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.
Again, this is a policy question, which should be directed to your council professional staff. The BSA’s position is that these forums are strictly for technical questions about the software, not policy/program ones.
The structure itself is (or was when I took it) covered as part of the position-specific training for registered scouter positions. I recommend taking it, as there is some good information there for those who aren’t already familiar. Also, I would expect that your unit Key 3 (SM, CC, COR) should all know who their contacts are at the council. In principle they should have regular contact with the unit commissioner (a volunteer), who may be able to assist. The UC could ask either the district commissioner (another volunteer) or the district executive (a professional scouter) to help get clarification from council if needed.
Yes, but my understanding is that come unit recharter time, all current scouts and leaders got “reset” to a single date - the unit recharter date.
But now, going forward, individual recharter dates will never be concurrent with unit recharter dates. So, when it comes time for unit recharter, we will have to know who is currently paid-up through BSA.
Anyway this is definitely straying into policy discussion now.
I just needed to know how to get a list of current paid adult leaders and scouts so that going forward we will know who to bill for unit fees. Sounds like Key 3 leaders can do this through my.scouting.org.
The only question now for me is will MBCs be considered paid members on the Official Roster since they will now have to pay.
@StevenSheldon - I understand. The MBC if that is their ONLY registered position will not reflect on your unit recharter. If the person is registered in other positions, like in my case I am the Committee Chair for a pack troop and crew and an MBC, I will pay in only one unit for the CC position and will in theory not pay for the MBC registration.
Right. We currently have 5 parent MBCs who are nothing but MBCs. They currently show up in my Scoutbook report I built.
I’ll need a way to track paid MBCs going forward.
Maybe District will pull them out of Scoutbook if they aren’t paid (more policy issues, sorry). That would make it easy. I do know my district contact for MBC stuff, I’ll ask her and see if she knows.
@StevenSheldon - they will get pulled if they fail to pay, do not respond to the email concerning renewal or the YPT expires. it is not your responsibility to track that as they will not be paying your unit nor are they registered in your unit.
They will remain in Scoutbook as parents but their MBC position will end if they do not renew their membership, which after August 1, 2023 includes paying the registration fee if they are not registered in another position with the BSA.
The Scoutbook (SB) roster is not the “official” roster. The “official” roster is found on My.Scouting (MyS). It is pulled from another database containing paid membership data. Eventually, we might end up with only one roster. But our two rosters do different things.
The SB roster allows units to track adult positions in greater detail as SB has adult positions of responsibility (POR) that MyS doesn’t have. SB also has admin positions that MyS doesn’t. Mostly, they don’t carry over to My.S. Your scout’s sub-units (den, patrol, etc.) are tracked in SB, not MyS. (For packs, scouts must be in a den for SB to track advancement.)
The My.S roster is based on paid membership. You can transfer and multiple there, but can’t just end a membership without cause (council does this). SB allows you to sort of end membership - adult POR’s can be ended - if it’s their last POR, they drop off the SB roster until something tweeks their My.S account - then they show back up again. (Best to make them a Unit Scouter Reserve until their paid membership expires.)
Scouts are a bit different, they have a membership tab. Entries there link them to both the unit and their sub-unit. End their only current membership and they disappear off the SB roster. (Use your connections tab to get them back.) Typically, they have only one current membership in any one unit. (When moving a scout between sub-units, use the “Reassign Scout” tab at the destination sub-unit.)
Aside: One way to deal with a scout that stops attending is moving them to a sub-unit labelled “inactive” and then “disapprove” them. This removes them from the messaging system. Disapprove/approve is the green shield with check mark which each scout has, access is on the membership entry for the scout.
How to get to the My.Scouting roster
Log into Scoutbook. Click the “Home” icon/button at the top
Click second line “my.Scouting Home Page”
Use your same credentials to log into My.Scouting
Click the menu in top left to get drop down listing
Click the Organization Box to get drop down listing with your unit. Choose your unit
If you have the proper permissions, you get a list like this with “Roster”
Evidently I don’t have permission as Roster is not an option for me.
However, somebody must be maintaining the records in Scoutbook. If an adult leader or scout stops paying their fees, then presumably someone is removing them or deactivating them from Scoutbook?
But the Roster should do the trick for our Key 3 folks. They can run the roster at unit recharter time and bill all people on the roster the appropriate fee.
Another problem I see, though, is what if someone pays BSA, but doesn’t pay the troop their fee? We will now have to watch the Roster and maintain our own database of those who have paid their troop fees, to know who is able to participate.
It’s an automated system. I couldn’t imagine a staff member in any council having time to individually manage every one of the registered scouts and scouters on a daily basis. They would do nothing else with their days.
How you manage unit-level fees and participation is a policy issue to resolve within your unit, and potentially in consultation with your council professionals. Since it sounds like (from your description) your role in the unit is somewhat limited at the moment, I would recommend having these discussions with your unit Key 3. This may already be getting handled in your unit, and it just isn’t in your bailiwick.
@DougWright defined it right before he first used it in his post:
It’s good to see that you’re really eager to be involved and proactive. I would recommend focusing that with your unit Key 3 to get some guidance from them on how best to get your questions answered (e.g. who to ask and what type of training might address a lot of your foundational questions).
Thanks. I’m trying to gather information before we meet again. From the discussion at our committee meeting yesterday there is a lot of unknowns still. I didn’t quite catch the conversation at the other end of the table (we were meeting in a restaurant last night as our church meeting room was not available) but from what I gathered folks at district have not been able to answer many questions yet either as they are still confused about it all also.
To my view, this is fundamentally a roster generation problem. If we can get an accurate roster from Scoutbook or my.scouting.org, then we can figure out who to bill for troop fees.
@StevenSheldon - well here is something to think about. What if registered adult paid their national and council fee but not the troop fee would you prohibit them from participating… i really think you and whoever else is in your line of thinking need to step back and examine the intentions
Thanks for all the replies everyone. I don’t want to break the rules any further by steering off into policy discussion more than we already have.
I think it sounds like we will be able to determine who has BSA-paid or Council-paid by whether or not they show up on either the my.scouting.org roster and/or the scoutbook roster. This was my technical question and I think I’ve got a handle on the answer.
