I’ve been working on entering service hours for my girls and had an idea. I realize my family is an anomaly with 5 girls in the AHG program, but I’ve actually run across this issue when entering service for girls who were at an event that was not on the calendar. If we have several girls that suddenly show up to help with service, putting those hours in individually for 20 girls can be tedious and time consuming. I’d love to see a way to enter bulk service hours that are not from events on the calendar.
Or maybe there is a way to do this and I’ve just missed it?
A calendar event is the best way to bulk record service hours right now. Just put “Never” for the invite and reminder and invite everyone who came to the service event. Makes it easy to record attendance and bulk add hours without anyone receiving invites or anything. You can even make them a certain color on your calendar to represent that it was for bulk hours adding.
Is there a way to keep the event from being seen by everyone? There is another family in our troop that has 4 girls. We both could use this feature, but we really don’t want to include a bulk service event for our girls each time they do something and have it on the calendar for the entire troop to see.
There isn’t a way to “Hide” it per se, but as long as you note what it is, like “Bulk Service Hours” and don’t send the invites or require RSVP or anything, it shouldn’t matter to the users.
I’m ignorant on the subject so forgive my question, but do AHG Troops do a lot of outside service all at once, frequently? If so, this is the best way to handle that right now. If not, then adding them individually as they occur would be the best approach.
I’m not sure about all troops, but ours does. We have random stuff that will pop up and several girls will get together and go. It’s not necessarily something that is on the calendar for the entire troop, just something that comes up.
For the other family that has 4 girls and my family, since we have so many girls in the program, they often do a lot of service together. We were looking at a roundabout way to enter them all at once. We’ll keep entering them individually for our own girls and use the creating an event for the others.
I don’t think it would be a good idea, for our troop, if people put non-official AHG activities on the troop calendar. I’ve seen the number of non-troop service activities these girls participate in. My daughter gets hours every week by volunteering at church. I think the calendar would be filled with girls volunteering!
In addition, if a family logged in that was not very computer savvy, they might feel overwhelmed by the crowded calendar, and not know which events they are supposed to attend.
Also, AHG is very particular about 2 deep leadership, CPR certified adults, permissions slips, carpool/ insurance, travel plans, etc. If people started putting a lot of non-troop events on the calendar that did not have all of those t’s crossed and i’s dotted, it might become very confusing about what was an official activity and what was not.
I think an option for Bulk Service Hours would be useful for families with siblings.
The way we handle this, because we don’t give everyone access to adding service hours like that, is that 3 times per year, a month prior to each Court of Honor, the girls hand in a form listing the service hours they have completed (outside of troop service project events that are on the calendar). In between turn in days, the girls keep a record at home of their service hours. On the turn in day, they show their form to their leader, with their parent’s signature on it, the leader signs it, and they turn it in. Our advancement manager or asst then input the total service hours listed as “Individual Service Hours” for that girl, listing the turn in day as the day they were completed. This way, even though we have to put in the hours for each individual girl, we are only doing so 3 times per year.
We did that for several years. The last 2 we have really worked to migrate as much paperwork as possible to TT. With a troop our size we just don’t have the time to do all that anymore. We’ve shifted much of that entry stuff to our parents at home or with our Pi/Pa’a to themselves. It has been such a time freer for us that we really don’t want to go back! Lol
I support an idea to allow the item to NOT show on the calendar. I agree with mlsully2002 that the easiest way to do entries for multiple attendees is to create an event. But I also agree with all the other users that showing this on the calendar may be confusing. The hard part would be figuring out how the calendar event might be found later on if it doesn’t show on the calendar. So maybe two types of calendars would be needed. The one that shows “hidden events” and the one that shows “public events”. I really don’t know how this might be solved. But I do agree that it would be nice if this could be improved.
I’m with Haggard. That’s what we do…on Achievement Night, 3 times per year, the girls turn in their badgework and service hour forms. The hours are entered by our Service Coordinator. For events that are not troop events, she just lumps all those together as Individual Service Hours for each girl.
If SRUEDU doesn’t want to go back to doing it this way, families can still keep track for a period of time and make one entry per month or whatever for Individual Service Hours. Everything that is not a troop event can be lumped together. We do recommend keeping a detailed record for possible future submission to the Presidential Volunteer Service Award.
Sounds crazy, but we ask our families to put in descriptions of what service their girls do. We want those descriptions in TT for tracking purposes. It’s actually saved our bacon a time or two when parents have entered service stuff incorrectly, myself or one of my TT mom’s can go in and make the corrections fairly quickly.
For now, we will just keep entering the way we have been. Either through the calendar event or plugging away one kid at a time. We were more curious if it would be an option than anything else. We have a lot of families with more than one girl in the program. We were curious to see if we could save time for those of us with multiple kids in the program.
How do people distinguish between religious and non-religious for PVSA and troop related items? We were going to use the Hiking, but now it seems like that will add it to the Service Stars.
Our girls have to turn in a detailed list of what they are turning in for PSA hours. That way, our service coordinator can review them to make sure they count. Anything that doesn’t count can be entered into service for the stars. Some things count toward both PSA and service stars. Essentially, our girls have 2 records for service. If they don’t turn in the sheet with PSA hours only, they will not receive PSA medals.
To simplify it, my daughters have a spreadsheet that they put all their PSA hours in. It calculates the hours for them. They email it in to our Service Coordinator, she can quickly run through and check that all their hours recorded count.
So none of that is put into TT for management? We manage all services in TT. We used to use the hiking and/or camping columns to track those hours that were ok for PVSA but not service stars, but now it seems like the hiking hours are being counted as service stars rather than independent numbers. So I need to find a way to manage theses hours that are troop related but still eligible for PVSA but not service stars.
We don’t put in the PSA service hours into TT. All PSA hours just go on spreadsheets and are turned in completely separately. There will be things that are listed for Stars and for PSA. We will put the award itself in so it shows on their record with a note of how many hours they had toward PSA, but we can’t find a way to track it since there are things that are not allowed to count for PSA.
Just for clarification, you use hiking hours to keep track of your PSA time? Do your girls not record their hiking hours? We don’t as a general rule, but that might be one way to utilize that feature if your families aren’t using the hiking hours. I’m going to ponder if we can use that idea in our troop.
@Pushkaraj is there a way to add that option to the drop down menu? Or a check box that would allow you to add your service hours so that it counts for stars and PSA? (I’m sure there is way more thought/coding that goes into it than my simple explanation ) For troops that do PSA, it would be a huge help/time saver to be able to pull that as as report.
Yea, that is how we did it before but now there seems to be a glitch where the hiking hours are being counter as service hours for the PIPA girls but not for younger ones.
We use the event category to segregate out any religious hours for PSA. So if we could even have a checkbox in the category types that allow the type to be included or excluded from service stars, that would be amazing!!!
We were more curious if it would be an option than anything else. We have a lot of families with more than one girl in the program. We were curious to see if we could save time for those of us with multiple kids in the program.
) For troops that do PSA, it would be a huge help/time saver to be able to pull that as as report.