Youth Member Record Keeping

My ultimate intention here is to provide a full description of the way in which I maintained records for my Pack. Some people will no doubt consider that what I have done is a little unnecessary, but I found it very helpful. For the time being, however, all I can offer is the Excel Workbook that I used to maintain my Cub Scout Records.

As a brief overview, the Workbook comprises a number of interlinked Spreadsheets. To use the Workbook as intended, you'll need to be comfortable using Excel and, for the time being at least, you'll need to ferret around and work out where the relevant links are (although they're all pretty straightforward) before making updates or modifications.

The names of all the youth members are listed in the first Spreadsheet ("Name"), and where ever names are needed elsewhere (in the "Sixes" or "Boomerang Groups" Spreadsheets, for example), the relevant cell(s) is/are linked back to this spreadsheet. Where ever possible, I use formulae to calculate cell contents rather than retyping dependent results.

The main feature of the Workbook is the "Test Summary" Spreadsheet. The cells in this Spreadsheet are linked to the Spreadsheets for individual youth members so that you can see at a glance what particular areas of development are currently lacking, based on the number of youth members who are yet to pass a particular Boomerang Test. To assist further, the number of youth members who are yet to pass a given test is listed near the top of the page, under the relevant test description, and the cell is colour-coded from white, through yellow and orange to red, indicating with increasing importance, an item that should be programmed in the near future.

The "Bronze", "Silver", "Gold", "Yellow Cord" and "Achievement" Spreadsheets are just templates for the entries used in the Spreadsheets for individual youth members.

In the absence of more detailed instructions, the best way to use this Workbook, if you're game, is to copy the relevant cells from one of the youth member Spreadsheets that I've included. I've replaced all the names, to protect both the innocent and guilty. The idea is to fill in the date that each test is completed, in the relevant youth member Spreadsheet. When the required number of tasks for a particular test is complete (sometimes a Test, for example, requires one out of three, or three out of five options only be completed), a tick should appear in the cell adjacent to the test name (assuming that the correct formula has been pasted into that cell). This result will also be propagated through to the "Test Summary" Spreadsheet.

Anyway, if you're interested in any more detail, contact me and I'll try to help you work through it all.