Scoutbook and large Troops

  1. A concern with Scoutbook is that it is not recommended for large troops because it does not keep an individual event record; an “event” being the activity that the scouts are doing–a camping trip, hike, service project, etc. For instance, questions frequently arise on “who participated on X event?” In Scoutbook, since there are no event data, there is no way to find X event. I don’t know if this might still be the case with Scoutbook.

  2. Another concern is whether Scoutbook allows for the ability to create reports such as “Individual participation.” Our Troop has run such reports frequently in the past and is still doing so, especially to get a scout’s service hours or camping nights. Reports are critical in our Troop, so we would want to be sure that Scoutbook can provide those.

Scoutbook (although it’s been moved to IA2 in anticipation of eventual migration to that interface to the database) does have reporting capabilities (by scout and at large), and does permit tracking of activities and participation in them, although perhaps not in the same ways that some of the commercial packages do. So, there will be a learning curve.

As far as “individual participation” reports, it kinda depends on what you’re trying to do and track. Camping nights and service hours have logs, as do hiking miles. There are not currently logs for anything beyond those three categories.

I’d suggest looking at these for some basic information:

There are many more help pages regarding the activity logs. These are just a few of the first ones that came up by searching on “activity” or “activities” at https://help.scoutbook.scouting.org

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For question 1, I think you are assuming a lot. Attendance can be tracked and nights camped, miles hiked, and service hours can be recorded.

I have never heard “not recommended for large units”. The roster takes longer to pull up, but other than that, a large unit and a small unit do the same program and have the same recording needs.

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@TobeyTrumbull - i would ask where is your information coming from ?

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At its simplest, the calendar events allow for taking attendance, and there is an attendance report that you can filter to a single scout.

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