Council Accounts for Units

Does your council have accounts for units to keep money in for Scout Shop expenditures, dues, etc? If so;

Do you get a statement on a regular basis (monthly or quarterly)?

Does council have the capability to withdraw money without notifying the unit?

Have you ever had a problem with a council unit account?

In my area:

Scout shops do keep "unit accounts."

Statements are sent yearly, but can also be printed at any time upon request.

The unit may give the council permission to deposit/withdraw funds to cover registration discrepancies. AFAIK, it's only used for registration purposes, and the transactions are rarely more than a few dollars. If the unit does not expressly give permission, the council can't touch the money.

The unit can provide a list of up to 3 or 4 people who are authorized to make purchases using the account. Most "problems" that develop involve either an authorized person spending more than the unit allows, or issues with people not getting added/removed from the account quickly enough. I'm not aware of any enormous problems to develop, mainly just minor clerical/logistical issues.

es your council have accounts for units to keep money in for Scout Shop expenditures, dues, etc? If so; YES

Do you get a statement on a regular basis (monthly or quarterly)? NO

Does council have the capability to withdraw money without notifying the unit? YES, but the COR,SE and DE had a discussion about it and it will never happen to our unit again. It involved the DE removing money to cover apps.

Have you ever had a problem with a council unit account? Yes again involving the DE removing money without permission.

Council accounts? Yes. Managed by council. Not the scout shop.

Receive statements? No. Never. I question if they really have good accounting controls.

Withdraws without notifying unit? Yes. I don't think there's any double check as who can use the account at the scout shop or other. IMHO, it's a black hole.

Have you ever had a problem with a council unit account? Not really. Other than being surprised that there is no money and not being able to learn what happened.

I'd like to be able to have a cash reserve of $500 or $1000 at the council office, but I just don't trust the financial controls.

Fred,

Trust me you don't want a lot of money in the council off, just enough to cover advancement. I've seen units that folded that still had accounts at the scout office that hadn't been used in years.

Also I've had instances where I bought stuff at one council office, which then forwarded the PW to my council, and a week late they deducted funds and sent me the stuff I already purchased.

For our crew, our council account balance is kept to below $5. We rarely use the scout shop, and the balance is there to handle over/under payment of rechartering. We get a balance printed at the bottom of every receipt that draws on it.

Not sure what the troop or pack does, but last year I had to put a couple of $ into the crew account to cover the troop's under-payment of rechartering. It saved mailing the thing back to the troop and wasting time sorting out an otherwise trivial mess. Someone later made me a decent cup of coffee and we called it even.

I'll let you decide if that's a problem or not, but it's fairly obvious we'd rather trust our units' dirt-bag treasurers.

Our council carries them, but it is optional. Have to make sure the mail popcorn commissions every year; they only do it if you tell them to. Not really comfortable with the council having control of money for our unit, as they are always running on the edge financially. So, we have opted out so far. Think it may be a viable option for larger units, especially cubs, where they have a lot of supply needs. We are so small that we seldom spend more than $30 or so on awards, other than right after summer camp.

We have a council account for the pack and the troop.

The troop keeps enough in there to cover awards so they are not always running to get a check to pay for them. And that is about a I know about the ins and outs of the troop council account

The pack has most of our funds in the pack council account so I know a lot of the ins and outs of how it's worked over the last 6 years.

If you turn in applications to council or to your DE, and you do not include a check or cash WITH the application, then the funds are assumed to come out of your unit council account. Otherwise why did you turn in your applications if they aren't paid for???????

similarly for reservations for summer camp, day camp, recharter, popcorn payment--if the unit does not include a check with those reservations or paperwork, council will look to see if you have enough in your unit council account to cover the cost.

I haven't had a problem at all over the course of 6 years having council take money out of the unit council account that was not acceptable, understood and approved by the unit. One time they made a withdrawal for a small scout shop return, and they fixed that as soon as they were told of it.

I can request from the council cashier a copy of a statement of the unit account transactions at any time, covering any time period. As a matter of fact I'm trying to hand off executive officer of the CO to a new person, and I requested a statement covering the last 6 years I've been in that position and received it as a nice handy pdf form.

Now the descriptions don't always say things like "this is the deposit of income from online popcorn sales". It will say unit deposit--so if you have no idea that you are going to get that deposit for online popcorn, you won't know what the transaction is for. but most of us don't look a gift unexpected deposit in the mouth too closely. An extra couple hundred dollars is A-OK in most instances.

We actually have had issues with keeping the Pack checking account under control and balanced, never had that issue with the council account. one year at popcorn time we had bounced checks from people buying popcorn and they already had the product. so if in doubt, we can deposit those checks into council account. An wonderfully that it is, council takes over the collection for bounced checks and we've never had that negatively effect our unit council account.

for the pack almost everything we do can be paid from the council account with a quick note. We have to be on the signature card just like we'd have to be on a signature card to use funds out of the checking account. to buy in the scout shop you have to fill out a voucher and be on the signature list.

so we pay for summer camp, day camp, and all awards, derby cars, leader trainings, uniform parts as needed(or if prepaid to us by a scout/leader), scout books, etc all come out of the unit council account.

Exceptions to this are applications as mentioned above --if anyone turns in applications to the council registrar (leaders, DE, etc) the council registrar will take the funds from the unit account unless you have attached a check or cash to the application.

the other exception is if your unit makes a reservation for use of a council camp--the application for use of the camp can be filled by the unit camping chair, and deposit be taken from the unit account--unless they attach a check or cash to pay the deposit for the camp.

I really don't understand the mistrust of the council. maybe our council is just above board on a lot of things, or maybe a lot of people just think they can turn in applications without paying council for them, or recharter without paying, or get popcornwithout paying??(This message has been edited by 5yearscouter)

Our issue with our account was over a double charge for an order through the Scout Shop. The second charge took our account down to almost zero without our knowledge. So when our Advancement Chair went to charge a few patches there wasn't enough in the account. It took almost 4 months of unanswered emails and phone calls get to resolve. Last week our UC came to visit, he wanted to review our recharter and schedule a FOS presentation. I told him that under no circumstances would our troop issue a check for recharter or allow a FOS presentation until this is resolved. Two days latter, problem solved!(This message has been edited by Eagle732)

So now were looking at how to avoid this problem in the future. I don't want to have our funds in an account that others, without our prior approval or knowledge, can access. I think it's just bad business. But we do need to do business with Council so how do we accomplish this? I think that a minimal amount in the account, say $25 and do all purchases by credit card. I know council will call you if you don't have enough in your account to cover an expense, at which time we can send a check.

I'd be okay with with the council having the funds if there was a web page that I could use to review the account status (balance, debits, credits, corrections, WITH DESCRIPTIVE INFO --> WHO WHAT WHEN WHY WHERE.

Give a sign-on to unit authorized people. At 11pm when I have a question, I could connect and review the status. Until that occurs, I doubt we'll use a council accounts.

I have the email address of our council cashier.

If I email them for account statement, I get an answer usually within 24 hours unless the cashier is on vacation, which happens about once a year.

I know in many places going into the council office and meeting these people is prohibitive, but if you can go in and meet those people that hold your money and learn which of them do particular jobs.

I know I can't leave a message with the front desk to get something taken care of. I know I can't send the DE to fix anything for me.

Primarily I go directly to the registrar for issues, or directly to the program director or financial person or cashier to fix things. And if there is a charge on scout shop side, I go to the scout shop for them to fix it.

knowing where to send your complaint and who to ask for help is the important part.

Good customer service would dictate that whoever received the complaint would make sure it was directed to the proper authority and that it was handled in a timely manner. Mistakes are made, it's how you handle them is what determines your reputation.