Ranks, Positions of Responsibility & Adventures

This guide covers four advancement tools that live under the Advancement area: rank progress, positions of responsibility, the adventure (and award/rating) catalog, and program enrollment. Together they let you follow where each Scout is on the trail, give youth real leadership jobs, and get new Scouts set up so their progress starts being tracked.

Note

A Scout only shows rank progress and adventures once they are enrolled in a program. If a page looks empty, start with Enrolling a Scout in a program below.

Scout rank progress

Open the Progress card on the Advancement page (/advancement/ranks) to see a Scout’s current rank, the requirements checklist for that rank, and a progress bar showing how far along they are toward the next rank. The page shows the rank card, the live requirements list, and a sidebar with advancement tips and an overall completion percentage.

This page is self-view for a Scout or their parent — it loads the progress of the person who is signed in. As a leader, you view an individual Scout’s rank progression and history from the Advancement Dashboard (/advancement) and the Advancement workflow tools, where you can drill into any roster member and record completed requirements or ranks.

Tip

If the page says “No Rank Progress Found,” the Scout has not been enrolled in a rank program yet. Use the Enrollment page (see below) and the data will appear.

Note

Sea Scouts: a ship’s rank checklists now follow the official Sea Scout requirements for Apprentice, Ordinary, Able and Quartermaster (the top rank appears as “Master” on screen), lettered the way the official sheets letter them (for example 1a, 1b, 5g). Each rank’s electives appear as their own optional lines under a “complete this many electives” line; a leader signs the “complete this many electives” line once the Scout has finished enough of them. Optional lines are not counted in the “N of M” progress, so a Scout who has finished every required line shows as complete. If a Scout had been signed off on one of the old placeholder lines, that sign-off is still kept in their history, but those old lines no longer count toward the rank, so a leader should sign off the matching official requirements.

Note

Cub Scouts: a Cub earns a rank by completing adventures, so a Pack’s rank screen no longer shows a hand-ticked list of rank requirements. Instead it shows, for the rank, Required adventures done out of six (for example “4 of 6”) and Elective adventures done out of two (for example “1 of 2”). Every Cub rank is the same: complete the six required adventures (the Bobcat adventure plus five themed ones) and any two elective adventures, as on the rank pages at scouting.org. A third or fourth elective is shown as an extra (“2 of 2 (1 extra)”), and the target stays two. Nothing is ticked on the rank screen itself: you record each adventure’s requirements from the Scout’s Adventures card, and the rank screen follows. If a rank lists no required adventures yet, the screen shows a dash rather than “0 of 0” or a full bar. Only when the six required adventures and two electives are all complete does the screen say “All adventures for the rank are complete”, and from that moment the rank reads Earned by itself: nobody has to tick anything, and a rank a Cub finishes late (even after the den moved up) clears on its own. A leader can also mark the rank earned by hand: on the Scout’s Rank Progress page, a rank that still reads Working on since has a Mark … earned button. This is the way to record Arrow of Light, which has no next rank to promote to; the same applies when you record a rank by hand or import it from Scoutbook. A rank that is verified or presented at a Court of Honor always counts as earned, whatever the adventures say. The old made-up rank lines for Lion through Arrow of Light have been retired. If a Cub had a sign-off on one of them, it is kept in their history, but it no longer counts toward the rank.

Positions of Responsibility

Open the Active Positions card on the Advancement page (/advancement/positions) to manage leadership positions of responsibility — Senior Patrol Leader, Patrol Leader, Troop Guide, Den Chief, Quartermaster, and the full BSA list. Active assignments appear under Current Positions and finished ones drop into Past Positions with their date range.

The standard BSA positions are auto-seeded for your unit the first time the positions list is loaded, so a brand-new unit starts with the full position roster already in place. The seeded set matches your unit type (for example, a troop gets Scoutmaster, Assistant Scoutmaster, Senior Patrol Leader, Patrol Leader, and so on), and youth leadership positions are flagged for whether they count toward Eagle tenure.

Adding and removing a position

To record a new assignment, click Add Position on the Positions page. Fill in the Position Name and the Start Date, and check Counts toward Eagle when the role qualifies for the Eagle leadership-tenure requirement, then click Create Position. The new role appears immediately under Current Positions.

To clear an assignment, use the trash icon on its card. This removes the assignment from the list.

Tip

To assign or unassign positions for the whole unit from a single roster — and to close out a Scout’s term while keeping the position open for the next holder — use Settings → Manage Positions, which shows every position with its current holder.

Cub Scout adventures

Open Advancement → Adventures (/advancement/adventures) to browse the catalog. The page adapts to your unit type — a Cub Scout pack sees the Adventures catalog, a troop sees the Scouts BSA Advancement Catalog, a crew sees Venturing Awards, and a ship sees Sea Scout Ratings.

Across the top are three counters — Completed, In Progress, and Available — and you can Search by name or filter by category. Each card shows whether the item is Required or Elective, its type, the number of requirements, and (for Cub adventures) a typical time estimate. Items already started show a progress bar and an In Progress or Completed badge. Click Start on a card to begin tracking that adventure for the signed-in Scout.

Note

For a complete rank-by-rank view of a Cub Scout’s adventures (Lion through Arrow of Light), including everything still remaining, use the Cub progress view linked from the Scout’s record — it shows the full catalog grouped by rank tier, not only items already started.

Enrolling a Scout in a program

Open the Enroll tab on the Advancement page (/advancement/enroll) to set a Scout up in a new advancement program. This is the step that turns on rank and adventure tracking for that Scout.

The wizard then asks Which program? and ends with a Confirm Enrollment summary of the Scout and program before showing Enrollment Complete!

Enrollment is a short three-step wizard:

1. Select Scout — search for and pick the Scout you are enrolling.
2. Select Program — choose the program (the options shown match your unit type, such as Cub Scouts, Scouts BSA, Venturing, or Sea Scouts).
3. Confirm — review the Scout, program, and unit, then click Confirm Enrollment.

After a successful enrollment you can click Enroll Another Scout to repeat the flow. Once enrolled, the Scout’s rank progress and adventures begin tracking against the program you chose.

Tip

Need to enroll a whole new den, patrol, or troop at once? Bring members in first with Member Import or Bulk Invite & Operations, then enroll each Scout here.

Promote Den / Advance Rank (Cub Scout packs)

At the end of the program year, Promote Den / Advance Rank on the Ranks page moves every Cub in a den up to the next rank in one step: pick the den, set the date, and confirm. The dialog first shows who will move from which rank to which.

Cubs who have not finished the rank they are leaving. Before you confirm, the dialog lists any Cub whose adventures for their current rank are not complete (fewer than six required adventures, or fewer than two electives), with their figures, for example “Ben Short: required adventures 5 of 6, elective adventures 2 of 2”. It tells you plainly that these Cubs will move up with the den, but will not earn the badge of rank for the rank they are leaving. Nothing else changes, and you can still confirm: the whole den moves up either way.

What that means on the Cub’s record:

• The rank a Cub is leaving is the one that is judged. A Cub who has finished it has it recorded as earned on the date you chose, and it is offered on the Court of Honor list.
• A Cub who has not finished it keeps that rank on their record, but it reads Working on since its start date (never Earned): it is not offered on the Court of Honor list, it is left out of the BSA advancement export and the “ranks earned” counts and reports, and it is not shown on the public unit site as a rank earned. It clears by itself as soon as the missing adventures are recorded, or a leader marks it earned by hand. Your own comment on the promotion goes on the new rank.
• The rank a Cub has just moved up to is shown as Working on since the promotion date, for every Cub in the den, until its own adventures are done.
• A rank that is already verified, presented at a Court of Honor, or marked earned by a leader always counts as earned, whatever the adventures say. The dialog lists those Cubs as “Recorded earlier, unchanged” and the rank keeps its own date.
• When the dialog cannot tell what a rank lists (no required adventures are listed for it), the figures show a dash, and the Cub is treated as not having finished the rank rather than as finished.

The same Working on since wording applies to a new Cub’s starting rank, because enrolling a Cub puts them on the rank they are working on, not the rank they have earned. A Cub rank that was recorded before this change with no adventures behind it is judged the same way: Earned if the six required adventures and two electives are recorded, otherwise Working on since. Scouts BSA, Venturing and Sea Scout promotion, and their rank screens, are unchanged.

Den activities (Cub Scout packs)

Packs plan at the den level. Den Activities (/activities) is a catalog of den meeting activities a den leader can browse and add straight onto an event, rather than assembling each meeting from scratch.

Related

• Advancement workflow — recording requirements, approvals, and boards of review
• Opportunities of Advancement — surfacing what each Scout can work on next
• Member Directory — find and open an individual Scout’s record