I have a question on using the other money accounts option-
We currently do not use payment online. We are testing it, and it is my hope to turn that feature on over the summer.
During my testing, I clicked on Money- Add Account.
I was able to set up another account and transfer money into the account from the primary account. I was also able to tie an outing to this account when I created the event. This gives us the ability to tie expenses to an outing and see if we made or lost money on the event. :)
I can see lots of benefits to use this option, and feel it could be used for accounting outside of outings such as NYLT fund, equipment fund, etc.
I am curious to see how other units handle payments and manage accounts using TT.
Also, for those units that use this feature, how do you use the option-
“Allow this account to be used by the account owner to pay individual fees such as event fees (this has no effect if you don’t specify an account owner)”
I’m not sure when I would use this option and haven’t played around with it yet.
If you check the box “Allow this account…” you are creating a scout account. If you leave it unchecked, it’s a troop account. That was mentioned in the documentation, but went right over my head…whoops!
I missed that in the documentation! Thank you for mentioning it. I need to go make some changes. lol
I’m also curious how other troops use it. Right now, we are just beginning to use it as a way to let families what they may owe for badges, pins, other purchases that the troop makes that parents need to pay for.
Thanks for the response! I also missed it in the documentation, but just started playing around with it. Here are my thoughts how I think it’s going to work. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong in my understanding. Keep in mind, we have not turned on integrated accounting. We are currently testing.
My thought is to click on add account, and name it the same name as the upcoming event. Do not click the check box, so the account remains a troop account and not a scout account.
Then, create the the event. In the Advanced tab, change the account name to match the name of the account created in the above step.
Now, all RSVPs will go to that event fund.
Any expenses can be paid out of that account.
We can easily see if we priced the outing accurately.
In addition, I think we will use this account for other troop business such as, Equipment Fund, NYLT account, CoH expenses etc. For example, we will pay a portion of NYLT back to the scout after completion. With an NYLT fund, we can transfer money from that fund into the scout account, and have an accurate record of who was paid, how much and when.
At the end of the year, we can zero out the appropriate accounts, as a way of “closing” the account.
My thought is, if we use the steps above, and are smart about our categories, we should be able to understand exactly where our money goes throughout the year.
I’m thinking along the same lines. We would use it for equipment funds, Events, and possibly badge purchasing. Since our troop fundraiser allows us to pay for so many badges, pins, and stars per girl, often we have overages where parents owe. Now our big thing is to get families to actually log on to TT and see they have a balance.
We will have a new treasurer this year that hopefully will be completely on board with all this change this year. I think our first year of doing those baby steps will be the hardest, then consecutive years should be progressively easier and more integrated. Right?
Thanks for the response. I am sure it will all come together.
Regarding parents logging in to see their balance, what about using the newsletter? The newsletter provides the scout account balances of each member in the household. This option must be turned on.
I love that feature but we’re trying to figure out how to use the newsletter efficiently. Right now, we have so many things going out to our parents that it’s all being ignored, missed, or sent to junk mail. Parents to try and read email, but when there is so much coming in it is easy to ignore or miss important stuff. Also, converting our families over TT is a challenge. We went from a completely paper troop to a 95% digital troop. Some of our families are a little resistant to change.
We are having a hard time figuring out how to make the newsletter work efficiently for our troop. Right now, our coordinator tries to send out a weekly/bi-weekly newsletter. For us, the only way for families to see their account is to log on to TT and see it on their dashboard. Since their account balance is at the very top, we’re hoping that will catch their attention. If you have any ideas on how to improve the newsletter, please feel free to chime in.
Sounds like you have your hands full. All I can say is stick with it, eventually the parents will come around. Commit to TT and force the parents to get on board with things. Once they do,they will be glad they did :)
We are rolling out the newsletter and things are going well. We don’t roll it out weekly, but we do want to send it on a more consistent basis.
One thing we do, is put all the announcements into TT. This way everyone has to log in to see the announcements. We also send the newsletter out and have settings set to include announcements. Our big hurdle was sign ups for outings. We had families sign up for both paper and TT. We sent the message that eventually the paper would go away. I think we are on the verge of being there :):) Eventually, you have to pull the trigger and make the move. We also put all our events on the calendar, and started creating events and sent RSVPs.
I have not seen that thread, but will look at it. I have a couple of questions on the newsletter as well.
