Setting up and managing your financial books is probably one of the more complex but important topic for a unit. Scout Manager provides a consistent way to help you do this with the ability to easily pass along the responsibility as your unit matures and new people arrive to help. There's no need for an accounting background with the our extremely easy interface and robust reporting. Enter your deposits and receipts and assign each transaction to an account and category. Quickly generate reports based on all transactions and use them for budget meetings.
The first thing you'll need to do is add the treasurer role to at least one person on your leadership team. This action is required and exposes the accounts menu option for this person. Only the people you assign the treasurer role will have the ability to manage your unit finances.
To add the Treasurer role to a user's profile, navigate to the Leaders tab and press the + button. Select Treasurer from the list of roles and then select the user(s) by adding their name and pressing Save.
If you're just starting you you can quickly get things setup by initially accessing any option under the accounts menu. There's only one decision to make -- whether to have the system create initial zero-balance accounts for all your scouts or not. If you're not sure go ahead and select it as it will save you significant time later on if you decide you want it.
That's it! You're all set up and ready to enter transactions. See below for fine-tuning the accounts to your needs.
There is a navigation bar at the top of the accounting module that allows you to quickly move from one section to the next.
Dashboard -- Provides an overview of your finances and recent transactions in one location. Quickly add, edit or delete transactions.
Transactions -- Search, view, sort and export all transactions.
Reports -- Display and export monthly balance reports for accounts, categories and users. Graphs help to visualize the balances.
Events -- Integration with Scout Manager's calendar allows treasurer's to quickly charge event attendees. See who has a charge already and who still needs to pay.
Account Management -- Manage all aspects of your accounts, categories and users: Create, edit, delete, activate/deactivate, set initial balances
Select the top-level menu Accounts, and then use Account Management to view your Accounts, Expenses, Revenues Liabilities and User accounts. Add, edit and delete as necessary to get them set up the one you'd like. Set the initial balance and initial balnce date for any account you'd like -- setting the initial balance date affects the monthly reporting.
Note: you can come back at any time to add/edit/delete accounts, set the initial balance and change the initial balance date.
If you'd like someone to see an account balance (view only access), click on the account name and press the Add User Profile button. Select the user profile and press Add selected. The selected users will be able to see the account balance on their user profile.
Note: Scout Manager ensures parents of scouts can automatically see their scout's balances.
Asset (Accounts)
These accounts hold tangible money such as bank accounts or lines of credit. e.g. Troop Checking Account, Scout Service Center (line of credit), etc.
Expense
Expense accounts hold your pack or troops expenses. (e.g. Office supplies, Awards, Equipment, Fuel, T-shirts, etc.) Don't confuse this with a scout's expenses (e.g. Camping, Summer Camp, Dues).
Revenue
This is the pack or troops income stream that goes directly to the troop. (e.g. fundraisers, dues, donations)
Liabilities
Use your liability accounts to hold money you owe others in the future or if you want to set aside money to be used in a specific way. (e.g. Twilight/Summer Camp, High Adventure camps, New Tents, Scholarships, etc.)
Users
These are special liability accounts set aside to be used specifically for your scout and adults. They are typically called Scout Accounts. These are not required but may be used if you want your scouts to hold a balance (positive or negative) or if you plan to distribute fundraising to participating scouts.
Delete an account, category or user by going to Account Management, find the appropriate account and pressing the Delete button next to it. You'll be prompted to delete the account and associated transactions or the account only.
Delete an account and associated transactions If you decide you do not need an account or any of the transactions associated with it, then you can use this option. Only the portion of a transaction associated with this account, category or user will be removed. For example, you want to delete the Donations category. The portion of the transaction associated with the Deposit category will be removed but the portion referencing your checking account will remain. This allows the checking account balance to remain unchanged.
Delete the account, category or user only Use this option when you want to delete an account, category or user but want all the transactions to remain. Account transactions are modified with the No Account attribute, categories and users are set to Uncategorized.
Use the Dashboard view to manage transactions.
Add a new transactions from the dashboard by filling in the form and pressing the Save Transaction button. You can split the transaction across categories and users or leave it as uncategoried. There are total and remaining fields at the bottom to help you know if you've categorized the total amount; however, you can exceed or be under the amount and the transaction will still post. This allows you to categorize only a portion of a transaction or categorize in multiple areas.
Use this transaction to deposit into your accounts. You may specify to credit a user's account or track with a category such as a Donation.
Use this transaction when you have money leaving your bank accounts, such as writing a check to pay for something. You may specify to debit a user's account or track with a category such as Awards.
Transfers allow you to move money between two different accounts or users. If you need to transfer to move than two accounts, simply create another transaction.
Find the transaction you need to edit or delete. Hover over the transaction and you'll see the edit/delete buttons appear on the right-hand side. Click on one of the action icons.
Edit -- clicking on the edit icon will open up the edit dialog. Make the changes you need and press Save Transaction. The transaction will be save and balances will be immediately all accounts affected (added, modified or removed.)
Delete -- clicking on the delete icon will open the Delete Confirmation dialog. Verify this is the correct transaction and press the Delete button. The transaction will be removed and balances will be immediately rolled back for all accounts affected.
Scout Manager provides you with various reports to help you visualize and understand your finances. The reports provide you with a 12-month glimpse of monthly balances and breakdowns. You can select between the last 12 months or a complete year for your bank accounts, categories and users. Additionally, there's a view to provide a bird's eye view of your deposits versus withdrawals.
Graph reports are detailed by account with a spark line graph showing each account's progression progression over a 12 month period.
Accounting Reports are generated as a PDF that is automatically downloaded to be viewed offline or printed.
A running balance is what you see in your bank statement each month with a list of transactions and a running balance down to a final balance. Scout Manager provides a monthly running balance for bank accounts and users in the reports section.
A monthly breakdown is a monthly total of all transactions. Scout Manager provides monthly breakdowns for all categories to provide a report on how money was spent month-to-month.
For people who want ultimate control over their reporting Scout Manager provides a way to export balances. Use the export and print buttons on the left-hand side of each report table to copy data to the clipboard, export to CSV or print in portrait/landscape.
You'll need to use your browser's print functionality to print the table and graph. Browser's and printers all different so your result may differ from what you see on screen.
If the scout/parent gave you real money and you need to deposit into the bank, simply create a deposit transaction and select the account and user.
Use a deposit transaction and select No Account for the account. If you want to categorize the amount, create a withdrawl transaction for the same amount and categorize it.
If the money has already been deposited into the bank account and you're simply distributed funds then use a deposit transaction and select No Account for the account. If this transaction represents the deposit into the bank account, you can select each scout as part of a split transaction and set each amount.
Scenario: A donor gave us $1000 and asked to specifically use $500 for new tents and $500 for summer camp scholarships.
This is a great use case and although this specifically may not happen all the time you can extend this example to many scenarios.
Set up two new Liability accounts: New Tents and Summer Camp Scholarships. You'll also want to make sure you have a Revenue account set up: Donations.
Create a deposit transaction for $1000. Set the first account to your unit's checking account.
Press the + button twice to create three split transactions categories