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.
As was brought up in this topic Retired Awards, we really need to have some method of preventing individuals starting awards after they are retired. I just had an entire den complete the “Leave No Trace” Award more than four months after it was retired. If we can’t put them in a different section, can there at least be a pop-up when people try to mark it complete, or a date check to verify that the award was completed prior to it being retired?
This is really something that should be looked at to ensure that Scouts and parents/leaders aren’t wasting time on an award that can’t be earned.
I would agree with this. A pop up warning them that it is retired or relabeling the award with (retired 20xx) would be helpful. That way if they ever decide to bring the award back the foundation is still there.
@jacobfetzer I thought (and I could be completely misremembering) that you have one year after the retired date to finish an award, not to start and finish it.
Either way, it would be nice if the stock system continued to keep the items in stock for that year. I have a den of Tigers who earned “Leave No Trace”, but none of the shops have the award, and it isn’t even listed on the scoutshop website.
The one year timeline to earn retired awards is to allow Scouts that may be working on them to finsih them and to deplete inventory. If the BSA continued to order supply until the “earn by” date, they would be stuck holding worthless inventory, thus wasting money.
When an award is retired in Scoutbook, the word RETIRED appears on the page and the award cannot be marked complete after the “earn by” date.
It has been my experience that most units that start working ona retired award do so without first consulting Scoutbook or other resources to see if the award is still active. Adding a pop-up does not help eliminate this problem.
