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.
Several of Scouts don’t have a “date joined Scouts BSA” date populated. Causinge errors like “Cannot calculate. Please enter aDate…”
Some of these Scouts just joined in Spring via “Be a Scout”
When I ran a custom report just listing the Scouts and their start date, those with missing dates were listed with start dates.
It appears the OA Eligibility report and custom reports hit different fields, tables, or views. Shouldn’t a value like the startdate be a unique universal value across the whole database?
Will this get fixed when Scouting is completly transfered from SB Legacy?
Because of the way Scouting America handles registrations, Date Joined must be filled in by the unit. Go to the Scout’s page in Scoutbook Plus and click on the Date Joined field below the Scout’s picture to set the date.
I did do that. But why does the custom reports have a value for the start date?
Why make the Units manually do it when it is automatically being tracked by National?
Is the end goal to have units manually replicate an automated process? If so, is there a PII or YPT issue that warrants this or should i put in a request to change this process?
National does NOT use the actual start date. They use the first of the month of the date a Scout registers. The actual date matters for OA. Say for example, a Scout goes camping with the pack on March 15 and registers with the Troop on March 28. If the OA Eligibility report used the date entered by National, the Scout would get credit for camping nights that do not apply to OA eligibility.
Hmmm…sorry I am trying to understand and thank you for your time.
We are having the families go through Be a Scout to register with the Troop, when moving up from the Pack; even thought they are comming from our feeder Pack. Once we accept, is that not the start date? Pack activities prior to that date have no play in this scenario, does it?
Am I diong something wrong, do I have it all wrong conceptually?
@JohnSagami- the oa eligibility report relies on the date in the joined scouts bsa field. That field is populated by the unit. It has no other source. The lack of a date will bring in cub camping into the calculation.
But my question is why not use the value (date) when the Troop excepts the Scout into the unit via Be a Scout?
Does that not satisfy the needed data and keep it automated?
I am asking if this is the end goal of the process because I want to know if I should wait until the conversion is complete before entering a change request.
Technically the actual start date is the day they complete the application but if you were to look in the membership database, the start date would be the first of the month, even if they registered today.
As long as they have not camped with their pack in the last month, the actual date does not matter all that much. You can use whatever date is convenient for you.
First, not all units use BeAScout exclusively (or at all), so the automatic method wouldn’t work for any of those units. Secondly, it is not uncommon for units or families to be slow in acting on the application (i.e. submitting to unit by parents or to council/accepting online by units). That means the automatic date could easily be significantly different from when the scout actually began participating with the unit. Whether the latter case should exist is a separate question, but it definitely does exist, so not at least considering it would create issues.
I concur that there should be an easy method for units to address this. Our typical process in my unit has been to set the date when we receive the application, not whenever council eventually acts on it (given that we have not historically accepted online applications for reasons not specifically germane to the discussion).
My last question and point of confusion then is when I run a custom report in Scoutbook Plus choosing only the scouts and their start date, I get accurate dates.
Are these dates not good to use to enter in the scouts profile date field for the OA report?
These dates are the date that the system added the Scout to the roster. In most cases it is OK to use this date.
In some cases, it may not be accurate enough. For example, Scout completes application and camps with the Troop but the application was not approved until a week later. You would want those nights to count for OA so the actual application date needs to be used for Date Joined Scouts BSA.
There are enough cases where the date the Scout was added to SB is wrong that some folks it was important for the unit to fill the date in. If the system did it, most unit leaders would not bother to even look at it.
