Hiding Dormant Payees and Donors for Year End

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atticusewig
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Posts: 308
Joined: Fri Jan 19, 2007 9:48 am

Hiding Dormant Payees and Donors for Year End

#1

Post by atticusewig »

Just a reminder that any Payees or Donors who have no activity
during the retention period, and you want off the books, need to be
set to "Hidden" prior to closing the Fiscal Year. You can use Add/Update either
Donors or Payees to do so. If not set to "Hidden" they will be carried forward into 2014
regardless of dormant activity. If in doubt, I recommend setting all the Payees to
"Hidden", Closing the Fiscal Year, and then bringing whatever is left back as visible.
We had a ward with 440 payees, who by using this trick, was able to clear 264 dormant
payees (60% of the 440, who had no transactions in the retention period). Not a bad
trade for 15-20 extra minutes of clerk work. It's too bad MLS doesn't take care of this
as part of the fiscal close, but saving volunteer clerk time has never really been much of a
priority for the church.
jdlessley
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Location: USA, TX

Re: Hiding Dormant Payees and Donors for Year End

#2

Post by jdlessley »

atticusewig wrote:I recommend setting all the Payees to "Hidden", Closing the Fiscal Year, and then bringing whatever is left back as visible.
A problem with this approach is there may be inactive members of the ward who have not made any donations being set to invisible. Should they then begin to donate you either have to go back into the list and unhide them or you will end up wondering why they are not on the list of members and create another donor record. Then when, and if, you realianze this is the case you will have to merge the records.

You may be decieving yourself in believing you are saving work and time. Should you be released/move another clerk/assistant clerk will be called and he may not be aware of the hidden members and will be faced with trying to figure out why those members are not available when processing donations.
JD Lessley
Have you tried finding your answer on the ChurchofJesusChrist.org Help Center or Tech Wiki?
atticusewig
Member
Posts: 308
Joined: Fri Jan 19, 2007 9:48 am

Re: Hiding Dormant Payees and Donors for Year End

#3

Post by atticusewig »

jdlessley wrote:
atticusewig wrote:I recommend setting all the Payees to "Hidden", Closing the Fiscal Year, and then bringing whatever is left back as visible.
A problem with this approach is there may be inactive members of the ward who have not made any donations being set to invisible. Should they then begin to donate you either have to go back into the list and unhide them or you will end up wondering why they are not on the list of members and create another donor record. Then when, and if, you realianze this is the case you will have to merge the records.

You may be decieving yourself in believing you are saving work and time. Should you be released/move another clerk/assistant clerk will be called and he may not be aware of the hidden members and will be faced with trying to figure out why those members are not available when processing donations.
Please re-read the post. I advocate returning all remaining donors/payees on the list to "Visible" after fiscal close. This avoids the problems you describe. The fiscal close actually
erases dormant donors/payees if set to "hidden" beforehand, so it is impossible for there to
be duplicates that will need to be merged. You may be right that the extra work might not be worth it, but it does streamline the records. If an inactive member decides to donate again after 3-4 years of not doing so, creating a new donor account would be no more difficult than creating one for a new move-in.
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