Inputting donations in MLS - can't use the preferred name?

[ericb]

I'm the ward clerk in our ward, and provide help when needed to record donations in MLS when our financial clerk is gone. I helped today (after the infamous CUBS upgrade) and noticed we're no longer able to identify a member by simply typing in their preferred name...it appears their regular full name must be used.

Is this intended behavior in MLS? If so, I think it's ironic since most members put their preferred name on their donation slips. The continual searching for the right member really got irritating.

[jdlessley]

I'm the ward clerk in our ward, and provide help when needed to record donations in MLS when our financial clerk is gone. I helped today (after the infamous CUBS upgrade) and noticed we're no longer able to identify a member by simply typing in their preferred name...it appears their regular full name must be used.

Is this intended behavior in MLS? If so, I think it's ironic since most members put their preferred name on their donation slips. The continual searching for the right member really got irritating.

While we don't know if this change is intended or not there has been some discussion in another thread that started about joint donor accounts and ended up on the same issue you describe.

Until the transition to CUBS is complete and the MLS development team has time to work out all the bugs we will not know for sure. For now the full legal name as recorded on Church records is the only name available for entering donor transactions.

[crislapi]

It is possible to edit the donor names, but apparently that's temporary and fruitless anyway. After each send/receive, they will revert back to the full legal name. See this post for more.

[aebrown]

While we don't know if this change is intended or not there has been some discussion in another thread that started about joint donor accounts and ended up on the same issue you describe.

I think it's pretty clear that the change was intended. The documentation (quoted in the linked thread) explicitly states that the donor records will now have the full name from the linked membership record. I agree that it makes donor lookup more difficult, and perhaps MLS will be changed back in the future, but it was definitely changed this way on purpose.