Ideas For Troop Advancement Organization System Needed

[ImJoAnn]

Okay, this is from the organization fanatic in me. Having recently been appointed as Troop Advancement Coordinator, I was wondering what everyone uses to organize the advancement/merit badge items - paperwork, blue cards, etc? Does anyone have a good "organized" system or does everybody have a messy file cabinet somewhere? The paperwork is easily kept in a binder, but the blue cards present a problem for transport, maintaining and easy access for multiple leaders. Too much cross-referencing required. Any ideas out there?

[Mrw]

I use Troopmaster to keep track of the scouts' advancements and upload the files to ScoutNet when it is time to order badges.

There is a single file folder of historical advancement reports that have been sent to Council. The troop portion of the blue cards gets dumped into a shoebox in the troop closet. Someone recently cleaned that up a bit and tossed all the older ones (for boys over 18).

Although I have had occasion to need an older advancement report to correct a scout's record with Council, this has not happened sine we could do on-line advancement. I have never needed a blue card once the badge was recorded.

Our Council has a badge checklist that they want filled out and signed when an Eagle app is submitted so it is easier for them to check that the boy has the proper badges earned. I keep a copy of this form that I fill out as the boys go along because it is easier for me that way. These are in a binder.

[Billiken]

Our Advancement Chair uses TroopMaster too.

Be sure to periodically check your council's advancement records for each Scout.

We did this last month and found that our council advancement records showed that one of our Tfoot Scouts had earned Camping MB. (In fact, he had earned Canoeing at summer camp.)
We found quite a few other data entry errors (mainly dates when MBs and ranks earned).

[Quailman]

Verifying the dates in Troopmaster and Council is very important. Two weeks ago I hand-delivered the application for our troop's first Eagle Palm to our council office. Well, the advancement person had mis-entered a date for a recently earned badge, so Troopmaster was counting it towards that boy's Eagle rank. That meant that the last badge listed on his Eagle Application was bumped to become the first of his five toward his palm when Troopmaster printed the palm application. I was only in the council office about thirty seconds. I went back last week with the correct paperwork and he received the palm Monday.

[Mrw]

Our data entry errors have been largely a non-issue with on-line advancement. I can double-check that I entered them all correctly before sending it off. Prior to that there were a few entries a year that needed to be corrected in ScoutNet. Trying to convince them that little Joey did not earn a badge he was credited with was a pain!

[cballman]

The way to keep the blue cards organized is to have a Manilla folder with the kids name in a filing cabinet. Then the blue card fit into the baseball card pages inside the folder. and a copy of the advancement report so that the adults can see where the boy in on advancement.