Other (Authorized Member Financed Activities) balances don't match CUFS for audit

As the stake finance clerk, I've been tasked with helping correct some exceptions from the year-end audits.

Two of our wards have Other total account balances that do not match the balance shown on the December CUFS. I've reviewed their income and expense reports choosing "Prior Year", and I can't find any expenses or deposits equal to the problem amount.

After the changeover to CUBS, I would think these balances not matching would be impossible. Aren't MLS balances now just a mirror of the information recorded at CHQ?

I'll likely be speaking to Local Unit Support later today or tomorrow morning, but I wanted to see if any other clerks were experiencing a similar problem.

Edit: as soon as I post this, I find another thread answering this question at https://tech.lds.org/forum/showthread.p ... conversion

UPDATE: I spoke with MLS support today, and they are now able to fix this problem. It involves a forced backup on the next send/receive; corrective action applied on the data at CHQ; and a second send/receive to download and apply the correction in the local database.

I'd encourage anyone with this issue to contact MLS support.

daveywest wrote:I'd encourage anyone with this issue to contact MLS support.

Let the flood gates open. I'm not sure they realize just how big a problem this is...

crislapi wrote:Let the flood gates open. I'm not sure they realize just how big a problem this is...

There's only one ward in our stake that doesn't have the problem. "Flood" is right!

daveywest wrote:UPDATE: I spoke with MLS support today, and they are now able to fix this problem. It involves a forced backup on the next send/receive; corrective action applied on the data at CHQ; and a second send/receive to download and apply the correction in the local database.

I'd encourage anyone with this issue to contact MLS support.

What info did you have to give when you called? Did you go through the right and wrong dollar amounts, etc., or did you just give your unit number and they said they'd take care of it? Just wondering what to be prepared with when we call....

aebrown wrote:There's only one ward in our stake that doesn't have the problem. "Flood" is right!

No kidding! Our stake is in the same situation. Multiple units in our stake that have differences in their other account from what is reflected in their Finanical statement. Most of the normal categories all add up right but there are lingering differences that are definitely attributable to CUBs. Our audits look horrible this time around due to "unresolved differences".

Just on a wild guess, if there are approximately 2500 stakes thoughout the US and at least 8 to 10 units within each stake (and only half of them) have CUBs issues that totals up to around 12,000 to 13,000 units that need help. Will the folks at LUS be able to help that many in a timely manner? I certainly pity them....its going to be a long night, week, month, quarter - take your pick!

On an additional note....one of our units after the CUBs conversion had their financial data base totally scrambled. They went from a balanced other account to $570 out of balance. Likewise for some unknown reason their missionary balance took a big hit.....went from a positive $1000 to a negative $8600. When I saw that I stopped trying to fix the data and called LUS. I asked them to take their database and repair it because it was beyond my capability at that point. Apparently the message got lost because the units data continued to show the big disparities all the way up through the end of December. Their clerk called me mid January and asked why it was still reading bad. (My error in that I didn't follow up sooner and remind LUS they needed help).

The following day after I talked with the unit clerk I called LUS and asked to talk with a supervisor. I related that the unit's financial data base was totally corrupted and it was now up to LUS to help. LUS did take the database and were able to fix it and it reads correctly now. I was going on a false premise that the 2010 December data base would be in error for the audit but it turns out that unit is the only one in our stake that had no audit exceptions for CUBs issues. So kudos to LUS for helping out.....

I certainly don't envy LUS because this truely is going to be a very taxing time for them with all the units out there that are still having problems post-CUBs conversion. But at least in the end the databases do reflect what they are supposed to after LUS does their magic!

WOW. Our audit was long (6 hours) but everything related to CUBS came out OK except for a bounced check pre-CUBS last year (I had documentation that LUS was working on it) and a couple of lingering reconciliation issues where the system doesn't know the difference between check 5385 (written pre-CUBS) and check 00005385 (deposited post-CUBS).

We didn't come through unscathed, but I'm grateful the items found were relatively minor...

daveywest wrote:UPDATE: I spoke with MLS support today, and they are now able to fix this problem. It involves a forced backup on the next send/receive; corrective action applied on the data at CHQ; and a second send/receive to download and apply the correction in the local database.

I called LUS tonight to "test" this on one of my wards. A HUGE caution or fyi for those going this route. I was basically given the pre-CUBS instructions. They pulled in a backup, and then told me to print my Income and Expense report w/ date range = all and report type = summary by subcategory. The programmers will review the backup and send down a setup file to fix the error.

As part of this fix, all expenses will be recategorized to the parent category (I hope). We would need to use transfers to recreate the subcategory balances. Before you go this route, make sure you print every financial report you will need/want!!! I think I will include an I&E w/ date range = current year as well as a detail budget report for current year and previous year as well. I'm going to print out my View/edit budget screen as well. And I will create a backup so that if the "fix" causes more errors than it fixes, I can restore to how it was before.

OK, so I have the situation stated in the first post-- in my Stake MLS my negative AMFA balance in MLS does not match the negative balance shown on the Stake UFS for February. I printed the finance reports and did a backup as suggested by crislapi then called LUS. Note they now have a menu option specifically for Stake Clerks!!

LUS had me do a S/R and verified on their systems that indeed there was a mismatch. He has queued the fix and I can get it by doing another S/R in two hours.

I asked what the fix entailed. It will bring my MLS AMFA balance in line with CUBS. So I will still have a negative balance to figure out, but MLS and CUBS will be in agreement.

I'm glad they told you to print an Income/Expense, when I went about fixing this in our stake, I wasn't aware that what you referenced above would happen (AGAIN) to all our unit accounts. I instructed all clerks (based on instructions from LUS) to send a message to Finance, giving them the balance differences. Finance promptly fixed them, but once again, I had Totally whacked balances everywhere. My clerks are so gun shy at this point, and I don't blame them. One very nice thing was when 3.3.1 came out, it at least automatically took care of the Budget issues. It's only left to us now to restore backups, run the reports, and fix the Other Accounts.

We need to fix the balance issues, but be cautious in your approach, the result is exactly what happened post-CUBS transitions, and it should be prepared for in the same way.

Is this ad hoc correction process designed just to make MLS match the monthly finance statement, or to fix all the errors in the CUBS conversion last October? Those are not the same thing. Our post-CUBS balances did not match the pre-CUBS balances, and today MLS and the finance statements are both still wrong. (I declined to sign the monthly statements for that reason.)

In October, we were told that there would be a remedial conversion done to fix the underlying problem, but that I think that never happened. I am trying to figure out if the process described in this thread is designed to fix our problem or some other problem. (Actually, I realize that I am going to have to schedule the time to spend with Local Unit Support during business hours and ask that question, but I would like to be informed by the experience of others here.)

When the cubs transition happened it introduced issues in MLS. As long as your bank statements cufs ending and cubs beginning were ok. The fix only affects MLS. And yes. The fix is to make MLS look like the bank statement.

JohnShaw wrote:When the cubs transition happened it introduced issues in MLS. As long as your bank statements cufs ending and cubs beginning were ok. The fix only affects MLS. And yes. The fix is to make MLS look like the bank statement.

Thanks. It seems this fix does not fix our case, because our CUBS beginning was fouled up. I will try Salt Lake again for a different fix.

JohnShaw wrote:When the cubs transition happened it introduced issues in MLS. As long as your bank statements cufs ending and cubs beginning were ok.

The ending and beginning CUBS balances were not the same, and that is the issue we are still waiting to get fixed. CUBS also introduced issues in MLS, but we have not even begun to work with those, because the underlying transition failed.

lajackson wrote:The ending and beginning CUBS balances were not the same, and that is the issue we are still waiting to get fixed. CUBS also introduced issues in MLS, but we have not even begun to work with those, because the underlying transition failed.

Unless one is correct and the other is not, I'd think the first task would be to get MLS and CHQ in sync then then correct the balances.

RussellHltn wrote:Unless one is correct and the other is not, I'd think the first task would be to get MLS and CHQ in sync then then correct the balances.

MLS has generally followed along with whatever the Church thinks we have this week in the form of money, at least in the main categories. What we have not yet determined is the cause of the money coming and going. It is really hard to budget when stuff just disappears. But the auditors have flagged it, so they will get another reminder that the problem is not going away unless they do something about it.

I ran into similar issues with the Cubs conversion. I was off by a small amount in the other category after the Oct 17/24th changeover. The auditor hit me with it and so I called SLC. We went through the backup send and receive process. They sent me the new file (after about a week). My other categories were then scrambled, and off again, but this time with more money than I started. I called again, and they fixed it that morning. Now, I was in balance. But, with my other account, the expenses and donations were correct. But, the transfers were completely scrambled. This made my various categories completely wrong. My only hope at that point was to just create transfers to balance them to where they should be. This is what the techs in SLC confirmed was the route to take.

I also had to look at my budget categories as I had created additional ones with no expenses but funds allocated. These categories were removed and so my budget was off. So, I fixed that as well.

I am now in balance. But it was a major pain. Run reports (lots of them) first before calling SLC and letting them scramble your accounts. But, get it done and balanced out.

I called LUS a couple of weeks ago to get them to bring our MLS Other category balance in line with the UFS. I was surprised that they didn't ask for any of the numbers I had figured out. We had two transactions clear between October 17th and 19th, and I won't be surprised if they haven't taken those two transactions int account, but I will have to wait for the next UFS to see if the changes LUS sent down have fixed the issue completely.

Interestingly, the analyst on the phone did NOT instruct me to print any reports, but I knew better from reading here. I'm glad I did, because I had to re-transfer most of my Other sub-categories to put the funds back where they belong.