@NicoleAllen3- yeah they always ask for it which is why I suggested hand writing it for those items. The advancement report is available online.
Score! This is awesome! THANK YOU. I’ll totally use this!
@Stephen_Hornak I found another reason that I would really like to be able to “edit” a MB even if it’s been approved or awarded. As I’ve been entering all our records from Troopmaster into Scoutbook, I had scouts who had earned MBs quite a while ago (2023), but I didn’t mark them as approved/awarded in Scoutbook until today. So now Scoutbook is assigning the MBs to later ranks (like Life), but I had been planning to count it for Star, for example. And I cannot seem to tell Scoutbook where to count each MB. I guess it’s doing it by awarded date. arrgh
@NicoleAllen3- actually the merit badges populate the ranks based on date earned. There is NO choosing what badge applies where. Unlike troopmaster which does not follow the guide to advancement scoutbook does. Date earned is how it is supposed to work.
No one looks to see if the MB list for Star and Life in Scoutbook match what is written in the Scout’s handbook. The requirement for Star is to have completed 4 Eagle Required MBs and any 2 other MBs and for Life it is to have completed 7 Eagle Required MBs and any other 5. There is no requirement to list which MBs apply to Star and Life. There are lists in the Scout handbook for ease of determining if the Scout completed the requirement.
Scoutbook is not populating the MBs by completion date. (Stephen, I’m assuming that’s what you mean by date earned). Scoutbook is populating the MBs into the rank based on when I am marking them as Awarded. Which I did today. But these MBs were all earned in 2020/2021. But in my Scout’s record, it’s counting Nature, Pulp & Paper toward his Eagle rank, even though he “completed” them well before the ones Scoutbook is using to complete his Star Rank.
My issue isn’t that I’m worried I can’t give him what he’s earned. I have tracked this all very closely in Troopmaster for many years. But when I decided to migrate us over to Scoutbook this month (this week), I guess I should have marked the field “awarded” to be the same or at least closer to when he completed/earned it, because it’s creating havoc for me now and I am not allowed to edit the award date after I enter it.
I cannot fix this Scout, but I’ll pay closer attention as I’m updating Scoutbook to reflect my Troopmaster. I know Troopmaster gets a bad wrap sometimes, but in my experience, it actually does follow the rules of advancement. It will not allow entries for things like POR or rank advancement until the required amount of time has passed, for example Which is good. I think Scoutbook is 1000% times easier to use than Troopmaster and I’m glad we’re migrating over. I’m just experiencing some growing pains.
Again, I know what my Scout has earned. I can conduct my Court of Honor without a worry. But I’m pretty type A and I like my t’s crossed and my i’s dotted. And right now I am not able to correct Scoutbook to reflect reality.
@NicoleAllen3- the date awarded is just an audit date and is not of any real consequence. To prove that out you can run either the eagle rank application or the scouts bsa history report to see if it shows date earned or date awarded. In the end the system presents date earned to council. Are you manually entering this data or using the upload?
We have always only uploaded the completed MBs and complete rank advancements (ie. earned Star rank). We tracked all the partials in Troopmaster. We never uploaded partial MBs or partial ranks. Nor did we mark things as approved/recorded in Scoutbook. So what I’m having to do now manually is enter the partial MBs, the partial rank advancement items, and enter our calendar from Teamsnap so Scouts can add their camping nights (a new & welcome functionality for us).
In doing so, I’m realizing that Scoutbook Plus is assigning completed MBs in a different order than what is in the scouts final BSA history report as well as what is in our Troopmaster. Our Troopmaster categorized items the same way the BSA History Report does.The table below shows my Scouts MBs, sorted by the date he earned/completed it, the date it was awarded in Scoutbook (today!), and to which rank that MB is assigned in Troopmaster vs. Scout’s BSA History report, vs. Scoutbook Plus.
Troopmaster and Scout’s BSA History Report are exactly the same.
Scoutbook Plus is not. (differences highlighted in yellow). Disregard the question marks related to Palms. I just haven’t figured out where Scoutbook is storing these palms yet, gotta look at that next.
It’s different. And it doesn’t really matter per se, until you go to mark a Scout off on a rank and it says the Scout hasn’t earned that rank yet. But they have. I’m pasting this Scout’s profile as an example. He earned Star rank a LONG time ago. On 5/8/23. It was marked as complete/earned on that date, in both Troopmaster and Scoutbook and BSA history report.
But Scoutbook Plus will not let me save it when I try to mark it was Awarded, I presume since the MBs have an award date of today 9/20/25 but his Star rank shows as having been earned 1 1/2 years before that.
Again, ultimately doesn’t matter. He’s been wearing that Star rank for eons. But I’d love it if I could figure out a way to get Scoutbook to match BSA/Troopmaster.
There are many posts on the issue with Star/Life requirement 3. A partial fix was released on Friday that fixed the issue with SOME of the Scouts. This partial fix was released with known errors because it did fix some Scouts. The full fix will be released soon.
Watch Scoutbook - Scoutbook Plus Change Log - Scouting Forums for an announcement of a fix.
Awesome, thanks for letting me know that. I imagine programming all this in Scoutbook is a gargantuan task. I’m not surprised there are bugs. Even Apple gets bugs and has to fix them with i-phone updates. No big deal. It isn’t preventing me from being able to do my job - advance my boys - it’s just a hiccup.
I found another Scout with another approved (but not yet awarded) merit badge showing up in his account, which he did not earn or ever start.
But there’s no way to delete the MB.
This seems like such a simple thing that almost every troop would need to do at some point or another. Someone in the troop should be able to do this. Like a Key 3 or Advancement Chair.
@NicoleAllen3- you should be able to unapprove the merit badge. The scouts bsa history report is the data that national and councils see. The visual placement I guess is what you are noting as scoutbook plus? Ultimately all merit badges end up at eagle and the palms.
Agreed. I should be able to.
But I can’t. ![]()
Ps - unlike my issues from earlier this evening, this scout never earned this MB. So regardless of where it is showing up in Scoutbook, I need it deleted from everywhere. It’s not an issue of being applied to a different rank as previously. It’s just an outright error.
@NicoleAllen3- if you go to the history tab in the advancement section where the to purchase and awarded is. Search for that scout and is should list the items. There should be a pencil icon in the middle of each line click on that and see if that unapproves it.
My advice to you is SLOW DOWN and take your time. Do not obsess about look and feel and that word awarded. In the end if the data on the eagle application is correct that is the critical thing all the rest does not matter.
Yes that worked. Thank you!
I am not presently entering all this information. I am just reconciling what is already in Scoutbook from our years of just uploading completed MBs from Troopmaster. When I come across something that doesn’t look right, I am researching it. If I hadn’t reconciled this MB, it would have appeared in my “To Purchase” list and I would have given it to the Scout, even though he never took the MB class.
It’s a long arduous process but if I make sure it’s all correct now, then when we fully migrate over (meaning stop using Troopmaster), we will know everything we’re working with is correct in Scoutbook.
I think when our troop first started 10 years ago, the adult leaders then felt like Scoutbook was hard to use, and Troopmaster was easier to use. Since then, there have been lots of improvements to Scoutbook. But auditing over 10 years of data so we can fully transition is a daunting task.
@NicoleAllen3 - yeah a decade of items is a daunting task and kudos to you for working through it. It is frustrating and is enough to give one a migraine for sure. One thing you can do to break the task up is to filter and sort by date earned.
That way you can check off those up to the nearest CoH date and bulk award them. There is one advantage to your task is that you will learn scoutbook in the process and be better able to manage things moving forward and be able to make a workflow that is effective.
Great idea!
Yeah, that’s why I’m going over it in painstaking detail. One, to learn the software, Two, to make sure I’m intimately aware of what all my Scouts are doing and how I can help them advance if I need to.
Thanks for all your help ! @Stephen_Hornak
So I have an update.
For background to others, I’m moving over all our advancement records from Troopmaster to Scoutbook.
I was having trouble marking my Scout as approved/award for his Star rank - I thought it was related to the way SB assigned his MBs differently than Troopmaster did.
Here is what I found out last night - this was happening to ALL my older Scouts. SB wouldn’t save it when I tried to mark them as complete/approved/awarded for ranks they’d already earned.
Finally I tried something that worked.
In their profile page, instead of just entering their final completion date and checking Mark as Approved/Recorded (which you can do for all the lower ranks through First Class), I stayed over on the right side and transferred over all their dates for each individual requirement for Star, then clicked “Mark as Approved/Recorded”, then hit save for each one.
At the bottom, I did the same for BOR and then entered the final completion date and saved.
THEN I went to the left side to see if I could enter that same completion date and then click “Mark as Awarded/Recorded” and IT WORKED!!!
I had to do this same thing to transfer over my older boys Life rank as well. It let me cruise through First Class just using the summary section at left, but for Star & Life ranks, I had to update each requirement individually first!
Just wanted to share that updated and my small success with yall! ![]()








