Understand it is by percentages per quarter but a real world example would help me understand.

Final question, How do the ward use the budget screen in the new way next year. Does the budget allocation field change throughout the year? Is it even needed?

Thanks for posting DJC. This really helps. I do still see a few issues that may still need addressing.

Budget allocations will be posted directly to the Budget Allocations sub-category. The unit can then create transfers to each of your budget subcategories in order to track budgets for each subcategory.

We still have view/edit budget capability but if we use that as well as transfers, we will get income 2X when viewing the budget report, the method most of us are used to using. See this post. Should we migrate over to the Income and Expense report?

For example, if the Primary had $1,000 left in their budget with pre CUBS MLS, you may want to transfer back $1,000 to the new Budget subcategory “Primary” or to a different subcategory, as desired.

I think a lot of the questions being asked of LUS is how to get the info on remaining budget back. The I&E report does have total expenses info, but for the past 4 years. If only the instructions had said to print current year as well. Even if a clerk knows how much was given to each sub-category over the last 4 years, he'd also have to know how much was leftover each year to back out a 2010 remaining balance figure. Is there a good solution LUS is giving clerks?

I can see why the instructions stated to print the I&E report instead of the Budget report - those who wrote it were probably familiar with CUBS. As mentioned above, with CUBS the I&E report DOES contain remaining balance info if you transfer balances to each sub-category.

Do not transfer previously recorded expenses from Budget: Administration. You may be tempted to adjust all of the old expenses to the new Budget subcategories. THIS IS NOT RECOMMENDED. Doing so will not allow you to have an accurate picture of correct running balances.

Good point and that makes sense. Having been one of those who already recategoriezed all my old expenses, let me offer this to those in my place. The reason I did it was because I like printing the previous year's budget detail report and giving them to auxiliary and other leaders to assist with their budgeting for the next year. If I edit the budget with 2010 budgeted amounts for the entire year, recategorize the expenses, and only look at budget reports, the remaining balance is correct. At the end of 2010 I will enter a single transfer from Budget:Administration to each subcategory equal to the total expenses as of 10/17/10. That will make my balances correct for 2011.

Another option for those who want to use the I&E report and have already recategorized their expenses is to transfer a credit from Budget:Administration to the sub-category equal to the total expenses on Oct 17, 2010 (run a summary by sub-category I&E report from 1 Jan 2010 to 17 Oct 2010 to obtain this info). This way, your detailed expenses will still be available in the appropriate subcategory, but your starting balances post-CUBS will be zero. You may want to date the transfers Oct 17, 2010 so your reports don't have "artifacts".

happy-one wrote:O.k. I read the document but still have a few questions. It sounds like we are supposed to leave all the expense history charged to the Budget:Administration category? We can't go in and change the Budget Category to the correct "New" Category? I am looking ot have more accurate expense trending. Please advise.

I've offered a couple solutions for how to do this.

happy-one wrote:Why would that get wiped out? How is the wards and stake supposed to know where there at in there budgets if they don't have the figures anymore?

Your financial information has been replaced with CHQ's records. The old system, CFAR, was not capable of holding any sub-category information so when the data was replaced, all the category information was lost.

happy-one wrote:Also also, When is the stake going to get more detailed information on doing budgets this new way for the wards? I Understand it is by percentages per quarter but a real world example would help me understand.

I found the instructions and sample given in the conversion instructions insightful. If you have not seen it, here is a link (pp 2-3). Also Alan_Brown's example in this thread is good (if is the former guess, not the latter. See here).

happy-one wrote:Final question, How do the ward use the budget screen in the new way next year. Does the budget allocation field change throughout the year? Is it even needed?

The Budget:Budget Allocations category will automatically receive budget allotments at the beginning of every quarter. No other sub-categories will automatically receive credits. If you chose to move income to your sub-categories, you must manually enter transfers every quarter.

Another option is to leave all the money in Budget:Budget Allocations and use the View/Edit budget and Budget Report screens (better for yearly budgeting). The only statement I can find suggest that your all your budget categories combined should remain positive:

After a ward receives and deposits the check from the stake, the budget category in the ward should be positive at all times.

crislapi wrote:Thanks for posting DJC. This really helps. I do still see a few issues that may still need addressing.
We still have view/edit budget capability but if we use that as well as transfers, we will get income 2X when viewing the budget report, the method most of us are used to using. See this post. Should we migrate over to the Income and Expense report?

I just wrote a check this morning to see what would happen. When I wrote the check, it deducted it from the subcategory and appeared as a deduction in that subcategory in the Income and Expense report. If it continues to function like this, I would recommend discontinuing use of the View/Edit budget screen (except to calculate allocations to auxiliaries).

Personally, I think it'd be helpful if one of two things happened:
1) The View/Edit Budget screen automatically created transfers that would show up on the Income and Expense report, or
2) The View/Edit Budget dialog didn't affect the numbers on the Budget Report.

But with the way it is set up now, I see a lot of potential for confusion.

nutterb wrote:But with the way it is set up now, I see a lot of potential for confusion.

Just a comment - how it is set up now is how it was set up before. It is just that before we did not transfer money to the sub-categories. Also, cut checks have always shown as expenses in the I&E report under the subcategory they were assigned to.

crislapi wrote:Just a comment - how it is set up now is how it was set up before. It is just that before we did not transfer money to the sub-categories. Also, cut checks have always shown as expenses in the I&E report under the subcategory they were assigned to.

That's a fair critique. The salient change in the process though, is that now we're being encouraged to do transfers, whereas I don't recall having that direction before.

Just extending the thought: before, it didn't really matter whether you did transfers or allocations--the stake collected whatever money was left over at the end of the year (at least in my stake). Since the ward's balance was going to go to zero at the end of the year anyway, I don't see that it made much difference whether we used transfers or allocations.

Now that the wards get to retain the funds at the end of the year, I suppose the decision of transfers vs. allocations can be affected by what the ward intends to do with the money at the end of the year. If the ward intends to absorb any excess funds for administrative use, the allocations will work fine. But if the ward plans to let auxiliaries retain any money they've not spent, then transfers need to be used since allocations will essentially reset the starting balance.

If I've missed something important, please correct me.

nutterb wrote: If the ward intends to absorb any excess funds for administrative use, the allocations will work fine. But if the ward plans to let auxiliaries retain any money they've not spent, then transfers need to be used since allocations will essentially reset the starting balance.

Nice summary. I'd agree. I think the budget report makes more sense if you require your ward auxiliaries to budget a year out and you will give them a lump sum at the start of the year. The total amount of budget is there from day 1 and they can see it all year long. I also see a lot of wards absorbing all left-over money from the subcategories at the end of the year, so this approach makes that easy.

If you give committees quarterly disbursements or you allow them to carry money over, then transfers will make that approach easier.

nutterb wrote:Now that the wards get to retain the funds at the end of the year, I suppose the decision of transfers vs. allocations can be affected by what the ward intends to do with the money at the end of the year. If the ward intends to absorb any excess funds for administrative use, the allocations will work fine. But if the ward plans to let auxiliaries retain any money they've not spent, then transfers need to be used since allocations will essentially reset the starting balance.

If I've missed something important, please correct me.

CUBS will rollover budget balances into the next year. This may or may not change your stake's policy regarding budget excesses or deficiencies. You may want to consult your stake clerk or president about how they plan on handling year end budget balances.

Making the assumption that since CUBS rolls budget balances for a ward into the next year that the stake must accept that method of handling budgets may not be your stake's plan for handling budget balances. If your stake zeroed your budget at year end prior to CUBS they may want to continue to zero unit budget balances. If so they may ask units with budget excesses to cut a check to the stake so that those excesses can be used for other purposes. Likewise the stake may cut a check to units with deficiencies.

Well, I am ready to throw my hands up in the air and call uncle. I can make very little sense out of the multiple threads posted on this site saying to do this or do that, nor can I make little sense out of the original messages sent down on the 8th, nor the pdf notice that just came out. No matter how hard I try I cannot seem to make sense out of the numbers I am seeing in the (after CUB's) transition.

Balancing budgets either in the Budget categories or in the Other Categories is beyond me at this time because the numbers just don't add up no matter which way I look at it.

So, to get on with business I tried figuring out what portion of the "allocated funds" we as a stake need to send to each unit. I have compared all four allocation letters that have been sent out with quarterly allocations and compared that with the Budget Allocation Report now in CUBS. Yet even they don't add up to a number that makes sense.

For instance: Budget Allocation Report (1 Jan 2010 - 27 Oct 2010)
Total allocation for the stake is $79,282.25 (that includes all four allocations to our nine wards and branches in the stake)
After all the lines showing the quarterly allocations there is an additional line at the end of the page that reads:
20 Oct 2010 LUBA Balance Transfer for CFAR SYS CD and Unit: 00 $90,306.59
This all totals up to $169,588.84
The next line down states that our stakes remaining budget as of 27 Oct 2010 is $169,588.84

However when I compare this with the latest Stake Financial Summary report that was sent to our Stake President yesterday the bottom line doesn't match.

Our quarterly allocations total $79,282.25
Carry over from 2009 is $58,781.78
This comes to a total of $138,064.03
Total spent so far this year $47,757.44 leaving a balance of $90,306.59 (which equates to that last line in the Budget Allocation Report).

So it looks to me like the Budget Allocation Report in MLS used incorrect data or at least an incorrect accounting method to come up with erroneous balances. Rather than the actual balance remaining in the stake budget of $90,306.59, the most recent report shows we have $169,588.84 which isn't correct.

The report is giving erroneous balances which just confuses matters rather then helping. So it makes me wonder what else in the data that is showing up in the post CUBS transition is right.

Sorry for the long missive here but hopefully it shows in part what is causing most of us out in the stakes some real headaches. Hopefully this will all work itself out but right now it is so far messed up that I doubt without an accountant coming in and working through this some of us dunderheads are in over our heads.

Pilotfly, I concur completely. I have amounts, both positive and negative, in the oddest places. For instance, not all my budget columns zeroed. Single adult, YM/YW activities and YW all show positive balances. Payable to local unit Girl's Camp also shows an almost $5000 dollar balance even though that bill was paid in June. I have a Budget Allocations carry over of $26K but a payable to local unit of 57K (perhaps quarterly budget allocations to different wards?), a travel income of $600+ (??) a $12K balance in the O Young Women column and a $35+K positive balance in the Regional Youth Conference column. I have over 20 hours in this mess myself and I am not much closer to figuring these things out yet.

I took a lot of pride in doing everything exactly and in good time. Now it is just a mess. For instance, I just made (last night) the 4th quarter budget allocations to each of the wards since that allocation was pre-CUBS. Was that the right thing to do? Who knows. I think I am supposed to wait until the next Stake Financial Summary comes out to write the wards a check for their remaining balances up until Oct 17. I think there was a woeful job on the part of the church as far as pre-planning the implementation training. In fact, there was no training at all other than the notice on which things to print out as a starting point in reconstruction. If you multiply the manhours across all the wards and stakes in the church this has been a colossal cost. My taxes with all the schedule C forms make more sense. Quicky

Quicky wrote:For instance, I just made (last night) the 4th quarter budget allocations to each of the wards since that allocation was pre-CUBS. Was that the right thing to do? Who knows. I think I am supposed to wait until the next Stake Financial Summary comes out to write the wards a check for their remaining balances up until Oct 17.

Your last statement is the correct action. If you wrote checks to the wards for the full Q4 allocations, then you would probably have given them too much -- the amount they should have received was their total annual allocation less their YTD expenses as of Oct 17. That was explained in the documentation that was sent out before the transition.

Alan, if that is the case and the SFS doesn't come out until mid-November, doesn't that put each ward in a real bind figuring out how much is available for Christmas programs? Most Christmas programs are in the first or second week of December.

Quicky wrote:Alan, if that is the case and the SFS doesn't come out until mid-November, doesn't that put each ward in a real bind figuring out how much is available for Christmas programs? Most Christmas programs are in the first or second week of December.

The point is that there is no change. Wherever the wards stood with their budget prior to the transition is where they stood immediately after the transition. They should have budgeted for the Christmas programs at the beginning of the year. I don't see why there should be any bind. The stake should be able to have this all sorted out by November 10th or so anyway.

Pilotfly wrote:Budget Allocation Report (1 Jan 2010 - 27 Oct 2010)
Total spent so far this year $47,757.44 leaving a balance of $90,306.59 (which equates to that last line in the Budget Allocation Report).

Perhaps not relevant but I would be curious what this would look like run as an Income & Expense report instead of budget allocation. My reports show a negative balance forward which offset the transfers. You don't mention one.

There was a separate transfer for the remaining balance. Every stake should see a line similar to what you stated (and I'm sure many would wish to have your amount!): 20 Oct 2010 LUBA Balance Transfer for CFAR SYS CD and Unit: 00 $90,306.59. This IS your remaining balance for the entire stake as of Oct 24, 2010.

The fact your report shows your balance as being off exactly the amount of you 2010 disbursements is suspicious ($169,588.84 is 2010 disbursements plus remaining balance). I wonder if this is related to the report you are running: the Budget Allocation Report (see this post). Did you enter your 2010 budget allocation total in the view/update budget screen? If so, the budget report will show this as income in addition to the disbursements entered by CUBS, essentially giving your 2x$79,282.25. The Income & Expense report will not do this, which is why I'm curious what numbers you get if you run that report.

Pilotfly wrote:So it looks to me like the Budget Allocation Report in MLS used incorrect data or at least an incorrect accounting method to come up with erroneous balances. Rather than the actual balance remaining in the stake budget of $90,306.59, the most recent report shows we have $169,588.84 which isn't correct.

I would agree that the amounts on their own don't make sense. For example, my Budget:Budget Allocations category has a huge negative balance forward that makes no sense. Instead, I would look at the balance from an Income & Expense report for Budget:Budget Allocations and work backwards from there.

Keep in mind you do not yet know your October expenses, so until you get the last SFS, you will still not be able to get the numbers to match exactly.

crislapi wrote:
Keep in mind you do not yet know your October expenses, so until you get the last SFS, you will still not be able to get the numbers to match exactly.

Your last statement isn't quite right. I indeed do have my October expenses - we already have our October Stake Financial Summary report. Most Stake Presidents were sent this report this last week. It entails all expenses up to and including 17 October. That is where I compared the data that prints out on the Budget Allocation Report versus what shows on the SFS report. The difference is that the MLS report added our remaining balance to the Quarterly allocations giving us an erroneous balance. The SFS correctly identifies the remaining balance while MLS no longer does.

This is what makes me wonder what else went wrong in the conversion of data. Am I beating my head against the wall needlessly trying to make sense of data that doesn't (and may never) reflect reality?

Just to add to the confusion, and show other data that doesn't compute, I will present another example: we had one unit that had problems downloading (activating?) CUB's last Sunday. They have been locked out of finances since the 17th. I have spent several hours driving back and forth to their unit and finally got the CUB's transistion loaded this morning. While printing out all the reports that were identified in the messages on the 8th I noticed their missionary balance is a negative $8,600. There are no subcategories under the Ward Missionary category and the unit has no missionaries out in the field. The SFS shows the unit has a positive Ward Missionary balance of $1,033.70 While I was on the line with Salt Lake advising them that I now had the unit up and running I mentioned the negative missionary balance. We walked through looking at the data and they came to the conclusion that - they don't understand the disparity either and will give it to the MLS folks to work.

These are just two examples (incorrect budget allocation data and erroneous missionary balances) that don't make sense. With what little instructions that have been sent down from Salt Lake and what we find here on the web site it is no wonder so many clerks are confused and frustrated.

However, I still believe it will all work out in the end. I just don't know how much hair I'll have left once all the dust settles!

Pilotfly wrote:I still believe it will all work out in the end. I just don't know how much hair I'll have left once all the dust settles!

You'll have it all if you don't pull on it! [grin]

We have the added luxury of being a new stake created on October 17th, just in time for the big financial adventure. We don't have a computer or any financial information, except for one thing.

We have a piece of paper with each unit's annual budget allocation. We are using a pencil to keep it updated.

Our wonderful stake clerk, who remained with the old stake, always kept it simple. We miss him already.

Pilotfly wrote:With what little instructions that have been sent down from Salt Lake and what we find here on the web site it is no wonder so many clerks are confused and frustrated.

It is a new system and no one here really knows what "normal" is yet. I know my units are not having anywhere near as much trouble as you seem to be having, so perhaps that indicates something did go wrong with your conversion. It's hard to know for sure - there's no history or experience to fall back on.

DJC wrote:The attached pdf file has been created to hopefully clarify a couple of questions...

From the pdf file:

CAUTIONS
 Prior the CUBS transition, units were instructed to print their income and expenses reports. If you did not print these prior reports, DO NOT RESTORE AN OLD MLS BACKUP FILE.

The question is not answered in the PDF...what about those units that didn't fully understand/comply with the instructions to print these prior reports? What exactly is the "official CHQ" recommended course of action? Automatic release of all clerks? (cheering heard in background)

Some have restored a backup to another new MLS on another computer and then printed the needed reports....

Should an update like this happen again, and because any user may initiate a send/receive who doesn't know anything about the finance changes it will make (membership clerk, organizational users, bishopric,) may I suggest a notice at the beginning of any send/receive session that will over-write our data:

Warning: This update will over-write your existing finance data, and is irreversible. Choose 'continue' to proceed, or 'abort' to exit and allow your finance clerk to print the needed reports.

Pilotfly wrote:So it looks to me like the Budget Allocation Report in MLS used incorrect data or at least an incorrect accounting method to come up with erroneous balances. Rather than the actual balance remaining in the stake budget of $90,306.59, the most recent report shows we have $169,588.84 which isn't correct.

The report is giving erroneous balances which just confuses matters rather then helping. So it makes me wonder what else in the data that is showing up in the post CUBS transition is right.

I took a look at my reports tonight and did find large discrepancies between what the Budget Report and the Income and Expense Report show. Specifically, the Balance Forward column in the Budget Allocation Report is all zeroes while the Income and Expense report has a large negative total. The totals in income, expenses and transfers exactly match on both reports. The Budget Allocation Report also contains a column "Allocation" that will contain any values you enter in the "View/Edit Budget" screen. I have not entered any, so my total here is zero as well.

The obvious difference is the Balance Forward column. Therefore, on the Budget Allocation Report my Balance total is huge while on my I&E report it matches values I compute manually using the SFS. In fact, the difference is exactly equal to the balance forward. I'm going to again guess this is causing the error you are seeing.

crislapi wrote:Perhaps not relevant but I would be curious what this would look like run as an Income & Expense report instead of budget allocation. My reports show a negative balance forward which offset the transfers. You don't mention one.

I will agree with you that the two should give the same answer. I don't know why the Balance Forward column differs in the two reports. However, for the time being save yourself the headache and use the Income & Expense Report.

crislapi wrote:I will agree with you that the two should give the same answer. I don't know why the Balance Forward column differs in the two reports.

I thought about it on the way home and have a thought. The budget report does not pass information from the previous year to the current year. It never did. In fact, when you set the date range, it does not allow you to span fiscal years. It appears to have built into it an automatic zeroing feature at the start of each year. This fit perfectly into the old system but does not work well with the new system, which allows you to carry balances forward year to year.

So currently the budget report will only show balance forwards from the current fiscal year. If your start date is Jan 1 then you would have no balance forward. I would chalk this one up to oversight on the part of the MLS team and would therefore expect a patch to be sent down as one of the early "fixes".

I'll also mention that the balance forward totals on the Income and Expense report don't make any sense. They get larger as you move back in time (my 2007 balance forward was ~-$450,000). It appears they are what they needed to be to yield the correct remaining balance for 2010. Again, my 2010 I&E report remaining balance exactly matches what I compute from my SFS.

crislapi wrote:The budget report does not pass information from the previous year to the current year.

I think you're right. Budget always zeros out each year while Income and Expense carries over. So I think there's two issues that will come out:

1) CUBS is exposing all the "dirt" swept under the carpet for the last 3 years. Units that have had good clerks will get by OK. Those who are recovering from past neglect will have problems.

2) In units that lose the budget at the end of the year, the Income and Expenses will have errors problem reconciling the old system to the new.

As for if this is a problem or not - I just see it as tools. If a ward chooses to have auxiliary budgets zero out at year end, they'll be given a budget and a budget report (Just remember to transfer the money out before closing the year). If they are allowed to carry over, they'll be given a transfer and a E&I report.

crislapi wrote:
I will agree with you that the two should give the same answer. I don't know why the Balance Forward column differs in the two reports. However, for the time being save yourself the headache and use the Income & Expense Report.

I concur. The Income and Expense Report does show an amount closer to what our Stake Financial Summary Report shows. I don't understand the ins and outs of the programming but at least it is somewhat starting to make sense. I hope I haven't been too much of a pain in your side, but far too many things didn't make sense when I started delving into them. I appreciate your efforts.

Not wanting to get off on a tangent to memory lane... I can't resist pointing out that there are many of us here that remember the days of paper accounting for Church finances (multipart, using carbon paper and lots of correction tape). Then MIS & FIS were born. I wasn't a clerk then, but was a ward finance clerk near the end-of-life with FIS and loved it.

Then I was called as Stake Executive Secretary and missed the transition from MIS/FIS to MLS. Within two years of that, I was a Stake Clerk. And many here will also remember the much grousing (on the clerks' maillist and even in the early days of the Forum) about the early days of MLS.

So, I appreciate those that are working hard to help us all get over the bumps. Think what it would have been like without the Forum. I appreciate the many wonderful changes in-place and yet to come in MLS and with new.lds.org.

We are very lucky indeed.

Pilotfly wrote:Your last statement isn't quite right. I indeed do have my October expenses - we already have our October Stake Financial Summary report. Most Stake Presidents were sent this report this last week.

Our stake has not received the Stake Financial Summary for the partial month of October. I don't think I've seen any post except for this one that claims that it has been received. I'm pretty sure that every unit (both stake and ward) has received the Oct 1-17 Church Unit Financial Statement electronically in MLS, but that's quite a different thing.

The SFS is essential to figuring out how much budget to give to each ward. Without it, we're still in limbo regarding how to divide budget funds and send checks to the wards. At least according to past practice, this would be sent in the mail (not electronically via MLS).

Is it indeed the case that most stakes have the SFS? If so, I'll need to figure out why our stake doesn't.

We have nothing here... although ours always seems to be late anyway for some reason. Maybe we should offer a big prize, like a pat on the back, to those that report that they have gotten it.

Alan_Brown wrote:Is it indeed the case that most stakes have the SFS? If so, I'll need to figure out why our stake doesn't.

I know they were only mailed out last week. We have not yet received ours.

The SFS hasn't yet arrived in the Heartland.

DJC wrote:The attached pdf file has been created to hopefully clarify a couple of questions that are coming in concerning the CUBS transition from calls and this forum. This document will also be sent via email to stake clerks.

I have also turned this into a wiki article: CUBS additional clarification‎‎.

We are doing the first audit under CUBS. The other account balance in the unit doesn't match the finanical statement 12-31. I can't find any reason why. I've looked back at the old july statement and that amount is wrong. What to do? this is the first unit being audited and I think we're going to have this problem in other units. any help

There is a CUBS bug that may be affecting the MLS balance of Other (and budget, but you don't have to reconcile budget). This bug needs to be taken into account for you to successfully reconcile the account AND not send the ward on a wild goose chase.

You basically need to identify the amount of the erroneous balance and then add that as a known difference so that your unknown difference is $0.

I have done the following:
Run I&E on Other using date range 1 Jan 2010 - 20 Oct 2010
Make note of the balance.
Look at Oct 1 - Oct 19 2010 financial statement
Make note of the remaining balance in Other.

The difference between these two amounts is the amount this CUBS bug is affecting your Other balance. Make note of it and enter this in the same section you would an outstanding check in the Other reconciliation form.

crislapi wrote:There is a CUBS bug that may be affecting the MLS balance of Other (and budget, but you don't have to reconcile budget). This bug needs to be taken into account for you to successfully reconcile the account AND not send the ward on a wild goose chase.

You basically need to identify the amount of the erroneous balance and then add that as a known difference so that your unknown difference is $0.

I have done the following:
Run I&E on Other using date range 1 Jan 2010 - 20 Oct 2010
Make note of the balance.
Look at Oct 1 - Oct 19 2010 financial statement
Make note of the remaining balance in Other.

The difference between these two amounts is the amount this CUBS bug is affecting your Other balance. Make note of it and enter this in the same section you would an outstanding check in the Other reconciliation form.

Just to clarify, is the "remaining balance in Other" on the Oct 1-19th Statement
the "Ending Balance" or the "Net Available Funds" in the Other Account ?
I remember reading that CUBS treats one differently from the other.

Thanks,
Atticus

bozz wrote:We are doing the first audit under CUBS. The other account balance in the unit doesn't match the finanical statement 12-31. I can't find any reason why. I've looked back at the old july statement and that amount is wrong. What to do? this is the first unit being audited and I think we're going to have this problem in other units. any help

Check to make sure all of your deposits have been properly recorded. On ours, we had a deposit in December that was listed as having been received by the bank, but not submitted to CHQ. That deposit contained a donation to one of the Other:AMFA subcategories, so because CHQ had no idea where the funds were supposed to have gone, the Other balance in the statement was off. I contacted LUS, and they had me resend the donation in question. I've made a note on the audit balance sheet. I hope that works for the audit.

On a side note, did the Other account balance in your semi-annual audit? That audit should have covered Jan 1-Jun 30, 2010, which should narrow down the range of transactions you need to search through.

atticusewig wrote:Just to clarify, is the "remaining balance in Other" on the Oct 1-19th Statement the "Ending Balance" or the "Net Available Funds" in the Other Account ?
I remember reading that CUBS treats one differently from the other.

In this case, it should probably be "Net funds available"
This is the one that removes the funds that would be used to cover any outstanding checks. MLS would have already deducted the funds.

Thanks for catching that.