Fast Offering Disbursement for Expenses Other Than Rent

[funbrand]

First time posting on the forum, by the way, I hope I'm in the right place

As the Ward Clerk, I've handled fast offering disbursements for rent several times for a couple members, and it hasn't been an issue since the landlords always took checks and gave solid invoices/receipts. I was notified by my bishop that after speaking to a member, they agreed that the ward would help them pay for a few different expenses including their phone bill and insurance.

Would the best path moving forward involve me sitting down with the member and going over each of the different expenses and figuring out the best way for us to pay for them? Or should I let the Bishop talk to the member about those specifics? I'm relatively certain that at least one of these expenses will have to be paid online with no option for a check payment, and in that case, would I disperse those funds to the member so they can pay it? I'm aware that when possible, we should pay the service provider directly.

[garystroble]

You should not pay the funds directly to the member. Instead, have a leader pay the bill on line and then have the leader reimbursed from fast offerings. Who talks to the member about how to pay these bills would be up to your bishop.

[waltbristow]

My experience has been that often when a landlord says they'll not accept checks, that policy was motivated by having to deal with bounced checks. When they learn the Church is paying, they'll make an exception and accept the check. But you have to ask to find out.

[russellhltn]

Others have indicated that checks from the church won't process like normal checks. They have to be deposited. Trying to use other services, such as converting it to a ACH transaction won't work.

[BrianEdwards]

Another idea is for the Bishop to review the list of possible expenses the ward could pay for, and check if there is an alternative expense that is roughly the same amount, but would be easier for the ward to make payments. So if the insurance was "online-only", but the electricity was "check-payable", then perhaps a switch could be made. Once I even had three different small expenses our unit ended up paying for instead of one larger expense, since that made the financial process much smoother for us. Even with our unit having to do three different smaller payments, it avoided asking a leader to make recurring large payments themselves and then ask for reimbursements, which in that case we just wanted to avoid.