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.
When a MBC marks the last item in a MB complete, but doesn’t mark the completion date on the Percent Complete line, there is no way for someone in the unit to know that that merit badge is finished. It doesn’t show up in any reports. If a MBC is using Quick Entry, they are not given the option to put in this date, so they don’t even know that it’s missing.
We have taken to going through each scout’s advancement record and looking for “100%” completions so that we don’t miss anything. Unfortunately, humans miss things, and it seems that each court of honor there is one scout who says that they completed something but didn’t get awarded their badge. Then we go look and sure enough, it’s this same issue again.
When this happens, make it a learning opportunity. Just like with the old blue cards, it is on the Scout to report to the SM (or delegate) that the badge is complete. The Scout has the ability to check that box and enter the completion date, just the same as informing the SM and turning in the card.
I disagree. There lots of other places in SB where marking the last item as approved marks the entire award/rank/adventure complete. In this instance, the MBC is inputting things piecemeal and doesn’t even see the Percent Complete box in tbe Quick Entry section. If the MBC had marked it as complete, why is the entire MB signed off? As advancement chair, what am I going to do except add it to my PO and purchase the patch?
I have had a few scouts that have gone to a council property for a MB Class. The MB Counselors have used SB to record MB partials and completions. I send out email messages to the Troop regarding turning in blue cards. I also send out a spreadsheet with rank, MB’s and Awards. This helps jog the memories of the scouts that they have something to turn in or let me know that they completed a MB at a Council property. Personally I feel communication is the key. And I feel the scouts should let me know when they have completed a MB, especially if it is completed through SB. The spreadsheet also helps the scout(s) who is putting together the Court of Honor Program.
The counselor has two ways to interact with merit badges in Scoutbook, both through Quick Entry and directly in the advancement record of a connected Scout. There are two choices in Quick Entry:
For signing completed badges, the counselor sees this:
This form is essentially the same as the back side of the applicant’s record (center section) on a traditional blue card.
I think the solution you are requesting is a new feature, to automate that last step, and it is not a bug. It’s certainly worth discussing the value of the new feature to help the developers decide whether to implement it and how to prioritze it.
In my view, the system as designed contains the complete functionality needed by the Scout and the MBC to record progress on merit badge completion. There are some gaps in getting the counselors to use all of the functionality, which can lead to some extra work for the unit in figuring out which Scouts have completed which badges. I’ve experienced this myself as a parent, troop committee chairman, and advancement coordinator. My solution has been to educate both Scout and MBC on how the system works. It eats up a bit of my hour per week, but only a little and not frequently.
I checked, and when entering the requirements directly in the Scout’s advancement record for a badge, on completion of all requirements the completed box does get checked (and the audit log indicates that I did so). This is the method that a Scout would use for recording his or her own progress, so if they are using the system (not all do - parents’ prerogative) then the lack of completion to cue the advancement chair is eliminated. It still needs a counselor’s approval if the Scout does it.
Thank you for putting it more succinctly than I did. That’s exactly what I am saying. There are other times, like a Nova Award, for example, where when you add the last individual requirement it marks the whole award as complete and does not require an extra step. I don’t see that signing off MBs should be any different. It’s challenging enough to get MBCs to use Scoutbook, let alone in this new day and age of virtual MB counseling for it to be reasonable to expect that all counselors are going to understand this last step. I don’t understand why a scout has to come and tell me (as advancement chair) that he or she has completed a MB except that “it’s always been done that way.” If the counselor has signed off on it I’m not really able, nor should I, change anything anyway, so why would I need to provide an extra step to approve it at the end? As it is now, if a MBC doesn’t mark it and I don’t catch it by manually going through each of my scout’s advancement records in SB, it may get missed. That’s not fair to the scout.
What I recommend until the behavior is changed is to create a report with Report Builder that includes all MBs, ranks and awards your unit is interested in. Turn on the % Complete setting and Date setting. Search the report for 100. If you find it, that is an item that is complete but does not have a completion date. This is much faster than clicking on each Scout’s advancement page.
