How can I link all the money accounts in one household? I would like to be able to give each family a total of what all members owe…
This would also allow somehow for the $60 sister cap.
Thanks!
We don’t currently have a view of money accounts that groups them by household. I’d be very curious to know whether other users would find this useful, so please chime in if you agree!
I’m not sure how we would deal with AHG’s $60 sister cap. We don’t currently have anything in TroopTrack that would calculate membership fees based on whether there are siblings in the troop. That’s another thing I’d be interested in learning more about - whether non-AHG troops need this sort of feature too.
~ Dave
3 Likes
Yes, we’d like money accounts grouped by household. But in the meantime…
Our current workaround is to have accounts that are named after the youth they’re linked to but “owned” by one of the youth’s parents/guardians, usually the mother. When we charge fees for events, TT still finds the appropriate account to pull the money from (based on the name, apparently), but when we want to see what a family owes as a whole, we can look at the parent’s money accounts page. It doesn’t show the total, but at least all the youth accounts in that family are shown in the same page. From there we sometimes do transfers between sisters accounts if one is positive and one is negative.
For the sister cap, for Registration Fees, we do Bulk Money transactions of $26 for all girls with 0 or 1 sister, and of $20 all girls with 2 sisters. (If we had families with four girls, we’d probably just do one final bulk transaction of $15 for them…)
-Karin
AHG MN0200
3 Likes
Interesting! We are just now beginning to play with the money accounts and instead of creating individual accounts, we are creating Family accounts. Then we are just attempting to go in and charge each family what their total registration is. So either, $26, $52, or $60. Since AHG changed their policies on individual girl accounts, we haven’t really figured out how else to use the Money Section of TT.
Christie
We would LOVE household accounts, too. @SRUEDU - how did AHG change the policy? Did not know there was one…
1 Like
@GambrillWagner I’ll ask our coordinator. She received something from National about no more girl accounts. I just know that National was very adamant about no girl accounts as our troop did them last year. Something about them being against IRS regulations. As soon as I hear back from her, I’ll post it for you. 
Crissi
@GambrillWagner I talked to our Coordinator. She said it was a conversation she had with National. It wasn’t something she got in email. I misunderstood that part. I’d definitely call National if you have any questions about using girl accounts.
Hope that helps!
Crissi
Yes, there’s something about money that belongs to the troop not being used for the benefit of one particular individual, especially in terms of fundraising money earned. If I understand things correctly, fundraising money belongs to the troop, not to individual girls or solely for their benefit. Or something like that. So, often, when people talk of “girl accounts” they’re taking about “this girl earned $150 during fundraising, so we’ll put it in a girl account for her to use to pay for stuff”.
But that issue aside, girl accounts can also be used merely for excellent communication regarding money. We’ve tried all sorts of methods for having parents know how much to pay for badges earned outside of troop time—paper forms, emails (with individual totals typed in for each email to each family), etc. Now every girl has an account. When ceremony ordering time is approaching, we order anything marked as 100% in TT and then our Treasurer enters transactions in each affected girl’s account. Then it’s just a matter of reminding parents “Check TT to see if you have a negative balance, and if you do, bring a check to the next meeting.”
1 Like
Same in Girl Scouts. We cannot have individual girl accounts. I am using the accounts on here the same way, where it’s just so parents will know they need to pay something.
OK, thanks, All! We only using girl accounts to track their charges for things like badges, registration, etc. We’re not allocating fundraising $ individually.
So if we budget that a certain amount of fundraising money goes to pay for badges (for example), we can not deposit those funds into an account listed with the girls name?
Or what if our Explorers did their own fundraiser and then they wanted to use that money that they earned toward individual things, like summer camp, or to pay for a new uniform, or AHG store merchandise, etc. ? Can we not do that?
I don’t think I understand the policy fully.
Thanks for any clarification you can give.
I would definitely call National to get the full details.
But from what I understand, money can’t go to an actual individual girl. It’s not “the girl’s money” it is the troop’s funds. If a girl leaves and has money in “her” account, she cannot take it.
So if you divide things up and put money in for badges, that is fine. In our case, our troop from its fundraiser last year, was able to pay for 4 badges, 3 service stars, one religious award, and one sports pin per girl. We could technically deposit the money in there for that, but then it becomes sticky (possibly b/c I’m still learning the Money Account features) if they don’t use it all. Do you put that full amount toward each girl for additional badges they earn?
1 Like
From our perspective it would be nice to see all the accounts associated with a household no matter if they are owned by one individual or many individuals. It slows things down when you have to move to each individual and then click on there money to see the status. Changing the Money tab or adding a new tab would simplify this for us.
Walter
2 Likes
Yes! it would be very helpful to link family accounts together. Parents often write one check, but we have 2-3 members that they are making payments for. Also, it is very time consuming to input multiple, varied transactions (like individual badge orders). Why can’t we add new transactions from the main money page? Thank you!
Welcome to the community Anna, not sure if it would help in your situation but what we did to get around this in our Boy Scout Troop was to create a Money Account for the family, typically it is owned by Mom but sometimes Dad. Since the Scouts are part of the same household they can pay from that money account, even if there are multiple scouts and adults attending an event when they RSVP and pay it all gets deducted from the one Money Account. Thankfully we realized this limitation early on so didn’t have many transactions in individual accounts before switching over to “Family” accounts.
This thread looks old, and I’m new to TT, thinking about switching from Troopmaster. Did any kind of household group finance feature ever get built? I am the treasurer of a troop with about 50 boys, and this feature would be extremely useful. I frequently get asked by a parent for their total household balance, and I often need to move money between family members.
Thanks,
Jeff
If you start out setting things up for one Money Account per Family owned by one of the Adults, then it can work that way. Everyone from the Household can pay from one Account.
I’d like to see a family account also. It would make it a lot easier to track.
For those of you who are creating one account for the family, how are you tracking awards then? For instance, I have two sets of sisters in one level, so I don’t think it would be possible to have child 1 achieve X,Y,Z awards and then child 2 A,B,C awards. Does that make sense?
Awards are tracked per user and each Parent and Child have their own User profile, its just the Money account that is singular and shared amongst the family. TT has the option for each User Profile to have their own Money Account listed under the Money tab. However if you only set up one of the Parents with a Money Account everyone in the same Household (Family) can pay from that account.
Say you have the Smith Family with mom and dad John and Jane, daughters Jill and Abby. Mom is the most active so you create a Money account named Smith Family with Jane Smith as the Owner. If John logs into TT he can go to Manage, Money, and will see Smith Family listed there to look at how much is in the account and what has been paid for, then if Jill is doing an RSVP for an event that costs $10 it will automatically deduct the money from the Smith Family account. Under the Money tab of John, Jill and Abby there is no Money account listed. In this scenario the Money account is singular for the entire Family, and each individual can pay from and see that Money account, but each user has their own profile for keeping track of Advancements, Participation, Leadership, Training, Etc. Only Jane will see an account listed under the Money tab of her Profile, and on her Dashboard.
This Money account system tied to individual or to Household gives flexibility for how units would like to use the system, some may prefer for each scout to have their own account tracked individually, we found the Family option to be the best for our needs. It can do both it just needs to be set up properly.