Tech Forum

BrianEdwards wrote:This request may be part of the "return and report" principle, based off what's in GHB 18.9.1, which contains much instruction including "All who participate in preparing, blessing, and passing the sacrament must receive approval from him or someone under his direction."

Which is fine, but notably absent from that list is "partake".

If the leader wants to keep track of who is blessing and passing the sacrament, and whose house they visited and when, that's not an issue for me. But when they start reporting who took the sacrament, I think you're in a gray zone, in my non-authoritative opinion.

For example, GHB 25.1 says:

Leaders do not establish quotas or reporting systems for temple attendance. Each member determines his or her own level of participation in temple work.

I'm suggesting there may be a similar principles involved for this situation.

Anyone have hints on how 2020 Q1 report average sacrament meeting actual and potential attendance were calculated? I can't reconcile what was pre-calculated with our reported numbers and we had more than the four required meetings in the quarter and one meeting in March, so I don't think any 2019 Q3 or Q4 numbers should be in play. I can't control what is pre-calculated, but I do like to understand the calculated figures.

greenwoodkl wrote:Anyone have hints on how 2020 Q1 report average sacrament meeting actual and potential attendance were calculated?

Potential is the number of membership records at the end of the quarter, i.e., March 31.

Does attendance work if you average every Sunday reported during the quarter, not just March? Do not count any Sunday with zero or blank. Normally, it would have just been March. But I thought they were going to look back at the whole quarter because meetings were discontinued in March.

lajackson wrote:

greenwoodkl wrote:Anyone have hints on how 2020 Q1 report average sacrament meeting actual and potential attendance were calculated?

Potential is the number of membership records at the end of the quarter, i.e., March 31.

Does attendance work if you average every Sunday reported during the quarter, not just March? Do not count any Sunday with zero or blank. Normally, it would have just been March. But I thought they were going to look back at the whole quarter because meetings were discontinued in March.

I think I'm having the most difficulty with potential attendance count. It is lower than our March 31st membership count, so I assume it is also somehow an average of attendance across a portion of the quarter. I can reconcile all the other figures.

I have tried several methods all discounting weeks with blanks. I've tried to enter zeros and the system blanks them out:

• actual attendance each Sunday/potential attendance each Sunday (accounting for move-ins and move-outs) to get a weekly average. Then sum the weekly averages over the quarter and divide that by the number of weeks - that average percentage matches the pre-calculated value when rounded
• sum actual attendance counts for all weeks in the quarter, sum weekly potential attendance (membership as of each Sunday - accounting for move-ins and move-outs) for all weeks in the quarter, divide those two numbers (actual sum/potential sum) - that average percentage matches the pre-calculated value when rounded
• Instead of dividing the previous sums (actual sum/potential sum), average each of the sums across the number of weeks in the quarter. The actual sum averaged across the quarter (actual sum/# of weeks) when rounded matches the pre-calculated value. The potential membership sum averaged across the quarter (potential sum/# of weeks) is less than the pre-calculated by one. No decimals to round.

There are two ways so far I can seem to reach the pre-calculated potential count is:

1. to average the potential attendance (membership count) on Jan. 5th with the potential attendance (membership count) on Mar. 8th (our last meeting). The Total Members counts from Unit Statistics on Dec. 31st and Mar. 31st match and are both higher than the pre-calculated potential attendance number.
2. to take the highest of the three monthly average potentials (sum potentials in month/# of weeks in month). In our case January was highest, since we net dropped members in the first half of January and net gained them back since our last Mar. 8th meeting.

I hope this makes sense verbally, I'm better with visual diagrams myself.

greenwoodkl wrote:I think I'm having the most difficulty with potential attendance count.

When I said potential is the number of membership records you had on March 31, I forgot a small detail, sorry. From that number, subtract the number of Members of Record Age 9 or Older. Does that work?

The only other thing I can figure is that I have heard the March 31 "snapshot" sometimes takes place a day or two later. Or the "snapshot" includes records that have been sent to your unit but that you have not yet picked up in MLS. The difference also is sometimes that MLS is out of sync, and a Membership Refresh is needed to get the numbers to match.

I told my bishop once that rather than trying to figure out the potential number to the tenth of a decimal place, I would rather just pick one of the names and go visit. He acquiesced to my altruistic desires and chose a name for me. Turns out they had moved out of the ward.

lajackson wrote:Members of Record Age 9 or Older

Do you mean:

Unbaptized members of record age 9 and over and those baptized but not confirmed are not included in unit statistics or Quarterly Reports.

If so, none of the numbers I was looking at included the 1 person that falls into that category. I've been using the Unit Statistics report run at the end of each month, which appears to exclude that individual.

I don't use MLS for reporting, I use LCR online from home, especially during social distancing for COVID-19. I've never heard of a need for a sync or refresh with LCR. Our last move-out was March 25th, our last move-in was March 22nd.

greenwoodkl wrote:Do you mean:

Unbaptized members of record age 9 and over and those baptized but not confirmed are not included in unit statistics or Quarterly Reports.

If so, none of the numbers I was looking at included the 1 person that falls into that category. I've been using the Unit Statistics report run at the end of each month, which appears to exclude that individual.

Yes, it was that to which I was referring. I believe Unit Statistics calculates totals a little differently than Quarterly Report, but I am not certain. I no longer have access to the quarterly report to do any checking.

If you took your Unit Statistics snapshot at the same time headquarters took their end of quarter snapshot, I do not believe there should be any difference. Other than that, I have no more ideas.

lajackson wrote:

greenwoodkl wrote:Anyone have hints on how 2020 Q1 report average sacrament meeting actual and potential attendance were calculated?

Potential is the number of membership records at the end of the quarter, i.e., March 31.

I don't know the exact formula but I do know that starting with this quarter the potential changed to be the average of the members in the ward each week (it might be the numbers at the time the sacrament attendance is submitted). We had to build a process to get those potential numbers from the new sacrament service (where the weekly information is stored) and add them to the quarterly report baseline information.

Thank you Ryan for the additional context. I figured the potential number was somehow average-based since it didn't match the monthly Unit Statistics counts. I'm still not sure how my calculations are off by 1, but I was trying to see if I could understand/reverse-engineer the math and logic behind the counts for this first quarter on the new system.

My stake requires a monthly statistical report and I've chosen to mirror the quarterly report format for my submission. Since the indicator numbers aren't calculated by the Church monthly, I've been trying to estimate the pre-calculated indicator counts for the two months between each quarterly report. The only indicator I have no way to estimate is the family history participation.

greenwoodkl wrote:My stake requires a monthly statistical report and I've chosen to mirror the quarterly report format for my submission.

If I were in your shoes, I'd ask the stake how to create the report they're asking for. Let them figure out the mechanics as well as getting a feel for how much work they're asking from the ward clerks.

If you don't ask, there is always a risk that whatever you do on your own will be wrong according to them.