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.
I started as Cub Scout Committee Chair in February at our Rechartering. For our June Blue & Gold, I had an adult leader go to the local Scout Shop to buy all of the rank badges we’d need for the Scouts. I wrote up a text file of what we needed, and another Adult Leader was able to purchase them without issue.
I recently heard from 2 parents that they are missing Tiger and Bobcat badges, so I want to buy a few missing badges. The Scout Shop told me I need to show an Advancement Report. This is not something I ran in June 2023 before Blue & Gold. I entered Advancements into Scoutbook, but I didn’t know I needed to run a report. I don’t know how the Adult Leader was able to purchase badges without it. But upon generating the report, it shows something like 4 years worth of advancements on the Purchase Order. That’s not correct, because the Scouts have already received 90% of those badges and belt loops.
But if I try to generate a new Advancement Report, I get an error indicating “Please approve at least one advancement before running the Advancement Report.”
How do I do that?
If I do that, and then generate a new report, will the new report only show me the advancements I inputted since the last report?
If I go into the Scout Shop with a Report showing 251 items, will they let me purchase just a handful of them?
Generally, as a unit leader, you should be able to generate the Needs Awarding report from:
My Dashboard → Administration → My Units → Unit Number → (scroll down to) Unit Reports → Needs Awarding report
You (or someone else who can generate the report like the Unit Advancement Chair) then needs to go through that report and click on everything that you know has been awarded. Do not use the “Select All” button, as that will approve everything on the report, including any new stuff that you know hasn’t been awarded yet. Then, click “Mark as Awarded” down at the bottom, and it will mark all of the selected items as awarded.
Anything that is marked as Awarded will automatically come off of the Needs Purchasing report, and any open POs.
I did this one scout at a time when my pack first migrated to Scoutbook years ago, so that the quantity I was dealing with was manageable. It also allowed me to go cross-check for each scout, then move on.
Thanks for all the suggestions. It turns out that the closest Scout Shop is not my own Council’s, so I went there and was allowed to buy the badges I needed without a report. I’ll reach out to my District rep about whether they need the report I generated to update any internal systems.
