Why isn't quarterly report available until the quarter starts?

[drepouille]

In a military ward or a student ward, they have so many "move-ins" that push notifications would quickly become annoying and ignored.

[sasgrw]

That's why it would be an option that you'd have to subscribe to.

[scgallafent]

In theory, I should not include numbers for those who moved out of the ward, even if it happened on the last day of the month.

That's more than just a theory -- those are the instructions on the form.

The attendance of the Doe family that month would essentially be for naught.

That's a little harsh! Hopefully they were able to take the sacrament, worship, and experience some spiritual growth.

What would be nice is if we could set up an "alert notification" (push notification) so that we could get an email when new records arrive or leave. Then it would a proactive thing instead of a reactive thing. ... But it did spark the idea of push notifications. I'm going to send feedback from the LCR page to suggest that.

We have had those discussions, but you're welcome to make the suggestion.

[russellhltn]

That way the Doe's attendance isn't for naught.

An interesting dilemma. Are we really recording attendance or lack thereof? Are we monitoring the needs of the individual or "grading" the ward? In the case of HT/VT, I think we're making sure that member's needs are being met and making sure everyone is getting regular visits.

In the case of attendance, I suspect we're more interested in new names appearing on the "not attending any meeting" list, while trying to avoid any centralized tracking of member's attendance. The submitted stats are more of a way of supervising and making sure the organizations are going though the process of seeing if anyone new has "dropped out". I can remember a time when they were to actually submit the names of those not attending and note how many new ones had been added.

As far as "grading" the ward, if a active member moves out, the ward's stats are going to take a hit no matter what. It's just a question of "when".

[sasgrw]

In theory, I should not include numbers for those who moved out of the ward, even if it happened on the last day of the month.

That's more than just a theory -- those are the instructions on the form.

Sorry, I meant in theory of practice, not instruction. I'm quite aware how the forms are to be properly filled out. But I suspect if you took a poll of this scenario, while everyone should be following the instructions to the letter, I'm guessing there would be very few who would fill out the report properly in this case.

The attendance of the Doe family that month would essentially be for naught.

That's a little harsh! Hopefully they were able to take the sacrament, worship, and experience some spiritual growth.

Yes, yes, of course. Don't take me too literally I'm referring to "naught" from a reporting perspective.

[sasgrw]

That way the Doe's attendance isn't for naught.

An interesting dilemma. Are we really recording attendance or lack thereof? Are we monitoring the needs of the individual or "grading" the ward? In the case of HT/VT, I think we're making sure that member's needs are being met and making sure everyone is getting regular visits.

Absolutely with respect to ht/vt. I was staying away from the "grading" philosophy and the whole concept of tracking attendance. We all know the numbers are just a small way to try to measure things and that it's people that matter. A great example is my home teaching this month. There was one family I couldn't visit because our vacation schedules didn't match up. They're an active family that I have a good relationship with. In this case, they weren't "officially" visited. However, we did stop by to drop a present off for one of the kid's birthdays, and we attended another one of their kid's baptism. So the family's needs were met and we stayed on top of it, but an official home teaching visit with a lesson was not performed.

But I don't want to digress into what counts as a home teaching visit and I didn't want my quarterly report discussion here to digress into what the numbers are measuring.

All I wanted to do was start recording the numbers that had been sent to me so that I wouldn't lose them. I was trying to do that after the last Sunday of the month but before the quarter was officially over.