Post-CUBS Audit - "Other" reconciliation worksheet changes

To prepare for the upcoming audits, I often fill out the
worksheet that reconciles the "Other" account.

Now that CUBS is in effect, I've noticed that some of
the sections might be deprecated.

From my experience, it seems that Outstanding checks
no longer should be listed to bring the difference down to
zero. I imagine this is because the new CUFS uses a Net Available Funds
for its remaining balance so Outstanding checks are already accounted for.

Has anyone else seen any other changes the transition to CUBS has on the audit
process ?

- Atticus

atticusewig wrote:Has anyone else seen any other changes the transition to CUBS has on the audit process ?

The most obvious challenge for this particular audit is that we are using the new audit instructions, which are written for the post-CUBS era, but July through September 2010 were pre-CUBS. Thus the instructions require some minor adaptation. For example, those three months have a CUFS, not a UFS, and the unit leader and clerk signatures are on the reconciliation form, not the financial statement.

atticusewig wrote:From my experience, it seems that Outstanding checks
no longer should be listed to bring the difference down to
zero. I imagine this is because the new CUFS uses a Net Available Funds
for its remaining balance so Outstanding checks are already accounted for.

Has anyone else seen any other changes the transition to CUBS has on the audit
process ?

I also noticed that Outstanding checks no longer matter when trying to reconcile Other balance between MLS and the December UFS.

The only other headache I've encountered so far is accounting for the CUBS bug that affects the Other balance.

We ran across an interesting issue during one of the ward audits. (I went along as the stake clerk with the auditor so as to make sure he knew what he was looking at). One of the questions asks if there are any outstanding checks older than six months. The December statement that the auditor looked at showed one check from May that was listed as outstanding. Trying to help the auditor and the clerk I pulled up the "View Expenses" screen for 2010 and it showed the check as being cleared. So how was the auditor or the clerk (who is new by the way) to know if it truly was outstanding or not when MLS said it was cleared? The auditor took a guess and did not mark it as an exception. The next day I called Salt Lake and asked about the specific check which turns out to indeed be outstanding.

We have had this conversation before on the site about checks showing cleared in MLS and what it truly means. After this experience of not knowing if it was indeed outstanding or not I really believe the LUS folks have got to come up with another way in MLS of listing checks.....currently there is no way to know if a check is outstanding or not unless you do the leg work of calling the bank, LUS, or the individual who wrote the check. There has got to be a better way.

FFRsqpilot wrote:We have had this conversation before on the site about checks showing cleared in MLS and what it truly means. After this experience of not knowing if it was indeed outstanding or not I really believe the LUS folks have got to come up with another way in MLS of listing checks.....currently there is no way to know if a check is outstanding or not unless you do the leg work of calling the bank, LUS, or the individual who wrote the check. There has got to be a better way.

It was intended for CUBS to show the actual status of the check, with cleared really being cleared. However, due to a bug with how CUBS interprets the message from the bank, it shows the status as Cleared as soon as the bank confirms the initial transmission of the expense ("posting the expense" so to speak).

You are correct. There is currently no other way to determine the status of the check as of right now other than calling LUS. However, this does not put us in unknown territory - this is exactly how it was pre-CUBS as well. How did you handle this during the last audit? Did you call LUS about every outstanding check or did you just base the audit off of the most recently available statement?

If I see a check was outstanding for at least 6 months on the December statement and it still shows outstanding on the January statement, I'm going to assume it's still outstanding for the audit.

crislapi wrote:However, this does not put us in unknown territory - this is exactly how it was pre-CUBS as well.

I beg to differ. The monthly financial reports one got back listed the checks as they were processed by CHQ (aka, the bank). Depending on what the check was written against (like "Other") it also affected the balance.

I don't have the "old" audit forms with me but I don't believe there was a question on the old forms asking if there were any outstanding checks over six months. That is a new question in the new audit forms. Not that it really matters but I wonder why it was added to the audit form when it is already dealt with when we have all the units fill out the "outstanding check" form each year.

The real issue is that while clerks are still getting used to the post CUBs way of doing business, there are some "bugs" in the system that make trying to figure out check status(s) somewhat difficult. I really wish LUS would figure out some method of distinguishing in MLS what actually has cleared and what has not.

FFRsqpilot wrote:I don't have the "old" audit forms with me but I don't believe there was a question on the old forms asking if there were any outstanding checks over six months.

Just for the sake of accuracy, item 22 on the old audit form asked, "Have all outstanding checks and other reconciling items more than six months old been cleared?"

FFRsqpilot wrote:I don't have the "old" audit forms with me but I don't believe there was a question on the old forms asking if there were any outstanding checks over six months. That is a new question in the new audit forms. Not that it really matters but I wonder why it was added to the audit form when it is already dealt with when we have all the units fill out the "outstanding check" form each year.

The outstanding checks question is also helpful on the mid-year audit, when the "Outstanding Checks" form doesn't have to be filled out for several more months. It gives clerks a reminder to stay on top of outstanding checks.

I have a CUBS Transition problem that I hope is only mine...but fear it is not. Since the transition the new statements show "outstanding" checks on the Financial Statement from as far back as March 2010 that have long since cleared (and show as cleared on statements pre-CUBS, and not just a few...dozens of them and not only showing uncleared checks that are cleared but the same checks listed more than one time i.e. once as check 4875 outstanding and then 00004875 outstanding. I of course call CHQ after getting each new statement and got the response that they will/are working on it and the next statement will reflect it accurately. Now that I have got January Statement (3rd one wrong now).
I am now not as concerned with that at this moment as being able to fill out the "Other" reconciliation form on the Audit that we are trying to conduct. Today when talking to MLS Support the only offering I was given was, to correspond by MLS messaging system and not by phone, because at least then I would have a record of the problem. While that is a note worthy idea, it doesn't help fill out the form. I have attempted several variations of including real outstanding with fake outstanding with and with out the dupes, but can't seem to find the magic combination to get the difference to zero. I have never had problems reconciling the Other category and I think once CHQ fixes the bugs it will be ok. Any ideas of how to handle page 9 form on the audit with this type issue?

stanstrad wrote:I have attempted several variations of including real outstanding with fake outstanding with and with out the dupes, but can't seem to find the magic combination to get the difference to zero. I have never had problems reconciling the Other category and I think once CHQ fixes the bugs it will be ok. Any ideas of how to handle page 9 form on the audit with this type issue?

I had a similar problem, and CHQ fixed many of the problems, but there are still some they haven't fixed. What I saw for the most part was that what you call "duplicates" are actually corresponding transactions where one is a debit and one is a credit for the same check number. Regardless of what else I decide, I will pair up those transactions and eliminate them from the "Other" account reconciliation on the audit form, since they offset.

Once you've done that, I think you have two options, but you should ask the auditor which you should do. Although you fill out the Other account reconciliation, he is responsible for the audit form, so you should take his guidance on this topic. Here are the options I see:

1. List all the remaining outstanding items on the reconciliation form. If they won't fit, just list the total and attach another sheet.
2. Do further analysis and determine which checks have actually cleared on any statement in the past. Exclude all of those from the report and list only those that are truly outstanding.

Either way, it sounds like you'll get an audit exception, because the CHQ balance is off, but that's okay. One purpose of the audit is to show problems with the CHQ, the stake, or the ward so that they can be discovered, addressed, and corrected. We all like to have clean audits, but it's important to send the information up the line so that the Church can be aware of the magnitude of such problems. Then the various levels of the Church can follow up and make sure the problem is corrected.

Since the CUBS change we too are seeing checks listed in the outstanding checks section of the local unit monthly financial statement which have, in fact, already been deposited by the payees some time ago. Mostly these checks numbers show up as the check number preceded by 4 zeros ie. "00001234".

There are, I think, 6 checks in this category, all written in Sept 2010. Some are Fast offering and some ward budget. I know the checks have actually been deposited as I've verified this with the payees. In MLS these checks appear as "posted" not cleared.

I've reported this issue to SLC three times and I have to say this seemed to confuse the person I've talked to. The first person I talked to suggested I simply void these checks. I refused to do this, explaining that it is impossible to void a check that has already been deposited by a payee. SLC did go ahead and void three of these checks.
The result is we are now showing a balance in our Fast Offering account and our CY 2010 budget balance carry forward is now incorrect. Subsequent followups with SLC resulted in, "oh, that is a reporting bug in MLS."

The ward budget checks involved were reclassified from one budget category to another, and I wonder if somehow this is is a cause of the problem. I have sent our MLS file to SLC on Jan 19 for them to look into this further. I haven't heard back and we still don't have our Jan 2011 monthly statement to see if any correction has been made.

From other posts, it appears I am not alone in having checks showing as outstanding, which have, in fact, already cleared the bank. Is there any explanation for this? It seems to be a CUBS transition problem to me, based on the idea that the "problem" checks in our case are all Sept 2010 checks.

dlcampnell wrote:From other posts, it appears I am not alone in having checks showing as outstanding, which have, in fact, already cleared the bank. Is there any explanation for this? It seems to be a CUBS transition problem to me, based on the idea that the "problem" checks in our case are all Sept 2010 checks.

I am experiencing the same problem. I sent a message in January explaining the problem, which originally affected dozens of checks. As of my January statement, we're down to about 10 that are still a problem. All of them are from September and early October. Some cleared before the CUBS transition, and some after.

I don't know exactly why this happens, but I wonder if the fact that the category was changed is a factor. This would create multiple transactions with the same reference number, and it seems possible that one of the transactions would be checked off as cleared when the check actually clears the bank, but the other transaction with that reference number might not have been checked off, thus giving the appearance that the check is still outstanding. But that's just a guess.

On Wednesday our stake was going through the financial audit. My Auditor and financial clerk (I'm the stake clerk) were having trouble reconciling the other account in the audit. I was called in to look at it, and after digging into the differences, I found 3 checks written before CUBS change over that probably cleared after were debited from the other account in Nov. Basically, money had been taken out of other twice. Once during the CUBS change over, the second time when they cleared.

I called LUS regarding this change, and the response back was the checks had been re-categorized and for the financial audit put in "checks re-categorized" and the difference to make the worksheet balance. That's the short answer.

The longer answer is that due to the CUBS change over, the church reconcilers are way behind with reconciliations and trying to keep current data up to date. As a result, checks written late September/early October have not been "fully" cleared in the system and the February statements should show current data as far as outstanding checks. Personally I'm waiting to see the statement to be sure. As of my January statement all previous CUBS issues had been resolved except checks written early October, so maybe things will be wrapped up this month.