Paperwork Prep

Erg. The annual paperwork shuffle for the troop. I keep all working documents in one big binder (attendance, award records, permission slips, medical info, etc. etc. etc.) for the current year, and keep everything from previous years in a large file box by year. My filing system is still under construction, and probably will be until my girls have gotten their Gold Award.

My system starts with a series of binders and folders. It would be pointless to tell exactly which forms I put where, since each council is different, but I can give you a general idea.

MAIN BINDER 

This is my work horse. I bring this to every meeting and am constantly updating things in it. After 4 years, it is looking a little sad. I probably need to spiff it up. The sections are:

• Attendance/Dues,
• Permission Slips (the originals),
• A section for each girl in the troop with all of the forms I need to have (medical history, allergies, etc.), an individual girl record (lists camping experience, service activities, and additional awards), as well as records of all past badgework (petals and try-its at this point),
• Service Unit roster,
• Service Unit meeting agendas for the year,
• Snapshot of Troop Fall Product/Cookie Sales for the year,
• Documents which state I am approved as Troop Leader and Service Unit Fall Product Manager,
• and for some weird reason I have a whole bunch of song lyrics in the binder.

TROOP FINANCIALS BINDER

This binder goes to the troop treasurer. It contains all of our banking documentation, receipts, and income statements.

TROOP FALL PRODUCT FOLDER

This is the folder I will be giving to our Troop FP Manager. It will contain permission slips, contact information for all girls participating in the sale, FP handbook, and a calendar with the important dates on it.

TROOP COOKIES FOLDER

This is the folder I will be giving to our Troop Cookie Manager. Pretty much the same thing as Fall Product, but for Cookies.

TROOP TRAVEL FOLDERS

Anytime our troop travels together to an event or campout, each driver needs one of these in their car. It contains the medical form and permission slips for each girl, as well as emergency forms for each adult, itineraries and maps for the current activity.

FALL PRODUCT BINDER 

From the beginning of September through the end of November, this binder goes everywhere with me. And since it definitely goes to Service Unit meetings with me, it becomes a temporary landing zone for SU meeting agendas until I can put them in my main binder. In it, I keep:

• all the paperwork I use to hold trainings
• all MY training documents
• a calendar of the sale dates
• a list of all my troop managers with contact information
• and all the forms and charts and lists I print out to do my job.

AWARDS BINDER

This is a new binder for our troop. Since we have big plans for the next two years (a camping patch which involves visiting every camp in our Council, and the Bronze Award), as well as the normal badgework, I decided to get this a little bit more organized, and may even pass it off to an assistant leader. I will probably have 3 sections:

• Badgework - Each girl has a form which shows which badges she has earned, and which steps she has completed toward each. I will probably also put a sheet for Journey awards for each girl.
• Camping Patch - This will be a small section, probably just a table listing the ten camps, and the girls names, so we can check off who went to which camps.
• Bronze Award - All the paperwork for getting the Bronze Award.