Scoutbook reports to manage awards/advancements

Is there an official place to request an enhancement to Scoutbook? If not, please consider this the enhancement request.

I think the Needs Purchasing and Needs Awarding reports/process should be enhanced. Currently there is overlap between the two reports and if a cub is not handed their award then the Advancement Chair shouldn’t mark it as Awarded yet. Therefore it’s up to the Advancement Chair to manage which awards have been purchased but not handed to someone and it causes manual work when running the two reports.

Instead, there really should be a status added for awards that are Purchased. That way the Needs Purchasing report can compare the Approved awards to see if anything is not in Purchased yet. The Advancement Chair can then add that list of awards to a PO. And once the PO is closed, then all the awards on the PO get moved to the Purchased status.

Then the Needs Awarding report can check for awards in Purchased status but not yet Awarded. Once the award is handed to the cub the Advancement Chair can mark it as Awarded. They would allow for managing the awards all the way through the process and remove the manual work.

I realize that this might add another step for some. But when you have a large pack and often scouts don’t show up to the awards/advancement ceremonies, it makes it hard to manage what’s been purchased and not handed out.

Thank you,
John

Closing the PO essentially makes it the purchased status. Also, note that it’s possible to mark something awarded in order to bypass the PO if you have them on hand already.

But that is only part of what’s required to implement the enhancement I outlined.

The Needs Purchasing and Needs Awarding reports have overlapping criteria. The criteria for the reports are listed in this page:

It would also be nice to see the status change in SB to needs purchasing and purchased accordingly, based on the PO status.

An award will not appear on the Needs Purchasing report if it is on an open or closed PO or if it has been marked Awarded. If it is not on the Needs Purchasing report, the approved award has already been purchased because of one of the above conditions.

Ok I had the issue a little backwards. The problem is that items that Need Purchasing and that are not on a PO are also in the Needs Awarding report. So if I have a cub who’s award is approved but not on a PO yet (maybe I already sent a PO to the scout shop for fulfillment, but this cubs award came in late). Then that cubs award shows up in Needs Purchasing and on the Needs Awarding reports. Honestly, Scoutbook should force every award through a PO and only when the PO is closed should the award show up on the Needs Awarding report.

This situation causes manual review when trying to mark awards as being awarded. I realize the basket is next to the award indicating it’s on a PO. But the Needs Awarding shouldn’t have any awards on it that have not been through a PO. I’ve confirmed this with a live example in Scoutbook now. Also, I’ve thought about a possible solution and one would be to not approve an award until it’s ready for purchasing. However, all that does is shift the manual review earlier in the process. At least if an award is on a PO and not Awarded yet, I can see the basket icon. That would not be true if I push this issue upstream into the Approval part of the process.

There are units that have some awards on hand so they do not need to be on a PO.

Some units set the award to awarded when they physically hand the Scout the award.
Some units set the award to awarded when they have it but have not yet presented it to the Scout.
Some units set the award to awarded when they verbally recognize the Scout, even if they don’t yet have the award.

The way Needs Purchasing and Needs Awarding work today allow for all of these options.

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@shadowjig - having used scoutbook since it was privately owned by subscription ihave had zero issues. The telling item is your statement that your request may cause more work for others… that is a no thank you. That is not fair or scout like to the rest of us. This really seems like a you problem

That’s not a very scout like statement. Please re-read my posts, you’ll find that I’m trying to make the management of these awards easier and remove any manual work, which would be more advantageous for Advancement Chairs.

@shadowjig - I default to what is here:

There are units that have some awards on hand so they do not need to be on a PO.

Some units set the award to awarded when they physically hand the Scout the award.
Some units set the award to awarded when they have it but have not yet presented it to the Scout.
Some units set the award to awarded when they verbally recognize the Scout, even if they don’t yet have the award.

The way Needs Purchasing and Needs Awarding work today allow for all of these options.

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