Sending Budgets to Church Headquarters

[waynecooke]

I recently received the following email from out Stake Financial Clerk:

" Just a friendly reminder that if not already done to submit your 2021 budget report to church headquarters as soon as you have approved the operating budgets for your respective unit organizations. It can be done via LCR in the comforts of your own home and will only take a few minutes.
Thank you.
H----- W-------
Stake Finance Clerk"

In my brief (21 years, four Wards, two Stakes and eight Bishops) experience as Financial Clerk, I have never heard of sending our Ward Budget breakdown to SLC. Is this new or have I just been failing to do my job for the past few years? Also, I couldn't see how, in LCR, to send to CHQ.

Any help would be appreciated.

[davesudweeks]

I have never heard of it at the ward level, but have never served as a stake clerk. From the wording you quoted, it sounds to me like a requirement on the stake clerk to submit the breakdown of the ward budgets within the stake (how much is allocated to each ward), not a breakdown of the organization budgets (how much it allocated to each organization in the ward).

[waynecooke]

I have never heard of it at the ward level, but have never served as a stake clerk. From the wording you quoted, it sounds to me like a requirement on the stake clerk to submit the breakdown of the ward budgets within the stake (how much is allocated to each ward), not a breakdown of the organization budgets (how much it allocated to each organization in the ward).

This was sent out to every Bishop (7), Branch President (3) and Ward Financial Clerk and Branch Clerk in the Stake.

[drepouille]

I was stake clerk for a few years, and I don't remember doing anything like that.

[eblood66]

My guess is that the stake clerk is just saying to enter your budget in LCR. Previously you would enter it in MLS (and I think you probably can still) but now you can enter it in LCR instead. In one sense this is 'submitting to church headquarters' since it is entered on the church servers but normally we don't think of it that way since headquarters doesn't review or use that data for anything. It's just for local tracking purposes.

[waynecooke]

I just did what I should have done in the first place. I called our Stake Financial Clerk. What he wrote was correct (more or less) except for the word "submit". What he meant was that after we fill in the breakdowns for each of the organizations in the Ward (which really isn't 'mandatory', but very much encouraged), CHQ has access to that information if, for what ever reason, they want to. So we learn from this what we have to be very careful what words we use when communicating something from a position of authority.

Edit: I wrote this before reading eblood66's post. That post brings up another beef of mine. MLS and LCR are not synced. I had been gone for several months into this year, and when I went to LCR to check for the Budget for 2020, I found that nothing had been done. I was really concerned that the Ward Clerk and the old Bishop had not done anything. Then about a week or so later I happened to be in MLS and checked it there, and voila, there it was. All done correctly in MLS but nothing showing in LCR. It was like pulling teeth to get me to go to LCR in the beginning, I did only when I had no option in MLS, but I recently was using LCR more and more. I think that will come to a halt until they get their act together and make it so the two are synced. My Stake Financial Clerk said he had talked to them about that and that they know the problem exists but haven't solved it. There are other problems I have with LCR but this isn't exactly the forum to vent about them on. Anyway, the post by eblood66 was exactly correct.

[scgallafent]

MLS and LCR are not synced. I had been gone for several months into this year, and when I went to LCR to check for the Budget for 2020, I found that nothing had been done. I was really concerned that the Ward Clerk and the old Bishop had not done anything. Then about a week or so later I happened to be in MLS and checked it there, and voila, there it was. All done correctly in MLS but nothing showing in LCR. It was like pulling teeth to get me to go to LCR in the beginning, I did only when I had no option in MLS, but I recently was using LCR more and more. I think that will come to a halt until they get their act together and make it so the two are synced. My Stake Financial Clerk said he had talked to them about that and that they know the problem exists but haven't solved it.

There is no "getting their act together" here -- new development effort is focused on LCR. The work on MLS is primarily maintenance work.

Stop using MLS except where you have to use MLS. Right now, the only thing most units will need in MLS is donation batch entry. Everything else can be done online.