Problem with dates in Scoutbook

I have a scout that earned merit badges at Scout camp on 8/21/21, but they were not entered into Scoutbook (so leader approved) with a later date.

That merit badge (Swimming) was the last badge needed for rank advancement to Life. The Scout had his Board of review and scoutmaster conference on 8/21/21 after they received the report that he had earned swimming.

My problem is that Scoutbook, will not recognize that he earned Swimming as his 5th required badge for Life. It is applying the next badge he earned which is after the date of his board of review and thus will not let me approve the badge. How can I get Scoutbook to recognize the proper date for Life?

@BethLevine

Go to the Swimming MB, click on the completion date and change it to the date it was actually earned, not the date it was recorded in Scoutbook.

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I tried that. Scoutbook says that it the Swimming merit badge was earned on 8/21, but is not using that date to populate the requirements for the Life rank.

I think this is due to the enterd date being later. It was originally marked scoutbook completed on 8/27, but that is not the day that the merit badge was earned. I can’t find a way to force Life to accept this merit badge and approve it.

@BethLevine - what does the life advancement page look like for that scout… screen shot for that as well.

It was also marked as leader approved on 8/27/21. Something I did today changed the approval date to today.

Weird, I just tried to approve again, to get the popup window with the error, and it went through. It now shows as approved with an approval date of today, but earned date of 8/21. However, it is still listing the E prep as the 5th merit badge. Will this be a problem when he is up for his eagle?

@BethLevine

Please give us the Scout’s BSA Member ID (no names) and we will investigate.

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It looks like his Eagle rank requirements page has the correct date for the Swimming merit badge, so it is only the Life page that has a problem.

His BSA number is 134624807

If you really want his Life page to look correct, you will need to:

  1. Temporarily remove one of the Life rank requirements (I would recommend the Scoutmaster conference 7, because it’s the same date as the board of review).
  2. Temporarily remove the Life rank board of review requirement 8.
  3. At the top, click on the box that says “Earned”, and remove the leader approved checkbox. Click Save.
  4. Click Earned" again, and remove the date earned. Save.
  5. Go to the Scout’s Advancement page and click on the Emergency Preparedness merit badge.
  6. Click on the box next to where it says “Completed”.
  7. Make a note of the Date completed (10/3/2021).
  8. Remove the checkboxes next to leader approved and remove the Date completed (might need to take 2 steps to do this).
  9. Go back to the Scout’s Life rank page and see if Swimming shows up under requirement 3.
  10. Click on the box next to requirement 3. Make sure that the date is the date of the merit badge that was completed last (8/21/2021). This date must be on or before the board of review / date of rank (8/21/2021), but right now the date shows as 8/23/2021.
  11. If everything looks correct, then you can add back the other Life rank requirements and add back in the Emergency Preparedness MB.

Well, I did the above. Now the swimming merit badge shows in Life. I could not approve the rank on the regular page, had to approve through troop reports, needs approval. However, the date on the merit badge requirement still shows as 8/23/21 even though the last merit badge was earned on 8/21/21. It’s all approved, so he should be fine when he gets to Eagle, but someone may want to look into the programming to get this fixed.

@BethLevine - it does not matter what the sub requirements show as they are not tracked in the database for eagle verification. What essentially matters is the dates on merit badges completed, time in POR and date completed for each rank. You are over-thinking this.

As a matter of fact, you can generate the Eagle Scout Rank Application to prove my point

If you go to the Scout’s Life rank requirements page, click on the checkbox next to requirement 3 (just to the left).

Are you able to change the date to 8/21/2021 and save it?

Done- so simple. Thanks.

I thought I had tried that earlier, but obviously must have been clicking on something else.

Thanks for everyone’s help.

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