Welcome! This forum has a treasure trove of great info – Scouters helping Scouters! Just a heads up, though - all content, information, and opinions shared on this forum are those of the author, not the BSA.
We have been having issues for several months on a scout that transferred in from a different Council. He is on our roster in Membership Manager and I transferred him into our Pack in Scoutbook.
However, we are still getting an error message that says “has not been matched with a Scout in your Units official roster. Please check with your council.”
His Den Leader isn’t able to add any advancements and Advancement Sync is also not set up - I tried checking & unchecking the Position Approved box on his membership page, but that doesn’t seem to be working.
If you have a youth transferring from another council, you shouldn’t have the option to transfer from another council. They will have a different membership number? That will effect the sync process. None of this makes sense to me. Why would Scoutbook have the capability to transfer from another council and the COUNCILS don’t have that option yet? We would manually enter the advancements and achievements once we receive the profile from the other council. The membership number that they were associated with cannot be linked with the new council . SOCUTBOOK shouldn’t allow units to transfer especially if they are NOT registered with the council yet. That option should be removed. This creates duplicate records and issues that we do not need to deal with. The more I read the more errors I anticipate. We are the new Call Center and who has the time to read all of the information on the forums when we barely have enough time to get our work done in a day.
@JoannVallillo I just had a Scout transfer to my unit from another council.
I made the transfer in Scoutbook first, and updated all of the information on the Scout’s Membership and Edit Profile pages. Made sure everything matched between his transfer application and Scoutbook (full name, date of birth, address, zip code, district, council), and the member update sync process gave him his new BSA number after his application was processed by my council.
Duplicates usually happen when something doesn’t match - usually the name or date of birth. Sometimes there’s a typo or the Scout is registered under full name in council A and nickname in council B.
Jennifer, I truly appreciate the response. I was a bit grumpy and never really post. I haven’t had the opportunity to play with the administrative options on Scoutbook, other than the MBC upload. (That was very time consuming and I’m so thankful that we no longer have to do that.) I’m the council registrar and get many complaints and it’s challenging trying to figure out the sync issues. When you say you made the transfer in Scoutbook first, do you mean you searched for this person and pulled their information from another council and the advancements pulled over or did you manually add everything?
Hi @JoannVallillo, as a Troop Admin, I went to the Troop Roster page and used the “Transfer in Scout” button. I used it to add a new membership with my troop.
Another way to do basically the same thing is for a Troop Admin or a parent to go to the Scout’s Membership page and add a new membership with the new troop in the gaining council.
I kept both memberships open at first, so that I could coordinate with the other troop and make sure that all of the Scout’s merit badges and awards were taken care of. Once everything was taken care of by the other troop, I ended his membership with them.
Then I updated all of his information on his Edit Profile page in Scoutbook to make sure that everything matched his transfer application (full name, date of birth, new address, zip code, district, and council).
Next, my council processed his transfer application. The member update gave him his new BSA number, but all of his advancements, leadership, memberships, etc. are still in his Scoutbook account.
However, I do think it’s a good idea to get a copy of the person record report from the former council, just in case something does not go as expected. Scoutbook’s Cub Scout History Report and Scouts BSA History Report can also be useful.
I’ve done something similar for youth coming to our troop, both inter-council and intra-council. It hasn’t (yet) come up for an inter-council transfer since the recent changes in Scoutbook, but on our recent intra-council transfers from a pack, their names are not locked, but their BSA ID and birthdate are.
I am really grateful for you taking the time to explain what you do. I am not registered with a Troop and I had no idea you could pull a transfer this way. It’s nice to know that the membership number created with the new council will be added to their record once they are officially added. I don’t have any units that have transferred a scout this way so thanks for letting me know that it works.
@JoannVallillo For what I have seen, duplicate Scout accounts in Scoutbook are usually created when something doesn’t match: usually the Scout’s name or date of birth.
Yes, we still have leaders reach out to me about transfers and never mentioned that they could pull the information, so I manually enter everything. I do have transfers within the council that do not have their advancements pull over from the pack to the troop. We’ve had a few of these strange situations and this is what prompted me to check out the forum.
