Quarterly vs. Monthly Reports

One of the things that has always bothered me in the many years I have been a clerk (in at least four different stakes across the country) is that even though HQ only asks us to submit the member progress report quarterly, virtually every stake still asks for the same data monthly.

I find it challenging enough getting the info in a timely fashion quarterly, let alone monthly. Additionally, MLS isn't really designed for acurate monthly reporting. It doesn't freeze the statistics monthly like it does quarterly, thus unless I happen to run unit statistics on the last day of the month the pecentages are based on what ever the current membership is.

I've been doing this long enough that I remember when we had to submit a monthly progress report to HQ and when it was changed to quarterly to reduce some of the burden on us clerks. I'm courious what other folk's experiences are. Does you stake still require the information monthly? It seems that if the majority of the stakes want the same information more frequently, the MLS developers could help accomodate this need.

Alternativly, any justifications to the stake president to only do quarterly??

Our stake president requests home teaching reports each month, but does not ask for any of the statistical information on the Quarterly Report. The stake simply receives that information from the wards automatically through MLS each quarter.

I think it's healthy for any entity (ward, stake, company, household) to periodically review the reports it generates or any other procedures and see if they are worth the effort. You might just have a chat with the stake clerk and ask him if the stake really uses the monthly information. If it's really helpful to the stake president and it helps him to minister to the stake, then you simply support him in that effort. But if not, perhaps your discussion with the stake clerk will lead him to talk to the stake president and make sure that the benefit of these reports justifies the effort.

I was a ward clerk with very similar feelings jvmoore13... It was my hope that the monthly numbers gathering allowed local HPGL, EQP, RSP, etc... to focus on the needs of people... The review of HT and VT never happened in my ward, so I would send reports, or distribute them in Ward Council indicating families that hadn't been seen in Months... sometimes these people went more than 6-9 months without anything changing... it was a bit disappointing to me, because they also tended to be the families that didn't fit into particular circles in the ward easily. The same could be said about all the areas we gather statistics.... If a ward only finds out 3 months later that little sally-sue hasn't attended YW in the last 3 months... but was attending earlier... maybe 3 months is too long to start compiling those stats... monthly is much better for intervention....

Here's my theory... I keep the wards gathering the data and sending it to me monthly.... the stake uses the data quarterly... both serve to help where the help is needed.

At the Ward Level, to me, the numbers are about the people.... At the stake level the numbers are about leaders, and training... helping to identify greater trends to be addressed... whatever is necessary to get that job done. Some stake presidents will want to micro-manage this process, some will not.

Obviously, the HT - VT stats are included on the quarterly, but should still be a monthly task on the ward level, as per CHI (CHI book 2: 9.5.4, and CHI book 2: 7.4.4) While the CHI doesn't require you to do this on MLS, most units probably do... If you do, then they are also provided to the stake monthly. Our stake still requires a separate HT report delivered monthly from each EQ & HP group to the stake through the High Council rep, including monthly goals and success stories, Prospective elder info, etc.

As far as attendance, our stake presidency doesn't require any additional reporting above the quarterly data. However, specific Stake organizations might. I think our Sunday School Pres. has a reporting policy, and I think the stake Primary still asks for an additional report from their ward leaders on children NOT attending any meetings. I have stakes in the past that required a similar "members not attending" monthly report of priesthood quorums, both aaronic and Melchizedek.
Our stake DOES enter the quarterly data into a separate spreadsheet for further processing, and breaks it down into wards and provides this report back to the ward, as described at this link to the wiki:

Some wards and stakes find it helpful to copy the data from the Quarterly Report into a spreadsheet. This allows you to create charts for each of the major statistics for more visual appeal and trend analysis.
Some examples of the kind of statistics that can be done from the raw data in the quarterly report....
(see the wiki for all of these additional statistics you can create without gathering any additional data)

As a side note, remember that the quarterly report may not give you a true picture of your membership's habits, however, and a monthly report might.
Should a member that attends a quorum four times a year be counted as having the same attendance as a member that attends every week? The quarterly reporting methods allows those two individuals to be statistically identical, one that attends weekly, and one that attends four times a year. While that may be good enough for the needs that CHQ tracks, you need to ask if that is good enough for an elders quorum president, or the bishop, or the stake president?

To me there is no question: "That which we measure improves." I was EQ pres. when we moved from the monthly attendance to the quarterly attendance (counting last month of quarter only) for the report many years back. The message seemed to be, no more roles for the first two months of each quarter, so we didn't take it.

Our presidency felt an immediate drop in our understanding of the participation habits of our quorum, and after a few quarters, we unanimously voted to go back to keeping role monthly. As this had "opened our eyes," we even went further, and asked the secretary to provide the presidency with a running report of "members not attending monthly," which was far more insightful to us then "members attending at least once per quarter," kept on a spreadsheet, so we could look back and compare it to the months before.

If my bishop or stake pres. asked me to provide this to him, I wouldn't assume he was "micro-managing." I would assume he wanted me to learn to use such a report for my own presidencies analysis and benefit. Requiring it be turned in would not be as much for that leaders benefit as it would ensure that we had the info we needed in our own presidency.

A leader may use this to train new presidencies by requiring further processing of Home Teaching data. Looking deeper and processing the numbers is what makes this data useful. Do you ever list all prospective elders that were missed by HT'ers in a month? Or list the percentage of visits to households without Melchizedek priesthood in the home? Have you run a report of families NOT HOME TAUGHT and sorted it by how many months in a row they have been missed- this can be further processed in a spreadsheet to identify which of those really shouldn't get missed...ever!

When the CHI suggest clerks should look for trends and provide reports of things they find, this is exactly what it is taking about. "Lift the hood" of your quarterly reports, and take a peak inside, and check ALL those fluid levels, sure, but look for the leaks underneath that might highlight problems...and see what is really going on.

However, if you're just counting, and nobody is looking at the figures you gather, sure, you are wasting time. Sorry for the long post, but this is my experience, like you asked...

My stake only requires this information quarterly. However, my recommendation is to collect them every month just so people don't forget to do it on a reporting month. Because we only do quarterly, I've had ward clerks forget to count attendance, for example. Just because CHQ only wants to see it quarterly doesn't mean there isn't useful information in the other months. If fact, due to how the quarters fall, you might actually get more accurate information in the off months.

The leadership of our stake and the wards within it require everything quarterly and nothing monthly.

Our previous Stake President required ward reports monthly. They had a annual spreadsheet (tab for each month) that looked just like the form for the Quarterly Report data. The Stake Clerk compiled all the ward information for the Stake Presidency and it was discussed in Stake High Council with assignments to the Councillors to followup with wards that seemed to be slipping in the metrics. The new Stake President doesn't seem to be concerned with it. I kept it up for a year or two, but as no-one ever seemed to want it, stopped pushing the ward organizations for the information.

One of the frustrations that is commonly expressed by many members of the ward council is the requirement to have the information, taken from the last month of the previous quarter, submitted by the 10th of the month. This puts a strain on all of the organizations who typically don't have their information gathered until the middle of the month. Is there a reason that the statistics are collected for the last month in the quarter? If the information was collected for the second month in the quarter, all organizations would have their information compiled by the time it is needed, and there wouldn't be a crazy rush to get it collected. I asked this question to HQ and was basically chastised for it.

cbradford wrote:One of the frustrations that is commonly expressed by many members of the ward council is the requirement to have the information, taken from the last month of the previous quarter, submitted by the 10th of the month. This puts a strain on all of the organizations who typically don't have their information gathered until the middle of the month. Is there a reason that the statistics are collected for the last month in the quarter? If the information was collected for the second month in the quarter, all organizations would have their information compiled by the time it is needed, and there wouldn't be a crazy rush to get it collected. I asked this question to HQ and was basically chastised for it.

I don't think your question is worthy of chastisement. However, we can only speculate as to why the last month of the quarter was selected (and there's not much point in speculation). The fact is that we have been clearly told that statistics are gathered for the last month of the quarter, and that quarterly reports are due on the 15th of the following month.

So given those facts (which seem unlikely to change anytime soon), we just have to organize ourselves as well as possible to cheerfully meet the requirements we've been given. That might involve doing as much preparation as possible before the end of the month (for example, collect as many HT and VT statistics as possible during the month, instead of waiting until the month is over to start collecting reports). And make sure you've created an efficient communication channel. The clerk might also yield a couple more days; if everyone can get their information to him by the 12th, he should be able to still be done by the 15th, especially if he has gotten some of the information earlier.

I have found that you can update the Quarterly report until the month ends. For example, if you find out on the 20th of the month that there were 3 more families Home Taught than you had reported, you can open the Quarterly Report, update the specific numbers, and save it again. It will re-transmit on the next send-receive. (Note, however, that I do not know if this affects the Budget distribution or if that is based on whatever is transmitted by the 15th.)

The other thing I have found useful is to print out the list of individuals to be counted and provide that to the each organization. It uses a few more sheets of paper, but in the interest of making it easier they can just check-off the members who have attended in their organization and turn it back in for me to count.

For our ward, getting HT and VT information in a timely manner is the hardest thing to do and I am often updating the HT/VT information right at the end of the month just before the Quarterly Report "locks."

davesudweeks wrote:I have found that you can update the Quarterly report until the month ends. For example, if you find out on the 20th of the month that there were 3 more families Home Taught than you had reported, you can open the Quarterly Report, update the specific numbers, and save it again. It will re-transmit on the next send-receive. (Note, however, that I do not know if this affects the Budget distribution or if that is based on whatever is transmitted by the 15th.)

You can edit any of the quarterly reports in your drop down menu (in the QR screen) at any time, even old ones that have already been submitted. If you save changes to a report, it will be re-transmitted the next time you send/receive.

If you happen to change numbers that are used in calculating your budget, then yes, the corresponding budget distribution will be updated to correspond with the latest information. Budget distributions are based on numbers from the quarterly report submitted 2 quarters previously (i.e. the Q4 disbursement (Oct) is based on numbers submitted in the Q2 report (Jun)).

cbradford wrote:This puts a strain on all of the organizations who typically don't have their information gathered until the middle of the month.

It seems that the "counting month" could well have been the first or the second month, but the third month of each quarter is the one that was chosen. I doubt that giving us any longer to compile our stats would make them come in a more timely manner, however. I guess I'm suggesting that leaving the date for the quarterlies due the 15 of the month after the end of the quarter, but moving the counting month to the second month, would merely give us 45 days to procrastinate compiling the report rather than 15.

aebrown wrote:we just have to organize ourselves as well as possible

In my experience, this is the key. How long really does it take to gather the numbers? Once the month ends, data generation is complete.

Either you made the visit or you didn't, and now it's just a matter of the "return and report." Collecting and tabulating...make the phone calls or knock on a door and ask, count the rolls. The time factor comes from waiting to do those things. Why can my Primary Secretary call me on the Sunday afternoon of the last sunday of the quarter with her numbers, yet the young men's sec. takes several weeks to tabulate attendance for far less people? It's organization and preparation, maybe even experience or willpower.

davesudweeks wrote:The other thing I have found useful is to print out the list of individuals to be counted and provide that to the each organization. It uses a few more sheets of paper, but in the interest of making it easier they can just check-off the members who have attended in their organization and turn it back in for me to count.

I started doing this as well. It really does help.

I've found many excuses for not getting numbers in on-time, and most seem to still be valid (family problems, lack of understanding, personal health, undeveloped talents, etc,... - been there, done that). I even caused delays until I understood that all fields have to have a number (even a zero) before the report could be seen by the stake. As an old ward clerk (I didn't know Moses personally) I'm very familiar with report schedules, and still lose track when I'm busy with church, personal, or work projects. etc,.. etc,.. as Yul Brynner (King & I) might say. Having a bit later deadline would make quarterlies somewhat less stressful for most secretaries I've known. Even new stake clerks could benefit. Currently I promote the 10th of the month, and I understand that our ward is regularly one of the first two to finish quarterlies, and I know how late I generally am.

Twice a year General Conference confuses most secretaries sense of timing, so my report tends to be a little later in April and October. Also, most secretaries are relatively new to their position (1, 2, 3 years). Production of a magic number or two every three months can take a bit of time and effort to make habitual. My biggest delays are persistently from male run adult organizations (go figure). Currently our HT number is way low because I'm waiting for data from our brand spankin' new EQ President. He's a great guy, and we talked today after not seeing each other for a time.

My relatively new stake clerk initially was very concerned about hitting the deadlines. We talked, he read, and after struggling with late reporting from most wards in the stake, he accepted that church quarterlies really don't carry the same personal threat as professional endeavors. We both agree that we need to promptly report solid data, and so we continue to guide and persuade those we try to lead.

I very much enjoy being able to serve as clerk. I've been told by a few normally reliable folk that I'll probably keep doing it 'till I get it right. So be it. I hope I help my secretaries feel comfortable while learning their duties.

Sorry for waxing philosophical. Hope the ideas help.

jpjonesxyz wrote:My relatively new stake clerk initially was very concerned about hitting the deadlines. We talked, he read, and after struggling with late reporting from most wards in the stake, he accepted that church quarterlies really don't carry the same personal threat as professional endeavors.

True, but some of those numbers do impact the ward budget. No quarterly, no money.

RussellHltn wrote:True, but some of those numbers do impact the ward budget. No quarterly, no money.

However, the deadline that affects money is considerably later. I'm certainly not advocating delaying past the 15th of the first month of the quarter, because priesthood leaders need the information to be timely in their ministry, which is the most important purpose of the reported data. Yet the fact is that budget allocation deadline is over two months later, at the end of the quarter -- from a purely monetary standpoint, that's the absolute deadline.

Two of the four quarters are followed by General Conference. In our case we had Stake Conference the following week, and so as of last night four of the sixteen units in my stake still hadn't submitted the quarterly report. Why it isn't pushed for the quorums and auxiliaries to turn in what they can (e.g. attendance rolls) to the ward clerk on the last Sunday of the quarter? (At least one ward in my stake does that . . . )