Table of Contents

<< List of all previous releases

Release 19.4 - Key Features

Key Features

ScoutBucks & Fundraising Support

Every member now (optionally) has a second “ScoutBucks” wallet that can be used to track funds that aren't real money (those are tracked in the original “Top-Up” wallet). The types of members (i.e., Youth, Youth & Scouters, Everyone, No one) that have this new wallet can be configured under “Account” | “Payment tracking”. E.g., a Section can offer it only to Youth, or disable the “ScoutsBuck” wallet entirely, if they want.

The ScoutBucks wallet functions identically to the original Top-Up wallet. E.g., amounts can be deposited into a member's ScoutBucks wallet, and they can then use it to pay for events. However, the ability for a member to self-pay for an event when RSVP'ing using the funds in their ScoutBucks wallet is an event-specific option (found under “Signup & Fee options”), and also has a default value (under “Account” | “Event defaults”). Some Sections may want to restrict the use of fundraising dollars to just marquis events (e.g., Jamborees), whereas other Sections might be happy if their members use their ScoutBucks in whatever way the families find helpful.

The Section also has a ScoutsBuck wallet, this means that a Section can put aside money (e.g., that was given a donation) into a separate wallet, and use it for their own NOLB program or saving up for expensive gear acquisition, without having that balance muddled with the Section's general operating funds.

Members who have a ScoutBucks wallet (and the troop) now see a second column of Money IN/OUT and Balance when viewing their statements (e.g., “Home” | “My Wallet”, or “Account” | “Wallets” | “Troop”.

There is now also better support for fundraising activities. Of note, after a fundraising event is complete, the Section can now record a fundraiser's proceeds in the event's wallet (including doing the behind-the-scenes double-entry accounting so that the Group's Treasurer can follow along).

And, there is now the ability to share a fundraiser's profit amongst some/all members. E.g., the profits can be shared across all members of the Section, or just select members (e.g., those that participated in the fundraiser). There are flexible ways to specify how much money is to be shared, so it's easy to do things like share one portion of the profits amongst all members, and another bonus share among the participants, and reserve a portion to be put towards the Section's “new canoe fund”.

Note that the Profit (or loss) sharing isn't just for fundraisers. If an event encounters some unanticipated expenses and you want to recoup the losses from all the participants, then the same sharing mechanism can be used to distribute the loss across the selected members' wallets. When sharing a profit (or loss), you are able to specify which of the members' wallets are impacted. Profit/Loss Shares can be edited, so if you realize that you overlooked one participant, or if an after-the-fact donation towards your fundraiser came in, you can go back and re-jig the numbers and all impacted members' wallets will be appropriately credited.

Now that there is a fully-supported ScoutBucks wallet, and built-in support for tracking fundraisers, the old “Targeted Fundraising” pseudo-badge has been deprecated, and any credit towards that badge has been migrated to a ScoutBucks balance.

Other Wallet Enhancements

Wallet Bug Fixes

Bug Fixes

Patch (2025-04-11)

Program Progression Planning

There have been a number of requests to improve the ability to find which requirements the Youth could focus on to advance through the program (e.g., earn their next stage).

Previously, the best you could do was use the “Reports” | “Completion” report, that shows all the requirements for all the Youth, for just a single badge. But the feedback was that this required too much “hunting” through multiple stages in multiple OAS, looking for good opportunities. And, you couldn't easily apply what you'd just discovered to your Program planning.

A more useful workflow would be to allow you to work with the Leadership team to easily identify those requirements that would offer either the “biggest bang for the buck” (benefiting the most Youth) or “low-hanging fruit” (i.e., the last couple of remaining requirements that will complete a badge for a number of Youth), and then with a couple of clicks add those requirements to one of your upcoming events.

To accomplish this goal, there is now a new “Program progression planning” report that can show a selectable number of multiple badges, and reduces the report to just the requirements that have NOT been universally completed, and then lets you select a number of the displayed requirements and add them as Related Requirements to an upcoming event.

The report focuses on what the youth can/should be working on. E.g., if every Youth in your Section has Camping Skills #1.4, there's no point in including that requirement in a planning report. Similarly, if any badge has been entirely completed/awarded by the whole Section, then it is also omitted from the report.

The set of analyzed badges can be automatically fine-tuned to suit the needs of your youth. In particular, there's an “auto pick” option that not only includes the fundamental Personal Progression and Top Section awards, but also reviews the Youths' current OAS progress in order to pick just enough Stages in each OAS to allow all Youth in your Section to advance. E.g., if your Pack has a couple of senior Cubs who have completed Camping Skills 3, then the set of selected Camping Skills to display will include Stages 1-4, so everyone has something to work on in that OAS; whereas if the maximum completed Paddling Skill is just Stage 1, then the set of selected Padding Skills will include Stages 1-2. Or, if none of the Cubs have completed any Emergency Skills, then the set of selected Emergency Skills will be just Stage 1.

Alternatively, you can also preselect just the OAS, in a particular range of Stages. E.g., you can select all OAS stages 1-2, or 1-3, or 1-4 with a single click.

And, of course, you can manually (de)select specific badges, too.

If a displayed requirement is already included in the Related Requirements for an upcoming event, then it is annotated with a scheduled icon, and hovering your cursor over the icon will explain for which event(s) the requirement is included as a Related Requirement.

There is a requirement filter input field, so you can search through the displayed requirements to show only those that match your text (e.g., find all requirements that mention “menu plan”).

The report also supports member filtering, by Patrol or Adventure Team, so you can reduce the number of youth down to just a particular subset. This allows you to work with just a single Patrol to help them find what they want to build into their Program.

The new “Program progression planning” report shows a synopsis of the requirement text in the first column of each row, so you can easily see what the requirement involves (e.g., you can see explicitly that Camping Skills #3.9 is “I can get a weather forecast”, so you don't need to look it up).

And finally, the report allows you to select one or more of the listed requirements, and then click “Add to Event” in the toolbar to include the selected requirements in one of your upcoming event's Related Requirements.

Improved Searching/Filtering

Anywhere that supports searching or text-based filtering is now improved, so as to feel much more similar to common search engines. In particular, multiple search terms are possible.

For example, previously, if you had searched for 'day pack' it would have matched text that contained exactly that string (i.e., the 'day' and 'pack' would have had to be adjacent in the text, in that order). However, now, it'll match any text that contains BOTH the words 'day' AND 'pack' (in any order). However, if you actually do want to an exact multi-word search like before, you can put some of the search terms in quotation marks. E.g., searching for '“day pack” hike' will find text that contains BOTH the two-word term 'day pack' AND the one-word term 'hike' (in any order).

Additionally, searches now use word boundaries, so searching for 'age' will no longer match 'bandage'.

As before, searching for a plural term (e.g., 'canoes') will also match the singular (e.g., 'canoe')

Miscellaneous Enhancements

Bug Fixes

Patch (2025-05-09)

Miscellaneous Enhancements

Bug Fixes

Patch (2025-05-23)

Miscellaneous Enhancements

Bug Fixes

Patch (2025-05-30)

Miscellaneous Enhancements

Bug Fixes

Patch (2025-06-10)

Miscellaneous Enhancement

Bug Fixes

Patch (2025-07-11)

Financial Records Export and Bulk Payments

As requested by some Group treasurers, you can now do a Group-wide export of all transactions that affect members' wallets (and the Sections' own wallets). You can customize the date range, and whether you're just interested in the Top-Up, ScoutBucks or both kinds of wallets.

You can also do an export from a Section account, but obviously, it won't be a Group-wide export.

The export is downloaded as either a .xls or .csv file.

Additionally, there's a faster way to record bulk payments… from the “Manage Signups/Attendance” page, you'll now find an “In Bulk” button above the “Payment” column. Clicking that will let you record with minimal clicks multiple payments received from members. The selections are intialized to those that still owe money, and the amount the owe, but the selected members and amounts can be changed. In the event of an event cancellation (for example) this “In Bulk” interface can also be used to quickly record refunds.

You can now specify and change transaction dates. Previously, all transactions had been timestamped to the time they were recorded, but with the goal of the transactions export feature being to allow a treasurer to reconcile ScoutsTracker data with your bank records, it became important to be able to record the date a payment/refund/reimbursement was actually received/issued.

Configurable Start-of-Year

Sections can now choose when their Scouting Year year starts. Most Sections will still probably want the date to remain in the early fall, coinciding with the youths' return to activities after summer vacation, but others have expressed the desire to have it start on Jan 1st, to coincide with the registration year.

If you go to “Account” | “Program preferences” and pick “January 1st”, then it'll change all instances of “2024-2025” to “2025”, etc., since your Scouting year now no longer spans two calendar years.

Changing the start of the Scouting year, only impacts which events are lumped into which year. E.g., Does your Hallowe'en Party get included in last Scouting year's events (2024), or this yeear's Scouting events (2024-2025). Additionally, it results in a slight presentation change in the Personal Journey Cards (i.e., whether the cycles are listed as Winter→Spring→Summer→Fall, or Fall→Winter→Spring→Summer. Note, changing the start of the Scouting year impacts all previous years' Personal Journey Cards.

Miscellaneous Enhancements

Bug Fixes

Patch (2025-08-06)

Initial Support for Chipmunks

Added preliminary support for the new Chipmunk Section, so Scouters can track events and communicate with parents. Some features (e.g., Sticker Book) are still under development.

Miscellaneous Enhancements

Bug Fixes

Patch (2025-08-26)

WB2 Scouter Development Cards

The WB2 Scouter Development Cards are now integrated into ScoutsTracker. Any member who has an active Scouter role in any Section account will see the link to the Cards on the Home Page. Note, this includes youth members who are acting as Scouters in younger Sections.

One of the things to keep in mind is that a Scouter's progress through the WB2 Cards is self-assessed, i.e., it's up to each Scouter to decide how comfortable they are with each Card's competency. In alignment with the Guide, ScoutsTracker allows each Scouter to set their completion status to be one of four stages… ranging from not knowing how to do the competency, to feeling very comfortable with the competency. But even though there are 4 stages, a Card's competency is deemed to be complete when the Scouter has self-assessed their skill to be stage 3, with Stage 4 being an indicator that the Scouter feels they could act as a resource for other Scouters–indicated by a checkmark with a little plus icon.

Not all Card competencies use this 4-stage recording–there are some Card competencies that are participatory, that one has either done, or not. E.g., “Facilitating Winter Adventures” #7 says “I have participated in one overnight winter camp”, so the “I know” / “I Can” / “I have” stages are irrelevant. Those will get marked as complete or incomplete just like normal badge requirements.

Because all Card competencies are self-assessed, they are never available as Related Requirements. Each Scouter will have to manage their own progression through the WB2 Scouter Development process.

Final Note: When verify the content transcribed from the official Guide into ScoutsTracker, it was discovered that the official Guide contained a number of bad, incorrect, or missing links to on-line resources. These problematic links have been flagged in ScoutsTracker, until they're eventually reviewed and updated by SC.

Inter-Account Wallet Transfers

You can now transfer a balance from a member's Top-Up or ScoutBucks wallet, to their wallet in a different account. This will be most useful when moving a youth up to another Section.

This can be accessed by going to “Account” | “Wallets” | “Member wallets” | <name>, clicking “Add Entry” and selecting “Transfer funds to a different Account”. You can then pick from the member's active roles in other accounts. Alternatively, for the Current Member, you can access this functionality from “Home” | “My wallet”.

Caveat: This only works for active members. So if a Beaver was moved up to Cubs and marked as no longer active in the Colony, then their wallet information is no longer synchronized and won't be visible under “Account” | “Wallets” | “Member wallets”. Ideally, there should be an option to move up balances as part of the move-up/transfer process, but that'll have to wait for a future release.

Miscellaneous Enhancements

Bug Fixes

Patch (2025-09-02)

Miscellaneous Enhancements

Bug Fixes