Scout SuiteHow-to guides
The parts worth walking through properly
The in-app tour points at buttons. These guides are for the handful of things that deserve more than that: how a whole feature fits together, start to finish.
People
Waiting lists, parents, moving on, and Explorer Units.
Explorer Units and Groups
When to create an Explorer Unit of its own, when to add an Explorers section to a Scout group (a partnered unit), and how uniforms, members and settings differ in each case.
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Scout Network Units
How to set up a Scout Network Unit for members aged 18 to 25 as its own organisation, run its Network section, and welcome Explorers moving on at 18.
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Moving on and transfers
How linking, moving section, transferring to another Scout Suite Group or Explorer Unit, and the leaving pack work when a young person moves on.
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Planning section sizes
How to see how big each section will be over the next two years, who is waiting for a place and for how long, and how to set the things that shape it: capacity, intake order and where each section moves up to.
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Provision planning for Districts and Counties
How a District or County sees whether there is enough Scouting in the right places: Explorer and Network intake, which sections are full, where volunteers are needed, and growth, all from each Group's own forecast and as numbers only.
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Sharing a member with another group
How to share a young person's or volunteer's record with another Group or Explorer Unit, so they can be added to its sections: moving up to Explorers, helping as a Young Leader, or volunteering in two places.
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Young Leaders
How to add an Explorer as a Young Leader in a younger section, add a helper who isn't an Explorer (volunteering for DofE, say), and see every Young Leader in the Group.
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Using the family portal
How the family portal works from a parent's point of view: accepting an invite, signing up for events, paying invoices, setting up Direct Debit, declaring Gift Aid, consent, details, and awarded badges.
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Waiting list on the Group website
How a parent joins the Group waiting list from a WordPress page: the Scout Suite form shortcode on the site you already run, and the child landing on the leader waiting list.
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Running a waiting list
How the group waiting list works in Scout Suite: sharing a public signup link, seeing the queue, and offering a place so the child becomes a young person.
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Getting parents online
How leaders invite parents to the family portal: marking a primary contact with an email, then sending the invitation from Parent Invite Manager or the child's record.
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Buying from the group shop
What buying from the group shop looks like for a parent in the family portal and for a volunteer on their profile, from basket to checkout.
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Your section's young people
How to sort a section's list of young people, open anyone's record from it, see their patrol at a glance, and the order sections are listed in everywhere.
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Parent updates
What happens when a parent changes their child's details: the email the leader gets, what it deliberately leaves out, and where to see the old and new values.
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Handling enquiries
How general enquiries reach you, who gets told when one arrives, and how to keep track of which have been answered.
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Suspending a volunteer
How a District, County or Group Lead Volunteer suspends a volunteer's access to Scout Suite, chooses what they can still reach, and restores them.
Watch the walkthroughProgramme
Terms, badges, events, camp, and the reports that follow.
Building a programme
How programme planning works in Scout Suite, from building an activity library to badges completing themselves from attendance.
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Running an event
How camps, trips and other one-off events work in Scout Suite: who can sign up, publishing to parents, capacity and waitlists, custom signup questions, payments and the event's money, consent, and the paperwork you take on the day.
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Awarding badges
How to award finished badges to several young people at once from a section's Badge Progress, instead of opening each profile in turn.
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Packing for camp
How to plan group kit for a camp in Scout Suite: set how many a tent sleeps, plan equipment on the event, check trailer weight, then check it out when you load up.
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Programme to badge: signing off what actually got done
How linking a badge requirement to a session works end to end in Scout Suite: from planning the term, through auto sign-off on attendance, to catching someone up afterwards.
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Reports
How the Membership and Chief Scout's Award reports work in Scout Suite: both read straight from real section data, not a spreadsheet someone has to keep updating.
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Uniform designer
How Scout Suite's uniform designer places every badge in the right spot on a section's uniform: no account needed, free to use on its own.
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Pre-pay events
How to run an event where a place is only reserved once the full cost is paid: who can sign up, publishing, and what parents and leaders see.
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Badge stock
How badge stock works for the group and for each section, what happens when you turn section stock on and off, and where awarding takes a badge from.
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Patrols, sixes and lodges
How to create a section's small groups, using each section's own word for them, and put young people in them.
Watch the walkthroughMoney
Subs, Gift Aid, and reconciling the bank.
Collecting subs
How membership subs work in Scout Suite: connecting card and Direct Debit, setting subs up under Finance → Subs, sending invoices, and letting payments mark themselves paid.
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Claiming Gift Aid
How Gift Aid works in Scout Suite: parents declare in the portal, the treasurer puts eligible donations into a claim, downloads an R68 file, and files it with HMRC themselves.
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Reconciling the bank
How bank reconciliation works in Scout Suite: linking an account, importing transactions, explaining each line, attaching receipts, and checking a statement balances.
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Transaction categories
The list of categories you pick from when explaining a bank line, how each one maps to a charity accounts (SORP) heading, and the income and expenditure report and CSV grouped by those headings.
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Paying leaders back
How leaders log what they buy for an event with the receipt, how the treasurer pays back anyone who used their own money, and how each expense is matched to the bank so it's counted once.
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Handling payouts
How card and Direct Debit payouts work in Scout Suite: what each payout paid for, matching it to the bank deposit, and how each event carries its own share of the fees.
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Sectional budgets
How to give each section a running pot: a share of the subs every term, an allocation you can adjust, and event surpluses that go back to the section.
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Selling group stock
How to put stock the group already tracks on sale to parents and volunteers: limited or made to order, what to ask for on the order, and how payment is taken.
Watch the walkthroughRefunds and disputes
How to refund a card payment back to the payer, what happens to refunds made in Stripe or Square, and how chargebacks (disputes) are tracked.
Read the guideSafety & HQ
Risk, incidents, GDPR, the building, and the kit in it.
Tracking equipment
How equipment tracking works in Scout Suite: adding kit, printing or registering tags, binding them, placing things on shelves and in containers, then scanning to check out, check in, and stocktake.
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PAT testing
How PAT testing works in Scout Suite: mark an appliance as needing a test, record the annual visit against a certificate, and see what's overdue at a glance.
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Mapping your HQ
How to put a building on the map from Locations: a UK postcode lookup, a pin you can drag onto the hut, and why that matters for the group website.
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Writing a risk assessment
How risk assessments work in Scout Suite: from a template or a blank page, through hazards and controls, review and approval, to a PDF and a link on the event.
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Hall hire
How to hire your building out: a venue diary of meetings, events and bookings, hirers with their insurance and terms, weekly bookings checked for clashes, and invoices for the hire and a deposit.
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Recording an incident
How incident recording works in Scout Suite: logging what happened, adding witnesses, photos and follow-ups, then investigating, reviewing, closing or escalating.
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Building maintenance
How EICR, gas safety and fire log compliance for your meeting place work in Scout Suite: real due dates, an auditable fire log, and certificates stored against the task they prove.
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Reporting a problem
How any volunteer reports a problem with the building, a piece of kit or anything else in Scout Suite, how it reaches the person who looks after it, and how they sort it.
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GDPR & compliance
How Subject Access Requests, data breaches, and the audit trail work under Safety → GDPR & Compliance: the paperwork a data protection lead actually has to produce.
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Risk register
How the Risk Register works in Scout Suite: top-level organisational risk, scored before and after controls, with a real owner picked from your adults and contacts, ready for a trustees' meeting.
Watch the walkthroughPremises audit
How to complete the Scouts' 2026 Safe Scouting premises audit in Scout Suite, from choosing which parts apply to an owned action for every gap and a PDF for your Trustee Board.
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In Touch export
How to print or download a section's In Touch emergency contacts sheet for the person at home while the group is away.
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Equipment that needs repair
How to mark kit as needing repair or in repair, why it can't be loaned while it is, and how to put it back in service.
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Equipment kits and bookings
How to bring your inventory in from a spreadsheet, group the kit that always goes out together, book it for camp, and get emails when it's overdue.
Watch the walkthroughPhones & messages
The group number, call flows, inbox, and meeting recordings.
Setting up group phones
How a group UK number and leader eSIMs work in Scout Suite: buying the number, optional WhatsApp, ordering and installing eSIMs, then pointing the line at a call flow.
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Building a call flow
How call flows work in Scout Suite: greetings, keypad menus and ringing leaders, then attaching the group number so inbound calls actually follow the plan.
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Recording a meeting
How leader meetings work in Scout Suite: creating a meeting, uploading or recording audio, and getting a transcript, summary and minutes without a separate generate step.
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Conversation records (vCon)
Every call, voicemail, meeting, WhatsApp, SMS, email and assistant chat is kept as a vCon, the standard record of a conversation. How to download one, or all of them, and what they hold.
Watch the walkthroughSending messages
How group communications work in Scout Suite: email to parents, SMS with optional WhatsApp-then-SMS fallback, templates, Facebook posts, and the inbox for replies.
Read the guideSetup
Districts, WordPress, importing from your old system, SSO, the API, privacy mode, and the assistant.
Installing the WordPress plugin
How to get the free Scout Suite WordPress plugin from GitHub, upload it to your site, activate it, and enter the Org ID and API key.
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Your Group on the district website
How Scout Suite fills Find a Group and the events calendar on a WordPress district site: Groups, HQ pins and public events written in from Scout Suite, not typed into WordPress twice.
Watch the walkthroughImporting from your old system
How to bring data across from your old system using files you export from it: a waiting list upload, a badge awards report, plus spreadsheets for everything else.
Read the guideSetting up SSO
How group single sign-on works in Scout Suite: adding an OIDC or SAML provider for your group's email domain, then copying the redirect URI into your identity provider.
Read the guideUsing the API
How the Scout Suite developer portal works: API keys for server access, MCP tokens for AI tools like Cursor, and OAuth apps that sign users in with Scout Suite.
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AI assistant
How Scout Suite's AI assistant answers questions about your own group's live data and general Scout policy, instead of behaving like a generic chatbot bolted onto the side.
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Counties and districts
How a District or County sits above its Groups in Scout Suite, one dashboard across every Group underneath it, the invite flow that links a Group in, and what a Group sees once it accepts.
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Roles and permissions
The nine team roles in Scout Suite, what each one can read and write, and what it actually looks like from a restricted role's own side of the fence.
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Privacy mode
How Privacy Mode blurs young people's names, emails and photos across the whole app from one switch in the account menu, with a hover-to-reveal and a pin-open option.
Watch the walkthroughYour account and profile picture
How to change your name, email, language and profile picture in Scout Suite, and who sees your picture.
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Trustee report
How to produce a report for a trustee meeting in Scout Suite: membership, safety, premises, data protection, money and assets lost or written off, with what needs a decision first.
Watch the walkthroughCorrecting mistakes
How to remove things entered by mistake in Scout Suite, from a statement imported twice to a young person added in error, and why money that really moved is reversed rather than deleted.
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Importing a group
How to bring a group's young people, team, events, sections, badge awards, attendance, waiting list and equipment in from a spreadsheet, and how a round trip updates what's already there.
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Section permissions
What a Section Team Leader can do in their own section, and why another section's young people, events and register aren't theirs to change.
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