Numbers off

I am the stake clerk and a ward clerk. After reading most of the posts here I think I am getting a good feel on how to do the budget adjustments and the missionary fund adjustments. The other section in the ward and stake still don't look good. My accounting for both units has matched the financial statements so I assume I have been keeping accurate books. For the ward as I compare the Oct 17 numbers with the Oct 24 numbers, I am short about $650. That is with taking into account any expenses or income after Oct 17. For the stake I am short about $920. If my mls numbers have matched the financial statements for years, how could I be that far off? Should I do something to try and correct this now or wait until the next financial statement, with hopefully some suggestions, arrives? I would hate to "eat" that big of a difference. If I am having this many problems, I can't wait unit my wards start calling me.

stott wrote:I am the stake clerk and a ward clerk. After reading most of the posts here I think I am getting a good feel on how to do the budget adjustments and the missionary fund adjustments. The other section in the ward and stake still don't look good. My accounting for both units has matched the financial statements so I assume I have been keeping accurate books. For the ward as I compare the Oct 17 numbers with the Oct 24 numbers, I am short about $650. That is with taking into account any expenses or income after Oct 17. For the stake I am short about $920. If my mls numbers have matched the financial statements for years, how could I be that far off? Should I do something to try and correct this now or wait until the next financial statement, with hopefully some suggestions, arrives? I would hate to "eat" that big of a difference. If I am having this many problems, I can't wait unit my wards start calling me.

I just checked the reports for one of my wards who has been more involved with using the Other account. While I have checked at each audit over the last 2 years to make sure their account is zero, they now show a negative balance. I'll dig into that tonight. In the meantime, it's not going anywhere. It might be best to wait for the first statement and see what action items it lists. This is the recommended course of action to correct mismatch between pre and post CUBS Income and Expense report balances. See this thread here and this wiki page here.

Ok, I dug into the Other account today. I'll start by mentioning there is a very similar post already. You may want to check it out.

Here's what I've found in this particular unit (Income & Expense Report, summary by subcategory, date range All):

• Other:Payable to Local Unit is to Other what Budget:Administration is to Budget.
• It appears all checks cut from Other have been recategorized to Other:Payable to Local Unit, just like all budget checks were recategorized to Budget:Administration.
• While it appears all active Other subcategories are still there, the only values in them are income with one exception: Temple Patron Assistance has no income or expenses, but does have a negative value for Transfers (and therefore Balance). This makes sense since this subcategory was automatically swept each week along with the other donations.
• My other balance is negative. Odd, since I made sure every 6 months it was zeroed.

I searched my pre-CUBS expense printout (created it for date range all) and identified every single check cut from Other and made note of the sub-category and amount. The total matched the expenses total on my post-CUBS I&E. Good.

I ran detailed I&E reports on each of the old Other subcategories in MLS and identified the income as member donations to those related activities over the past 4 years. Good.

The category Other:Payable to Local Unit has income as well. It exactly equals my transfers out of Other:Temple Patron Assistance. I noticed that all donations to Other:Temple Patron Assistance were recategorized to Other:Payable to Local Unit so this makes sense, too. Good.

Finally, I have a positive transfer in Other:Payable to Local Unit that is my 2006 carry forward balance. Good.

Why the negative balance despite all my previous work? It appears to be related to the Other checks I cut back in early 2007. Some of these were pulling from Other categories that no longer appear in MLS, meaning they have been inactivated and had no income since Jan 1 2007. One was pulling more than showed as income, meaning most of the donations were in 2006. If I subtract the sum of the missing income from my carry forward balance, that gives me the difference I'm seeing.

This makes me somewhat worried. This is either due to an error when processing Other, resulting in an incorrect balance forward being supplied (not likely) or due to some error that got masked pre-2007 that I can no longer investigate. That, unfortunately, is more plausible to me.

As for how I will proceed, I will transfer all income from my old other subcategories to Other:Payable to Local Unit. I will transfer the income in Other:Payable to Local Unit from the recategorized Temple Patron Assistance donations back to Other:Temple Patron Assistance, thereby zeroing out that subcategory. I'll wait for the next CUFS to see if they offer any suggestions on how to clear up the negative balance in Other. If nothing is offered, I'm afraid it's going to take some budget funds to truly zero out this category.

crislapi wrote:I'll wait for the next CUFS to see if they offer any suggestions on how to clear up the negative balance in Other. If nothing is offered, I'm afraid it's going to take some budget funds to truly zero out this category.

I'd look at the statements pre-CUBS. Unless this balance showed up then, I'd push CHQ for help in zeroing Other since it appears that this came out of the conversion and wasn't really there.

Brethren, thanks for taking the time to investigate the other account discrepencies. I hope they come up with a better final solution than to take money from budget and move it to other. We stand to lose several hundred dollars in my ward and stake accounts. Why did they go through this complicated approach pulling all the numbers from 4 years back? Even our Fast Offering category, which I would assume they will zero out, has all these negative numbers. Why even include that on the sheet which just looks confusing?

I think they should have kept things very simple for we non accountant types. They should have told us to record somewhere our category and subcategory balances as of Sept 30 for budget, other, and ward missionary. Then they would zero out all sub category numbers except for what we had previously in the above 3 subcategories. The other and ward missionary would match our Sept financial statement minus what we have spent since Oct 1. The new total budget amount allocated to us would come from the stake calculations on what we were allotted and what we have spent YTD. Then we would transfer our monies from the subcategories into our new sub-subcategories. Done. No transferring money around to try to get back to zero. No spending hours trying to find hidden numbers 4 years back. Life would be good. I vote we start over and do this.

stott wrote:Why did they go through this complicated approach pulling all the numbers from 4 years back?

You may well spend most of your time on the current year, but the fact is that (in the US) MLS stores 4 years of data (technically 3 years plus current year). All 4 years of data had to be converted in order for MLS to switch to the new system.

stott wrote:Life would be good. I vote we start over and do this.

I think you're oversimplifying, but none of this really matters. We don't get to vote -- I think you've noticed that this is not a democracy! There are many, many issues involved in this whole process. I'm sure that none of us are aware of all of them. And there's no way that we are going to start over. Some things will get fixed with software updates, some we will fix ourselves, and others we may have to work with LUS to correct. We just need to move forward from where we stand now.

I found this helped:
Work on Budget, Other & ward Missionary separately and from fewest categories to most. I even went so far as to use color highlighters and put a box around each set of numbers on the reports. I did my WM categories first b/c there were only 2 FTM's. Then I did my Other accts b/c I only had 3 with positive balances on the 17th. Then I did the budget. Maybe I was fortunate, but my Other and ward missionary accounts worked out perfectly. As for budget, I have a -65 charge from 2007 that I cant figure out, but not bad considering all that others are going thru.

(At least Noah didn't have to use a computer to build the ark)

ralitaco wrote:As for budget, I have a -65 charge from 2007 that I cant figure out, but not bad considering all that others are going thru.

To find the -$65, try this. Pull up a detailed I&E report of 2007 for just Budget:Administration. Sort both expenses and transfers by amount, expenses so it has the largest negative expense first, transfers so it has the largest positive transfer first. Print the report.

With the reports in hand, match expenses to their corresponding transfer. For each expense you should be able to find a corresponding transfer. They should be pretty much in order. However, you might find a positive transfer but no corresponding expense. That is ok and expected - this check has been voided.

At the very end of the transfers, you will also likely find some negative transfers. These are also for voided checks. They cancel out the positive transfer (voided checks do not show in expenses anymore). However, you probably will find one -$65 transfer and no +$65 to cancel it out. That or several negative transfers that sum to -$65 that do not have corresponding positive transfers.

This is what has happened for voided checks that were issued pre-2007. The positive transfer occurred in 2006 but, since we no longer have 2006 data in MLS, the "canceling" negative transfers are making your Budget:Administration category negative. This is a known bug for which a patch is expected to be released this week.

To verify this, look at the date of the negative transfer, and then pull up the CUFS for that month and year. In the voided checks section, you will see the info of the check that got voided. Note the check number and then go look at your view/update expenses for 2007. Find the very first check issued that year and note the check number. If the check number from the CUFS is lower than the first check issued in 2007, this is your problem. There is nothing you can or should do about it. Wait for the patch and it will be fixed automatically.

Crislapi,
thanks for the explanation. I don't know why, but I understood it very clearly.
I have found a -65 transfer w/ no matching + back in Jan 2007. I will take your advice and look at the finanacial statement from then and I bet I will see the voided check. I look forward to the fix.

What a great resource this forum has been...I know there has been some murmuring, even by me, but for the most part everyone is just trying to help out...Thank you all

YEAH I found the source of the -65. There was a check written in 2006 that was voided in January 2007. I await instructions from CHQ on what we are to do with this.

Congrats! It's satisfying having it all nailed down!

I just got this reply from LUS tonight:

We are still in the process of sending finance files to fix some of the current balance issues in MLS. We will notify you in the future with a message indicating this process has been completed. If your balances are not correct at that time, please contact us with the details.

crislapi wrote: I just got this reply from LUS tonight:

We are still in the process of sending finance files to fix some of the current balance issues in MLS. We will notify you in the future with a message indicating this process has been completed. If your balances are not correct at that time, please contact us with the details.

Hmm, I haven't contacted LUS yet to discuss my ward's balance issue. I wonder if these new finance files will come to everyone (unrequested) or only to those who have notified them of problems.

(I've traced our discrepancy to a 31 Dec 2006 "balance forward" that isn't the same before & after CUBS. We don't have any documentation to investigate further with.)

86Bengal wrote:Hmm, I haven't contacted LUS yet to discuss my ward's balance issue. I wonder if these new finance files will come to everyone (unrequested) or only to those who have notified them of problems.

(I've traced our discrepancy to a 31 Dec 2006 "balance forward" that isn't the same before & after CUBS. We don't have any documentation to investigate further with.)

Yes, everyone will receive these files. The message will likely be sent through MLS to all units and then just those units that still have issues will need to resolve them with LUS.

The balance errors were caused by oversight and therefore affected virtually every unit (any adjustment to a 2006 donation or expense in 2007-2010). For example, if you voided even one check in 2007 that was issued in 2006, you were affected and require the new files.

I have been able to track down the budget balance error but haven't been able to make heads or tails of the Other difference.