Voiding checks - procedural change?

In helping some of my units clean up old checks, I've encountered a subtle change in the protocol and thought I'd put it here for others to verify. The issue with the checks was they could not void them in MLS. The checks were issued 13 months ago.

LUS just informed me that clerks can no longer void the check in MLS if it is older than 365 days. Also, they wanted the ward clerk to call LUS to get them voided AFTER he had reissued the check.

These seem to be new limitations placed on voiding that I don't remember. The unit is on version 3.4.1b8 of MLS.

crislapi wrote:In helping some of my units clean up old checks, I've encountered a subtle change in the protocol and thought I'd put it here for others to verify. The issue with the checks was they could not void them in MLS. The checks were issued 13 months ago.

LUS just informed me that clerks can no longer void the check in MLS if it is older than 365 days. Also, they wanted the ward clerk to call LUS to get them voided AFTER he had reissued the check.

These seem to be new limitations placed on voiding that I don't remember. The unit is on version 3.4.1b8 of MLS.

A letter was sent on 19 August 2011 regarding the new escheatment process in the United States. It said that checks older than 180 days would automatically be escheated. I'm not sure why the LUS rep you talked to mentioned 365 days; the official letter only mentioned 180 days (and an extra warning starting at 90 days).

It makes sense that any check that is automatically escheated cannot be voided, so I imagine that's what you were seeing. The letter tells clerks to clean up all older (90 days +) outstanding checks by September 15, so I'm guessing that's when the new procedure became effective.

aebrown wrote:I'm not sure why the LUS rep you talked to mentioned 365 days; the official letter only mentioned 180 days (and an extra warning starting at 90 days).

Seems to be a common question...
Yeah, never saw that letter. I'll track that one down.

crislapi wrote:Yeah, never saw that letter. I'll track that one down.

My bishop handed it to me yesterday. The "snail mail" seems to be a bit slow. It is available at https://lds.org/letters, document number 11826.

mfmohlma wrote:It is available at https://lds.org/letters, document number 11826.

I received permission from the Correlation Department to post it on the wiki's Letters and policies archive, so you can read it at Outstanding Checks and the Escheatment Process, even if you don't have access to the Official Communication Library.

Thanks to some one-on-one communication with giffordrb about how voiding has worked vs how it will in 3.4.1, I thought I'd add this here.
Currently, a check status of "cleared" only means the check was successfully transmitted, reflecting that a confirmation was received from CUBS. The next release of MLS should instead show a status of "sent" once the check has been transmitted, "Issued" once it has been confirmed by CUBS, and "cleared" once it actually has cleared the bank. You will no longer be able to void checks that have a status of "cleared".

giffordrb just created a new post about this change. You can read more at his thread.

Nice feature to easily see if check have cleared.