LCR - Seems that you cannot allocate Budget at ward level in Mexico?

[Azael.Ortega]

HI All

My ward is in Mexico, not sure if there are differences in LCR between USA vs Mexico Region, but after the Decommission of MLS and moving to LCR, the budgeting tool has become useless for our ward, now I and the organizations need to keep tabs of expenses on spreadsheets. I was able to Allocate budget in MLS to each organization, not so in LCR. Let me explain.

We get our Budget Allocation every quarter as per usual from the stake. I can see that in the Detailes of Income and expenses.

Summary of Income and Expenses

And on summary of income and expenses, when you click on Budget, you will see that the funds are under Budget allocations category.

Budget Allocations Category

In theory, I should be able to do 2 things.
1) I should see the total amount of funds reflected on the Dashboard as Budget, but it is not, always shows 0 and is always negative in the red due to expenses incurred, see below:

Budget is on the Red

2) I Should be able to allocate funds via transfer to other categories in my ward. But it seems I cannot, my only option is to transfer to another unit. Not sure if by design or if there is a bug. See below

Transfer out of unit only

if I choose any other category I now can see the full list. and if I were to process to transfer $500 to primary as in the picture, it will put the administration category negative 500 because it has no funds, eve-though it shows 6k plus.

Full List

I would love for this tool to work, to allocate a budget to each Organizations and manage it just as it is done in the USA but it is not the case. I have asked other bishops and they are in the same boat. I have inquired the stake about it , butthey are clueless as to why, they told me they are just are following the way they were told to allocate the funds to the wards.

I have read the manual for using funds, and the LCR part is either outdated or does not apply to our country. I would love for this to be working... Am I missing something? Is the Stake missing something? Or is it that this feature is not intended for use outside of USA?

I will appreciate anyone sharing some light on it.

[russellhltn]

I believe there's two "budgets" going on here. Some screens show the budget account balance, but the third screen show "budget" as a spending plan. No allocations have been entered. You might want to look at this Help Center article: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/too ... s?lang=eng

[jdlessley]

Your unit is receiving your budget allowance allocations. What you are showing indicates that your unit has not allocated the incoming budget allowance allocations to the unit sub-categories. Do not attempt to use transfers using the LCRF > Transfers function. Allocating budget funds within your unit are not transfers. Go to the LCRF > Budget > Prepare Annual Budget tab to allocate unit budget funds to unit sub-categories. This allocation of funds is a book keeping tool rather than actually moving funds around.

Use the Help Center article link russellhltn provided to learn the procedures to set up your unit budget and budget allocations for your unit.

[eblood66]

Allocating budget funds within your unit are not transfers. Go to the LCRF > Budget > Prepare Annual Budget tab to allocate unit budget funds to unit sub-categories. This allocation of funds is a book keeping tool rather than actually moving funds around.

The problem is that based on the OP's screen shot of his Budget page, he doesn't have the Prepare Annual Budget tab. That would be a problem. I have no idea why that tab would be missing. I would suggest calling the Global Service Department by using the Help > Contact Us option and include a screen shot of the Budget Page.

[Azael.Ortega]

Eureka! Jdlessley and eblood66 thanks I think you guys are right, the Anual Budget tab is not available for me, I don't see it anywhere, I think that is what is missing or perhaps a restriction for our country, here in Mexico our Budget allowance is not Anual, but per quarter, so each quarter we get a deposit and a letter of such deposit form the stake.

Also thanks russellhltn, I will inquire with the GSD.

[jdlessley]

... here in Mexico our Budget allowance is not Anual, but per quarter, so each quarter we get a deposit and a letter of such deposit form the stake.

In the U.S. it is much the same - a quarterly allowance allocation distribution. However, the stake determines how the quarterly allowance allocation is determined. It appears your stake has taken the approach to make the allocation to the stake units themselves from their end rather than letting headquarters know how to compute the allocation and then send the unit allocation directly to the stake units.

[Azael.Ortega]

Perhaps I misunderstood or got the process wrong.

"...the stake determines how the quarterly allowance allocation is determined." <- Perhaps this is true.

"... It appears your stake has taken the approach to make the allocation to the stake units themselves from their end.."<- This I am not sure.

What I know is that the computation is done accordingly to the formula based on attendance groups criteria (Sacrament, YM,YW,YSA, Primary). When I check the budget allocation letter (pdf.) I can see that This letter comes from the Church's Department of Records and Finance in Mexico.

Wether the stake deposits the funds to the unit, or the Church's Department of Records and Finance in Mexico directly do it, is not something I have validated, I perhaps might be wrongly assuming that the stake does this.

I will reach out to my Stake Leaders to understand this process better.

[lajackson]

"...the stake determines how the quarterly allowance allocation is determined." <- Perhaps this is true.

In the United States, ALL of the quarterly allowance allocation is sent to the stake. The stake has two options.

(1) There are settings where the stake can have the allocation sent to each unit based on the percentage the stake sets.

(2) The stake can manually transfer part of the allocation. (They used to have to write checks before the electronic transfer process was established.)

You are correct that the allowance is set based on attendance and other information from the quarterly report sent in by each ward or branch. But the allocation itself then all goes to the stake, which retains a portion to use as the stake budget and then sees that the rest is sent to the units using one of the two methods above.

[russellhltn]

The stake's allocation of funds to your ward is a separate issue from you setting a spending plan within your ward.