How our troop keeps track money paid and money due to the scouts through the boy scout program.
Show Notes:
- Excel Accounting & Itinerary from 2016 DC Trip
- Excel Accounting & Itinerary from 2016 Boston Trip
- Why Didn’t They Teach Me This in School?: 99 Personal Money Management Principles to Live By (Amazon)
- Managing Your Money All-In-One For Dummies (Amazon)
- ScoutMaster Dave YouTube Channel – Subscribe Now!
Cover Photo by Artem Sapegin on Unsplash
Transcript:
In our troop we have a concept of troop bucks. Troop bucks let us run our program without having to deal with small monetary account payable and receivables. So, let me explain a little about how this works.
Each scout has an account that has a zero dollar balance. If a scout sells popcorn, and sells over the minimum requested from the troop, a percentage goes into a scouts’ account.
These troop bucks can be used to pay for anything troop related from trips, to apparel, to yearly dues. In fact, we try and zero it out at the start of the year with an offset from what a scout owes for dues, so it really is possible to have a free scouting year, but on an individual scout basis.
We have some scouts that love to sell popcorn, and as a result pay for dues, trips and summer camp without having to hand in a check.
The good thing about troop bucks is it lets us be very specific about accounting, or at least down to a dollar.
As I’ve mentioned in previous videos, I’m a bit of a nut, keeping track of all sorts of things. One of those things is the actual cost we pay out during a trip.
As an example, last year we went to Washington DC in December, and stayed at a hotel, which is not something we normally do, but the boys voted for it, and we gave it a try.
We traveled 5 hours by car, visited lots of venues, went to scout friendly restaurants, ordered in pizza, took the DC Metro numerous times and other things. Prior to the trip, we estimated how much this would cost, and subtracted how much the troop itself would kick in and came up with a cost per person, which we estimated higher than average. For those interested I’ve included this Excel accounting in the show notes.
After the trip, we have the actual costs of things. After all was said and done, each scout was due back about $12, so instead of writing a check back to each of the 25 scouts for $12, we just allocated it to the scout’s troop bucks.
It might not seem like a lot, but we feel it’s the boy’s money, and if we had to write checks out, we would never write a check for $2, but put it back to the general account. Troop bucks help us keep the money with the boys, with the benefit of keeping us all accountable for the costs, But this is what works for us.
Take what you like and leave the rest, and as we say in Woodbadge, feedback is a gift, leave yours below in the comments, with the hope we can all learn together.
I’m Scoutmaster Dave, and this was troop bucks.
