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.
I am a new Cub Master with new leaders. Our pack camps every month. Because of our new leaders delay in getting their applications in, I’ve had way too much on my plate. Besides being a Cub Master, I was also acting den leader for two dens until I could get new den leaders. We had over 60 kids join our pack in August and September. I was also the popcorn colonel for our pack. We sold over $4000 in popcorn in a few weekends. I couldn’t order more because there wasn’t time to deal with it. We had 80 people at our September camping trip. Our October camping was impacted by hurricane Milton and I had to scramble to plan another venue. We were able to reschedule two weeks later. Our November camping trip to Favor Dykes park and Marine land was also canceled due to hurricane damage. I was fortunate in finding another location to camp but it wasn’t easy.
The problems caused by the new Recharter caused me a lot of extra work. The quick entry change cost me a day. I normally could do it in an hour. Other packs were complaining at the last roundtable. We had the problem three weeks earlier.
I volunteer three weeks a year at the Aquatics camp in the summer and other shooting sports events during the year. I don’t have any more time that I can give to Scouts. I have our pack and my family.
We were not told of changes to quick entry. Recharter messing up our rosters in Scoutbook was a nightmare. One pack had kids who weren’t active in their pack for three years dumped into their unassigned dens.
We can’t use Scoutbook at the beginning of the year because it takes weeks in our case it was two months for them to be loaded into Scoutbook.
There has to be a better way to handle everything. The latest changes have created a tremendous amount of extra work for me.
We are now being asked to start doing recharter as we had done in the past because the new way failed.
I was president of a gun club with 409 members and vice president of the range with over 3000 members. We treated volunteers like gold. We respected the time they were volunteering. It has been so frustrating with all of the extra time I was having to put in to deal with the mess Recharter did to our roster and the. The quick entry was the icing on the cake.
One big problem with the new recharter is so many people don’t read their emails. Many people don’t answer their phone either. When I send an email out to the pack I have started to follow up with a text telling them to check their emails.
I worked as a systems engineer for many years for very medium to large systems deliveries and upgrades. I was pretty surprised to see how these deliveries were done.
Communication with us would be much appreciated. I don’t care who is doing the communicating. We need to be told of changes.
I apologize for being so blunt but making these changes without notice has caused me a tremendous amount of time that I don’t have.
This feedback needs to go to your council (both the council level volunteers and the few paid employees). They are the ones that have the ear / can have the ear of those that can make a difference. Every post you have seen in these forums are volunteers just like you. None are paid and none are the developers.
@RobertCowan - I suggest that you subscribe to these:
As has been noted many times, the folks on these forums are volunteers just like you. Giving us the run down of your issues is not going to help your cause. I would also suggest that your unit enable on-line registration as that will bring scouts into the unit roster within 24 hours.
There are changes to the scoutbook systems every week. An email to every registered leader every single week would be viewed as overkill or even spam. The people who really care should subscribe to the change log and set their preferences to receive emails.
But…den leaders having the ability to approve any/all adventures regardless of familial relationship is a universal requirement; not something unique to any particular pack or district.
As has been noted numerous times in various threads on the topic, it’s a known bug, not an intended feature. One that, as you know from the other thread where you’re posting, was thought to have been fixed. Since it’s being reported again (or potentially continuing for some users), more detailed information on when it’s occurring and for whom is needed to diagnose the issue.
Thanks, Charlie. You’re aware, too, that people are being told the issue is fixed when it’s clearly not. No one is pointing fingers or placing blame here. Facts are facts; this isn’t some hobby-shopped niche use of scoutbook. Den leaders are just asking what’s going on and how they can fix it.
Actually, what I’ve seen on numerous threads is “we think this is/thought this was fixed, please provide us enough information to investigate why it’s not working for you.” There have been numerous cases (including recently) where the people reporting this and similar issues were not properly connected to any/all of the scouts involved, didn’t have the relevant positions, weren’t registered in the proper position,… Weeding those and other similar issues out from actual system dysfunction requires more information than “it’s not working”. Thus, all the questions.
None of us here have visibility into the code base, whether we’re just unit level volunteers or folks like the SUAC, and only the BSA official folks can make a call that something is actually a bug/not working. The most the SUAC folks can do is report what’s been provided to them and (where they have access, test the issue themselves).
Thanks, Charley. No idea what other threads are saying since we’re only talking about this one and the other one you mentioned in your initial response to me. We all look forward to a proper fix to this issue.
Makes perfect sense, Matt. I do appreciate the work from everyone here to figure this out. We just need to do a better job communicating the nuances and remember that most of us don’t have all the information the super users here have, hence why we come here to begin with.
I have been having the same problem this year as well and I think I found the issue, at least for me. Last year I checked off the tasks for everyone in my den (including my son) and was able to select “marked as approved” and it would go through just fine. If I did it for each individual scout, I would select “marked as approved”, but I wouldn’t have to do it for my son. It would just happen automatically. This year I still select “marked as approved” for the scouts in my den, but the option isn’t available when I do my son’s tasks. So, everyone was approved except my son. I figured out when I’m on my sons profile on scoutbook (when I’m on the screen for advancements) that there is a yellow button in the top right corner with the cub scouts logo that I click and the two options to choose from is parent/guardian and Cub Scout. I click Cub Scout and then select my son in the list of pack members and click view profile. Once I do that, the option of “marked as approved” is now available because I’m marking tasks off as a den leader and not as a parent.
I hope this helps and maybe this info will help get the glitch fixed.
Sorry I didn’t mark up my pictures, but one picture is just the advancement screen with the yellow button in the top right corner and the other picture is after I click on it and the two options that show up once I click on the hutton. (Cub scout and parent/guardian)
Unfortunately our Pack became aware of this issue after our first Advancement ceremony. Since then, as Advancement Chair, I run a report prior to creating the Purchase Order and check with Den Leaders if I see completed Adventures that are not marked as approved. If the Adventure needs to be approved, the Den Leaders authorize me to approve it, and I am able to.
Additionally, I check that all approved Adventures appear on the Needs Purchasing report.
Our Pack is relatively large, but it’s not too bad, and it’s only temporary until this bug is fixed.
