Households & Family Links

A household ties the people in one family together inside MySummitKeep: the scouts, their parents and guardians, siblings, and the shared address, phone, and emergency contact. Once members are grouped into a household, leaders get a single view of a family’s advancement and balances, and parents can see their own children from the My Family page.

This guide covers how leaders build and maintain households, and how parents link their own scouts.

Why households matter

Scouts rarely come to your unit alone. A household captures the real-world family unit so you can:

• See every linked scout’s advancement progress and outstanding balance in one place.
• Keep one shared address, primary phone, and emergency contact instead of duplicating it on each member.
• Know who the primary contact is when you need to reach a family.
• Let parents log in and link their own children, instead of you entering everything by hand.

Note

Household pages contain family contact information for the whole unit, so the Households list, search, and detail pages are leader/admin-only. Parents use the separate My Family page, which only ever shows their own household.

Creating a household

Open Households from the leader navigation. You’ll see a searchable list of every household in your unit and a New Household button.

Click New Household to open the create form. Only the Household Name is required (for example, “Smith Family”); everything else is optional and can be filled in later:

• Address, City, State, ZIP Code — the family’s mailing address.
• Primary Phone — the household’s main phone number.
• Emergency Contact — Name, Phone, and Relation (such as Grandparent) for someone to reach in an emergency.

Click Save Household and the new household appears in the list. Use the search box at the top to filter the list by name as it grows.

The household detail page

Click any household to open its detail page. The page is split between the Members panel and a column of contact cards.

• Members lists everyone in the household. Each row shows the person’s household role plus blue Primary and amber Emergency badges when those flags are set. Click a row to expand a financial summary; youth rows additionally expand to show advancement progress. Click the member’s name (or the View full profile link) to open their full profile.
• Address, Phone, and Emergency Contact cards display the details you entered. They only appear when there’s something to show.

Use Edit in the top-right to change the name or any contact details, or Delete to remove the household entirely (deleting a household does not delete the members themselves).

Adding and removing household members

From the detail page, click Add Member in the Members panel.

In the modal:

1. Search for an existing unit member by name or email and select them. Members already in this household are filtered out automatically.
2. Choose a Household Role — Parent, Guardian, Youth, Sibling, or Other.
3. Optionally tick Primary Contact and/or Emergency Contact.
4. Click Add Member.

Caution

You can only add people who are already members of your unit. If the family member isn’t in the system yet, add them first via Member Import or by creating the member, then return here to add them to the household.

Note

If the member you’re adding is under 18, a parental-consent disclosure appears before they’re added. You must confirm consent to continue — this satisfies youth-privacy (COPPA) requirements.

To remove someone, hover over their row in the Members panel and click the remove (person-minus) icon, then confirm. This unlinks them from the household; it does not delete the member record.

Setting the primary contact

The primary contact is the family’s main point of contact. You set it with the Primary Contact checkbox when adding a member in the Add Member modal. The chosen member then shows a blue Primary badge in the Members list, and the same idea applies to the amber Emergency badge for emergency contacts.

Tip

A household should have exactly one primary contact. If you need to move it to a different family member, add or re-add that member with Primary Contact ticked.

Linking parents to scouts

“Linking” simply means putting a parent (or guardian) and their scout in the same household. There’s no separate parent-to-scout pairing step: add the parent with the Parent or Guardian role and the scout with the Youth role, and they’re linked. Once they share a household, the parent can see that scout on their My Family page and in the family feed.

Most families do this themselves — see below.

Household split warnings

When units split or members move between units, a parent can end up on one unit while their scout lands on another. MySummitKeep detects these mismatches and surfaces them on the Household Split Warnings page (under the leader tools).

Screenshot coming soonLeader Household Warnings page listing split-household warnings with acknowledge/suppress actions

Each warning explains the situation in plain language — for example, “Jane Smith (Parent) is on Troop 100, but John Smith (Youth) is now on Troop 200.” A red badge at the top counts how many are still new (status Detected). For each active warning you can:

• Acknowledge — confirms the split is intentional (a youth moved alone, parents are in different units, and so on). You can add an optional note like “Family decision — youth moved alone.” The warning moves to Acknowledged.
• Suppress (don’t show again) — hides the warning permanently. A reason is required before you can confirm. The warning moves to Suppressed.

Note

Acknowledging or suppressing a warning is a record-keeping action — it doesn’t move any member between units. If the split was a mistake, fix the membership first, and the warning resolves on its own.

When there are no warnings, the page shows a green “No household split warnings for this unit” confirmation.

Parents: the My Family page and granting youth login access

Parents don’t use the leader Households pages. Instead, they open My Family to manage their own household and link their children themselves.

My Household lists the family’s adults and scouts. Under Find Your Scout, a parent searches by:

• First Name (required)
• Last Name (optional)
• Date of Birth (optional, but it narrows results)

Matching scouts appear as cards showing the scout’s name, age, and patrol. The parent clicks Link to My Family to add a scout to their household. Scouts already linked show a green Linked badge instead.

Note

When the scout is a minor, a parental-consent disclosure appears before the link is created — the parent must confirm consent to continue. To remove a scout later, click the trash icon on the scout’s row and confirm.

Tip

If a search returns no results, the parent should check the spelling or contact you to confirm the scout is registered in the unit. Only scouts already in the system will appear.

Granting youth login access: when enabled for your unit, each linked scout aged 13–17 shows a Grant login access button. This lets a parent affirm verifiable parental consent and generate a one-time claim link the youth uses to set their own password and sign in. The claim link is shown only once, so the parent should hand it to the scout right away. This affordance stays hidden when the feature isn’t turned on for the unit.