Ending Balances don't match Beginning Balances - where to look?

Received the new UFS for the last half of October and noticed that the
Beginning Balance for Other doesn't match the Ending Balance for Other
on the CUFS for the first half of October. Many of the other wards I've spoken with have matching balances. Has anyone else had a mismatch ?

We got a MLS message saying the two should match, but it doesn't say what to do if they don't. The wait time for phone support prevents me from contacting LUS, and the last few times I sent detailed requests on other matters via MLS message they sent back a form letter and no real resolution. If you have had a mismatch and have had the patience to wait on hold, could you pass on what you learned.

Sometimes I wonder if the lack of support is so clerks get frustrated and "patch" any CUBS errors with Budget Funds rather than fixing anything at headquarters. In fact, perhaps that would be overall cheaper for the church than to have support help clerks fix things. If the church were to authorize such a procedure I bet the call volume would suddenly drop.

- Atticus

atticusewig wrote:Received the new UFS for the last half of October and noticed that the Beginning Balance for Other doesn't match the Ending Balance for Other on the CUFS for the first half of October. Many of the other wards I've spoken with have matching balances. Has anyone else had a mismatch ?

Haven't called in, but I do know there is a known bug w/ CUBS that can cause incorrect balances in other and budget. While this will be fixed at some point, I still have not seen a patch come down that fixes this issue in my wards. If CUBS balances are wrong at the time the UFS is generated, I assume the balance will also be wrong on the UFS.

The ending balance on your CUFS is correct. If the beginning balance on the UFS does not match, you most likely are affected by this bug. There is no way you suddenly gained/lost money overnight.

crislapi wrote:Haven't called in, but I do know there is a known bug w/ CUBS that can cause incorrect balances in other and budget. While this will be fixed at some point, I still have not seen a patch come down that fixes this issue in my wards. If CUBS balances are wrong at the time the UFS is generated, I assume the balance will also be wrong on the UFS.

The ending balance on your CUFS is correct. If the beginning balance on the UFS does not match, you most likely are affected by this bug. There is no way you suddenly gained/loss money overnight.

My ward is affected by the bug/problem that our Other account is short ~$1,500 after the CUBS implementation. Our CUFS for the first half of October does show the correct ending balance for Other. This morning I checked out our new UFS and was surprised at what I found. The UFS also shows the correct amount for its beginning balance (and ending balance - we've had no Other transactions in the last couple of months).

I celebrated for a moment thinking that the problem had been resolved. But then I opened an Income & Expense report to see details of the correction, and found the same wrong data I've been looking at for several weeks. I quickly hit Send/Receive multiple times, hoping I'd get updated data as shown on the UFS, but sadly... no such luck.

Bottom line: As of today, our CUFS and UFS are correct. MLS isn't. What's up with that?

(Still trying to get through to LUS for help & encouragement.)

86Bengal wrote:As of today, our CUFS and UFS are correct. MLS isn't. What's up with that?

Your financial databases will have to be re-written to some degree in order to fix the MLS details. Just like the original conversion to CUBS, this isn't trivial. Hopefully part of the wait is to allow for proper testing and debugging so that the problems are actually fixed instead of compounded.

crislapi wrote:Your financial databases will have to be re-written to some degree in order to fix the MLS details. Just like the original conversion to CUBS, this isn't trivial. Hopefully part of the wait is to allow for proper testing and debugging so that the problems are actually fixed instead of compounded.

So I finally got through to LUS this evening. They confirmed that the cause of our Other account problem is a software bug, and the fix will come by patch from Church HQ. They wouldn't make any corrective adjustments for me while I was on the phone. They did tell me to restore all of our subcategory balances back to the pre-CUBS amounts via transfers to/from "Other:AMFA". That puts all of the discrepancy in the parent category to await repairs.

After hanging up, I noticed another "new thing" that I haven't seen discussed yet (and that I didn't get to ask LUS about). Our Other account balance has increased by a dollar or so since mid-October. I investigated because I couldn't remember any transactions since then. The source of the increase was found to be interest paid on our account balance. MLS used to credit all of the interest to the Ward Missionary category, so I was puzzled why it went into Other. It turns out both categories received interest income last month, seemingly in proportion to their balances.

86Bengal wrote:After hanging up, I noticed another "new thing" that I haven't seen discussed yet (and that I didn't get to ask LUS about). Our Other account balance has increased by a dollar or so since mid-October. I investigated because I couldn't remember any transactions since then. The source of the increase was found to be interest paid on our account balance. MLS used to credit all of the interest to the Ward Missionary category, so I was puzzled why it went into Other. It turns out both categories received interest income last month, seemingly in proportion to their balances.

I saw this too. I was planning to transfer it but not sure if I should. Any thoughts

I got a response from LUS via MLS Message and they said that I
should compare the Oct 19th Net Funds Available to the
Oct 20th Beginning balance and it will all match up.

The Instructions sent prior mentioned Ending Balances, reconciliations in the
past always used Ending Balances, but I guess something is different as we
move to CUBS.

If this is actually correct advice - match Net Funds Available to Beginning
Balances - then the previous instructions sent out to all the units should
be ammended so clerks know using Net Funds Available is the proper step,
and calls and messages to LUS can be avoided.

- Atticus