The BSA recently announced changes to their annual membership fees and the recharter process, as documented in this post on the Three Harbors Council website. Aside from the fee increases, the most significant change appears to be that, for most units, all membership registration fees will be paid directly to the BSA by individual scouts and adult leaders.
It will still be incumbent on the scouting units to monitor the registration status of their members, to make sure that everyone attending an event is covered by BSA insurance, as well as to assure compliance with the new rules that we discussed in our May newsletter requiring registered adult leaders at every event and "fee paid position" leaders at every overnight event.
To help you track this information, we are expanding the use of the BSA Registration End Date field to include scouts. We implemented a new upload program that will allow you to periodically update everyone's current BSA registration expiration date with data from the BSA's My.Scouting site.
We added a new, optional section to the newsletter that will inform the recipient if their registration is about to become due. We also added two reports to help you track this information.
Please let us know if there are other things we can do to help you manage this transition.
The BSA Registration End Date field is now available on the membership detail page for scouts. It has also been added to the Update All . . . Scout BSA ID page, as shown below.
We recommend that you use this Update All page immediately to set the BSA Registration End Date to the end of your current charter year for all of your current scouts.
To keep the registration end dates up to date, we recommend that you periodically generate the Roster Report CSV file from the My.Scouting site, as shown in this User Guide article.
This file may then be uploaded into TroopWebHost by going to Membership → Upload My.Scouting Roster Report.
The primary purpose of this upload is to transfer the current registration end dates for all scouts and adults into your system. If that's all you want to do, put a checkmark in the first box - Update BAS Registration End Date Only? - and leave the other checkboxes empty.
If you leave that checkbox empty, the upload will update every matching record with the contact information from the My.Scouting site. You should only do this if you think the mailing address, phone number, and email address in My.Scouting is more accurate than what you have in TroopWebHost.
You can also use this function to add new members to your database by checking the Add Member If Not Found? box. This is not recommended unless you have no other source for information on new scouts and adults. The Roster Report file does not contain the sex of each member, nor does it have a reliable way to link parents to scouts - although we will attempt to create those relationships if we see the same mailing address on both a scout and an adult.
If you use this option, be sure to specify the default sex to assign to new scouts who may be added.
And, as always, we recommend that you use the Trial Run option the first time you upload a new file. This will prevent the upload from actually updating your database, while allowing you to see which records will be updated or added. This, in turn, will allow you to make any necessary changes to BSA IDs and names to ensure that each row of the file can find a match in your database.
If you do add members using this function, be sure to check the relationships for each new member that was added.
A new section is available in the automated newsletter to inform recipients if their BSA registration will be due for renewal within the next 60 days.
This feature should probably not be implemented until after this year's recharter is complete, and only after you've updated everyone's registration end dates.
To add this section to your newsletter, go to the Sections tab of the Automated Newsletter Settings page and click on Add Section. Select "BSA Registration" from the drop down list, then click Save & Exit. Then move this section to the appropriate position in your newsletter.
Here is an example of how this section will appear - once it's been added to your newsletter, and only if the recipient's registration is about to expire.
We did not add this section to your newsletter configuration. It is up to you to add this section if and when you think it will be useful.
This new report will make you aware of members who need to renew their BSA registration soon. It includes:
You will find this report under Membership → Troop Directories. (Cub scouts will find it under Membership → Membership Reports.)
This new report shows you the registration information for all active members of your troop, scouts and adults.
You will find this report under Membership → Troop Directories. (Cub scouts will find it under Membership → Membership Reports.)
If your council uses Pecatonica for the annual popcorn fundraiser, you can download the current product line into your upcoming sales campaign by selecting "Pecatonica River Popcorn" as the national sales campaign, then clicking the Add Merchandise From National Campaign button on the Items For Sale tab. This will copy the product descriptions, photos, and prices for all available items into your sales campaign.
This year we set the wholesale cost for each item at 67% of the list price. You may need to adjust the prices to fit your council's price list.
We also continue to support the Trails End product line, but we have not made any changes to our National Campaign data yet this year for that supplier.
Send us a ticket from the My Support Tickets page on your site's Help menu. This is absolutely the best way to communicate with us!
Or simply contact us at CustomerSupport@TroopWebHost.com. If you do, please include your troop number and city in your message so we can identify your site.
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