Member Import

If your unit is coming from another Scout management system, you do not have to retype your roster. The Import Wizard walks you through exporting from your old platform and loading the data into MySummitKeep — members, advancement, training, medical-form dates, event history, and even legacy photos.

Find it in the left menu: Settings → Import / Export.

Everything lives in one place: the Data Import & Export page.

Where to find it

Open the Data Import & Export page at /import-export (it is its own page, not a tab inside Members). You will see two cards — Import Data and Export Data — and two history tabs below them.

• Import Data → Start Import launches the wizard described below.
• Export Data → Start Export sends your advancement out as a BSA Internet Advancement 2.0 file (and other formats).
• Import History and Export History tabs list every job you have run, each linking to a detail view.

Import vs. invite

Import is for bulk-loading the people already on your charter — they arrive as roster records with a No Account badge (no login yet). Invite is for adding one or two new people who joined mid-year. For first-time setup, almost every unit imports first and invites later. See Inviting imported members below.

The Import Wizard, step by step

The wizard is source-driven: you tell it which system you are leaving, and it shows you exactly how to get the file out of that system before you upload it.

1. Choose your source

Pick the platform you are migrating from. Supported sources include Scoutbook (auto-detect, multi-file), Scoutbook Report Builder (Pack), TroopMaster and TroopMaster / BlackPug (advancement), TroopTrack, TroopWebHost, ScoutManager, and a Generic CSV option for any spreadsheet with a header row. Each card shows the file types it accepts and the kinds of records it can bring in.

2. Pick what to import (some sources)

Sources like TroopWebHost let you import different data types one at a time — full roster, patrol rosters, merit-badge history, current advancement, medical-form dates, adult training, swim tests, and legacy event photos. Each type is a separate export file, so you can run the wizard as many times as you need.

3. Follow the export guide

The wizard then shows numbered, per-source instructions for getting the file out of your old system — which menu to click, which report to run, and what the resulting file is called. A blue note at the bottom tells you exactly which file to upload.

TroopWebHost photos are different

For TroopWebHost Legacy Event Photos, the wizard asks for your TroopWebHost subdomain, username, and password instead of a file. MySummitKeep logs in on your behalf and imports the photos automatically. Your credentials are sent over HTTPS for that one job and are never stored.

4. Upload, preview, and review warnings

Drop your exported file onto the upload area (Scoutbook lets you drop several files at once). The wizard parses it without writing anything yet and shows a preview with mapped columns. Rows with problems — a missing youth birthdate, a duplicate, a name it could not match — are flagged so you can fix or exclude them before committing.

5. Set options and commit

Confirm the import options — Merge with existing records and Skip duplicates are on by default — then commit. Only the rows you kept are sent. The wizard reports how many records were imported and how many were merged.

Re-importing is safe

Running the same file again will not create duplicates. Members are matched on BSA Member ID first, then on first + last name within your unit. Existing records update in place, new ones are added, rows missing from the new file are never deleted, and a parent link a leader removed is not re-created.

Members who belong to another unit

MySummitKeep keeps one record per person, so a BSA Member ID or email address in your file can belong to someone another unit already has, such as a Scout registered in both a troop and a crew, or a leader who serves a pack and a troop. The import handles these rows differently:

• The row adds the person to your unit only when its BSA Member ID, name, and date of birth all match their existing record. Otherwise the row is skipped with “This BSA ID belongs to a member of another unit — ask them to join your unit” (or the same message for an email address), and nothing on their record changes. Ask the person to join your unit themselves.
• While the person belongs to another unit, your import never changes their medical notes, allergies, medications, or emergency contact, because that unit’s leaders rely on them too. The row tells you when it left them as they were. The member or a parent can update them on their profile.
• The person, and a Scout’s parents, get a notification that your unit added them from your roster.

The same applies to someone who already has a MySummitKeep account but hasn’t joined any unit yet, such as a parent who signed up this week.

Roles the import can give

The Position column sets each new member’s role in your unit: Scoutmaster, Cubmaster, Advisor or Leader makes them a leader, and anything else makes them a parent. Treasurer, Quartermaster and Historian are roles only a leader who manages roles can give, the same as when you invite someone or change their role on the Roles screen. If you don’t manage roles, those rows add the person as a parent and say so, and a unit administrator can give them their role from Roles.

While your membership is suspended, you can’t run an import or view an import’s rows.

Import history and reconciliation

Every import is saved. Open the Import History tab and click any job to reach its detail view at /import-export/:jobId.

The detail page shows:

• Total / Successful / Failed / Skipped counts at a glance.
• An Error Summary and a Skip Reason Summary that group rows by cause, so a “no rows saved” result tells you whether it was duplicates or unmatched names.
• Unmatched Participants — names from an event or attendance file that did not match anyone on your roster. Add those people (or fix the source file) and re-run to capture them.
• An Import Records table you can filter to All, Failed, Success, or Skipped, with each row expandable to show its original data — the reconciliation workflow for tidying up after a large import.

Inviting imported members

Imported people appear on your roster but cannot sign in yet — they have no account, so their identity is not bound to a real login. In the Members table they carry a No Account badge.

There are two ways an imported member gets a real account:

• You invite them. If an adult member has an email on file, an inline Invite button appears next to the No Account badge. Use Bulk Invite on People → Members to send many at once. The invitation email lets them register and binds their new login to the existing record; the family links the roster gave that record stay with it (see Family links from the roster). Scouts aren’t invited this way: invite their parent. A parent the roster listed is already linked to the Scout; any other parent is invited from the Scout’s household on the Households page, and linked when they accept (see How We Keep a Parent on Messages to Scouts).
• They sign up themselves. A parent or Scout creates an account, picks your unit, and the platform detects a matching imported record. The match does not link automatically — it queues for a unit admin to verify under Account Verifications. Once an admin approves the request, the new login is bound to the imported record.

Never touch the account identity by hand

MySummitKeep binds an account to a member automatically when they register. The internal user identifier (ExternalUserId) must never be edited manually — setting a fake value breaks the secure, ID-based identity model and can lock a member out of their own account.

If the same person was imported twice under different spellings, do not delete either by hand. Open the standalone Member Merge tool at /admin/member-merge, pick the record to keep, and merge the duplicate into it so no history is lost. A merge moves family links along only where that links nobody new. Where it would make the surviving adult a parent they weren’t before, that adult is sent an invitation instead, and the preview tells you how many before you merge. (A link the roster made, moving onto a record nobody has signed in to yet, moves along and goes on the review list instead.) A Scout merged into a household keeps its place there, and the household’s parent links go on the review list. If the record you keep has no date of birth, it takes the duplicate’s, and the merge treats it by that date: a Scout keeps their place as the Scout of the household even when the record you keep had no date of birth. You can’t merge your own record, whichever side of the merge it’s on: “One of these records is your own, so you cannot merge them. Another leader must merge these records.” When another leader merges it, a family link the duplicate held reaches you as an invitation, like any adult’s. A merge also moves the duplicate’s current positions of responsibility (such as Scoutmaster) to the record you keep, takes away the duplicate’s role in the unit, and, when the record you keep has no sign-in or no email, gives it the duplicate’s, so whoever signs in as the duplicate then holds the kept record’s role and positions. When that would move a current position, or a role only a unit administrator gives (Admin, Treasurer, Quartermaster or Historian), from one person to another, only a leader who manages roles can merge them: “Merging these records would move a position or a unit role to someone else, or take one away, and only a leader who manages roles can do that. A unit administrator must merge these records.” The same goes when either record’s role in the unit is suspended: the merge keeps the suspension on the record you keep, so a merge never lifts one. A position someone has already finished is history, and moves with any leader’s merge. If your own access in the unit is suspended, you can’t preview or merge records at all: “Your access in this unit is suspended, so you cannot merge records. Another leader must merge these records.” And if you’re a parent or guardian of either record, or have a pending invitation for either record or into a household the record you keep belongs to, you can’t merge them at all. (A pending invitation into a household that only the duplicate belongs to doesn’t stop the merge: the Scout you keep just isn’t placed in that household.) The preview tells you before anything happens: “You are a parent or guardian of one of these records, or have a pending invitation to become one, so you cannot merge them. Another leader must merge these records.” After a merge, the surviving Scout isn’t a new record anymore. A roster consent link to your own address that was sent for either record no longer lets you give consent yourself, and resending it doesn’t either.

Family links from the roster

When your roster lists a Scout’s parent or guardian (Scoutbook’s Parent/Guardian Name and family Email columns, for example), the import links them to the Scout in a household, finding or creating the parent’s record as it goes. Roster import links are automatic and never held: nobody has to accept them, and the import never stops to ask, even when the parent listed is you.

What the import adds is visibility:

• The Activity Log. Each link appears in your unit’s Activity Log under the leader who ran the import, for example Family link “Pat Rivera — Parent of Sam Rivera (Rivera Family)” was created (roster import).
• The Scout’s parents are told. A parent already linked to the Scout, and the parent being linked, get a notice that the roster import linked them.
• Links to unit leaders go to the review list. When the linked parent is a leader or admin in your unit — including the leader who ran the import — the link goes on the Leader-Parent Links to Review list, and the other leaders are notified. A different leader confirms or removes it there; see Leader-parent links to review. Nothing happens to the link automatically in the meantime.
• Links a leader removed are not re-created. If the roster lists a parent whose link to that Scout a leader removed, the import skips the link and still completes. It appears under Removed Links the Roster Lists Again on Households, where a leader chooses Restore or Keep Removed, and the other leaders are told; see Removed links the roster lists again. The adult is not told, and removals made before this release are not remembered.
• The import’s detail page counts them. A Family Links card on the job’s detail view says how many links the import made, how many involve a leader or the person who ran the import, and how many listed links were not re-created because a leader had removed them, with a Review under Households button.

A Scout under 13 is not linked this way. When the roster has a parent email address, the import emails it a parental-consent link instead, and the parent is linked when they give consent. If that address is your own, because the Cub is your child, you can give consent yourself; the link then goes on the review list like any other link to a leader.

Scoutbook data sync

Scoutbook Data Sync (/scoutbook-sync) handles Scoutbook exports specifically: an import section for the file, and a reconciliation step that compares incoming records against your roster before anything is written. Reconcile rather than import blind — Scoutbook exports routinely contain members who have already left the unit.

Exporting back to BSA

The same hub exports your data out. Start Export produces a BSA Internet Advancement 2.0 file you can upload to advancements.scouting.org, and also supports Scoutbook Plus TXT, Generic CSV, JSON, PDF, and Excel for backups and integrations. Like imports, every export is recorded in the Export History tab.

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