You don't have to start with an empty database. Your council office can create a ScoutNET export file from which you can import the basic personal data on your scouts and adult leaders. There is an option on the File>Import menu that enables you to do that. If needed, council procedures for creating the export file are located in the Help>View User's Manual for the File>Import section of the program. Unfortunately, the export file does NOT contain advancement data.

Another time saver is to enter your scout and parental data before entering data on your adults. You can then use the family links feature to create records in the adult leader, merit badge counselor, and POCs areas for parents who also serve in one or more of those functions.

Yes, here are some data entry tips we got from BSA:

• Don't enter data with 'Caps Lock' on, particularly when entering names. ScoutNET expects the first letter to be capitalized and the remainder to be lower case. Of course, names like McCoy, Van Dam, and O'Connor are exceptions.
• Don't punctuate any information unnecessarily, especially addresses and abbreviations. For example, instead of 'St.' enter 'St'; instead of 'Apt #22-B' enter 'Apt 22B'; etc. However, sometimes hyphens and slashes are needed for postal delivery (e.g., 10-234 Main St, and 103 1/2 Oak Blvd)
• Don't use data fields to store data other than what is requested by the field label because it can cause processing of your recharter to fail. For example, don't enter driver's license number and license expiration date in the driver's license number field. If you need to record data for which there are no system-defined data items, use the 'remarks' or, better, create your own data items. That can be done on the Remarks/Other tab of the scout and adult personal data dialogs.
• Similarly, if a person has a name prefix (e.g., 'Dr'), don't enter that in the first name field--just enter first name. The program only tracks prefixes for Points of Contact. We also provide separate fields for 'First Name' versus 'Nickname'. Enter the formal first name in the 'First Name' field.
• If a person has a suffix (e.g., 'Jr'), enter that in the suffix field, not the last name field.

Yes, the latest versions of both TroopMaster and PackMaster are fully compatible with the new Internet Rechartering System.

Yes, the latest versions of both TroopMaster and PackMaster are fully compatible with the new Internet Advancement System.

The awards from your transfer file will only be transferred into their system if it can find an exact match on an existing member in their database. To find this existing record in their system will require an exact match on the following fields: First Name, Last Name and Date of Birth. If all three of these fields do not match the information in their system, it will not find the existing record and will not transfer the advancement records for this member.

You can use their system to generate a roster of your members which will allow you to check the exact spelling of the names in their system. If these do not match, one of the two system will need to be adjusted so that they are both the same. If the names are spelled exactly the same and the records still are not being transferred, the DOB must not match between the two systems. For security reasons, DOB is not available on any of the reports that you can manually generate from their system so, in this case, you would need to manually confirm this data with your local council to make sure the DOB matches the data in your system.

Yes, if you first format the CD for data. CD's do not come pre-formatted because the format needed varies with the intended use (i.e., music, data, video, etc.) . You should have a program that came with your writable CD drive that you can use to format a CD. On most computers, if you insert an unformatted CD, that program will automatically start and it will ask you what you want to do with the CD. You should choose the data format option. The "Open a writable CD folder" option is not sufficient.

The default settings for the Award Cards and Merit Badge Blue Cards should work fine for most printers. However, if you are having trouble, you may need to adjust these settings.

The purpose of the "R" (reported) flag is to provide a way of tracking awards that were earned during the time period for your previous Court of Honor, but were not reported to you until after the close out date of the Court. These awards can optionally be included on the next Court of Honor and on the associated Unit Advancement Report (4403) for your council.

The purpose of the "P" (presented) flag is to provide a way of handling the case where a scout misses a Court of Honor. If that happens, you can go to his Individual Advancement records and turn off the "P" flags for the awards he was to receive. These awards can then optionally be included on the next Court of Honor report. These awards will not be included on the next Unit Advancement Report (4403) because they have already been reported to your council.

The program is flexible in marking attendance for activities. Typically, if some scouts camp a different number of nights than others, you simply use the number of nights camped as the Attendance Marker for those scouts. For example, if a scout leaves after the first night of a two-night campout, you mark attendance for him by putting a "1" next to his name--that will override the nights camped for just that scout.

The program will accept a different phone number format for overseas units, so make sure you've set your country code on the File>Preferences dialog. You must also uncheck the U.S. Phone/Zip Format checkbox on that same dialog.

If you have AOL 7.0 or newer, you can configure it to work with our software. However, you must first make AOL the Windows default e-mail program.

If you have AOL 7.0 or 8.0:

1. Sign on to AOL.
2. Click the Keyword button.
3. In the 'Keyword' dialog, type the word 'Preferences' (without the quotes) and click Go.
4. In the 'Preferences' dialog, click on the 'Association' link to select 'America Online' as your preferred application for web browsing, e-mail and newsgroups.
5. In the resulting 'Associations Preferences' dialog, click OK.

If you have AOL 9.0:

1. Sign on to AOL.
2. Click the 'Settings' icon on the toolbar.
3. Click the Index tab.
4. Click the 'AOL as Default' link.
5. Click OK.

In the latest versions of our programs, we have replaced the old "flags" with much more flexible and intuitive Member Groups. Groups are created through the Unit>Group Members option. You can create as many groups as you like and you can assign anyone in your database to any group. For ease of use, you can name each group; e.g., Troop Committee, Summer Camp, etc. When you generate reports, you can optionally control who appears on the reports by selecting one or more of your defined groups. On the reports dialogs, groups are selected through the Filtered Selection option on the drop-down list boxes.

The data formats between the old and new versions are totally different so the existing (old) data must be converted to the new formats during the installation. Please see Section 1 of the Getting Started Guide.

The new Save to PDF option does now support saving the grid lines as well as the text from the report. However, the Text, Rich Text, and HTML options do not support these grid lines. If you must save to one of these formats, one of our users came up with a way to restore lines to a Calendar that's been saved in Rich Text format. For specific procedures, please visit the following website:

Windows Vista introduced quite a bit of security protections on specific folders in your system. If you attempt to backup your files to any of these protected folders, you will be prevented from saving the backup. The default settings should allow you to save your backups to either directly to our program folder or to your My Documents folder on the machine. If you need to create your backup in one of the protected locations, you may need to disable the User Account Control in your Vista installation.

For more information on User Account Control, please visit the Microsoft website at: