Scoutworks Features
Badges & Awards
Every UK Scouts badge in one place — progress worked out as you sign off, Top Awards that add up, a Badge Forecast, parent evidence and badge stock.












Badge progress tracked automatically
Every UK Scouts badge in one place — Core badges, Activity badges, Challenge Awards and Top Awards across Squirrels, Beavers, Cubs, Scouts and Explorers. You sign off requirements, often a whole event's worth at once, and Scoutworks works out the rest: a badge shows as complete the moment its requirements are met, and staged badges such as Nights Away move up a stage as the nights add up. Awarding it stays a leader's decision.
- Visual progress for every member across every badge scheme
- Sign off a whole event's attendees in one wizard, or a single requirement from the badge page
- A badge shows as complete the moment its last requirement is signed off
- Nights Away, Hikes Away and Time on Water move up a stage as the count reaches each target
- Patrol and Six role badges complete when you give a young person the role
- Fix a completed or awarded date in place — click the date and pick the right day
- Badges belong to the member, so progress follows them when they move up a section
- The 'By Person' grid shows every member against every badge, with Award one click away on completed badges
Top Awards & Joining In
Top Awards are the ones that matter most, and the ones that take the most cross-checking. Scoutworks does the cross-checking. Each Chief Scout Award shows as complete as soon as its Challenge Awards and the right number of Activity badges are in place. Joining In awards complete on each member's anniversary in the movement. You decide when to present them, and a report tells you who is due.
- Chief Scout Awards complete on their own when the Challenge Awards and Activity badges are in place
- Earlier sections count — a Scout's Cub badges still feed their record
- Joining In awards complete on each member's anniversary, checked every night
- A Joining In report lists everyone due an award in the date range you choose
- Top Award progress PDF for the members and sections you pick
- Presenting the award is always a leader's decision — nothing is awarded for you
Awarding Badges & the Ceremony Tick List
Before a ceremony, open Award Badges to see every badge ready to hand out, filtered by section. Award them all at once, or print a tick list of exactly the rows on screen for the night itself, with a shopping list of what you need. Awarding takes the badge out of stock for you. Adult volunteers can receive the badges meant for them too.
- Every badge ready to hand out in one list, with section filter, sort and select-all
- Award in bulk, or one at a time from the badge page or the member's record
- Print list — a tick-list PDF of exactly what is on screen, grouped your way
- Mark the lower stages of Nights Away, Hikes Away or Time on Water as not required, so only the highest stage is handed out
- Awarding takes the badge out of section stock first, then group stock
- Award membership badges, the Group Name Tape and adult-eligible custom badges to leaders, admins and trustees
- Badges to Award and Badge Inserts PDFs for the ceremony itself
Programme-Linked Badges & Badge Forecast
Link badge requirements to your events, and Scoutworks tells you what they will achieve before they happen. On a single event, the forecast shows which badges it will complete and for whom, and suggests the one extra requirement that would finish a badge for more members. The Badge Forecast page looks across the next four weeks to twelve months of your calendar. After the event, a wizard walks you through signing off the attendees.
- Attach requirements to any event, by badge or by searching for an activity
- Per-event forecast — which badges will complete, and '+N would earn it' suggestions to close the gap
- The Badge Forecast page — badges completing, members earning one, and who is one requirement away
- Read the forecast by badge or by person, with the date each badge finishes and the meetings that deliver it
- Flags badges that rest on a single meeting for members who often miss one
- Lists members the programme does not reach yet
- Post-event wizard to sign off requirements for everyone who came, with a reminder on the day the event ends
- The forecast is a ceiling: it assumes everyone attends
Parent Badge Portal & Evidence
Parents follow their child's badges from their own portal and submit photo, video or PDF evidence against a specific requirement. Scouts and Explorers with their own login can submit evidence too. Everything lands in one review queue, where leaders approve it, return it with feedback, or move it to a better-fitting requirement. Parents also get a weekly round-up of what their child achieved.
- Parents submit evidence against a specific requirement, and can save a draft to finish later
- Photos, videos and PDFs, up to 25 MB a file
- Scouts and Explorers submit their own evidence from their youth login
- Leaders approve, return with feedback, or move evidence to another requirement — one queue for parents and young people
- Parents see every badge by status: in progress, ready for award, awarded and awaiting review
- A weekly email tells parents which badges their child completed or was awarded that week
- Send Badge Check — email parents a checklist of awarded badges, so they can see which ones still need sewing on
- Leaders get a Monday round-up of evidence waiting for review
Custom Badges
Create badges unique to your group — camp traditions, annual challenges, community projects, section-specific achievements. Choose how each one is completed: all criteria, a set number of them, or at a leader's discretion. Custom badges sit alongside official UK Scouts badges in the same views, tracked with the same tools.
- Create as many custom badges as you like, with your own image
- Completion models — all requirements, a set number of them, or leader-awarded
- Custom badges appear alongside official badges in the same progress views
- Choose which sections each badge is for
- Parents see custom badge progress and can submit evidence from their portal
- Set where it is worn on the uniform, and whether adults can receive it
Badge Requirement Finder
You ran a great activity. Which requirements did it actually cover? Type what you did in your own words — 'made a sponge' still finds the cake requirement — and Scoutworks lists the badge requirements it matches, using keywords and a list of Scouting synonyms. Narrow it to one section to see who still needs each one, then sign it off for them in one go, or add the matches straight to an event you are planning.
- Describe an activity in plain English and see the requirements it matches
- Matches on keywords and synonyms, so 'sponge' finds 'cake'
- Search every section at once, or narrow to one
- Pick a section to see exactly who still needs each requirement
- Sign off everyone who still needs it in one action
- Planning a meeting? Add matching requirements straight onto the event
Uniform Placement Guide
Every parent has sewn a badge onto the wrong sleeve at least once. From the parent portal, each young person gets a personal placement guide showing exactly where each of their awarded badges belongs, marked on the official diagram for their section, with a separate group for anything worn on the belt, scarf or woggle. Download a printable checklist grouped by uniform zone, with a plain left-and-right note so nobody mirrors the diagram.
- A per-child guide in the parent portal showing where each awarded badge belongs
- Marked on the official section diagram, with badges worn elsewhere grouped separately
- Printable checklist grouped by uniform zone — a tick-off sheet for the sewing table
- A clear left-and-right note so the diagram never gets mirrored
- Leaders set where a custom badge is worn when they create it
- Uniform stock — polos, neckers and woggles — lives in Planning → Uniform Management
Young Leader Award Tracking
The Young Leader Award has more moving parts than any other award in Scouting — training modules, missions, service hours and a reflective log — and it is almost always tracked on paper that goes missing. Scoutworks tracks the whole scheme in one place: every module, every mission, hours logged as they happen, and a private journal the Young Leader keeps themselves. Leaders see every Young Leader's progress side by side.
- Modules A to K tracked, with the Belt Buckle waiting on the missions
- Missions One to Four signed off by a leader
- Service hours logged automatically when a Young Leader is marked present at a younger section's event
- A reflective log that stays private until the Young Leader chooses to share an entry
- Leader dashboard showing every Young Leader's modules, missions and hours side by side
- Invite only the Young Leaders who still need the modules a training event teaches
- Feeds the same badge and award records as the rest of the platform
Nation Awards & the Gateway Award
Scouting is not the same in every nation, and your badge list should not pretend it is. Scoutworks carries the ScoutsCymru, Scotland and Northern Ireland awards, and shows the ones for your nation based on your group's postcode. It also tracks the Gateway Award from Mencap, session by session, as a working record for the young person and their leader.
- Wales — the Dragon Awards, the Welsh Award, Cennin Pedr and more
- Scotland — the Thistle Award, the Zodiac Award and the Scottish Rights Challenge
- Northern Ireland — the NI Challenge Award and the Harry Scott Award
- Your postcode sets which nations show, and an admin can change it with one switch each
- Gateway Award Bronze, Silver and Gold, with sessions logged one at a time
- Open at any age, and it counts in place of the Scout Challenges towards Platinum, Diamond and King's Scout
- Mencap verifies and issues the Gateway Award — Scoutworks keeps the record
Bring Your Badge Records From OSM
Years of badge records should not stay behind when you move. Upload your OSM badge workbooks and Scoutworks works out which section and category each file holds, matches members by name, and shows you a full preview of what it will create, update or leave alone. You settle any name it could not match, choose whether badges arrive as completed or awarded, and only then import.
- Upload one or more OSM workbooks at once
- Section and category worked out from each file, and you can change them
- Members matched by exact name — you settle the rest in the preview, and it remembers
- A full preview of what will be created, updated or left alone, before anything changes
- Flags sheets it does not recognise and requirements that have changed
- Choose whether imported badges arrive as completed or awarded
Badge Insights, Stock & Reporting
Badge reporting across your section and your whole group. Track Top Award completion, programme coverage and completion trends over time. Manage badge stock for each section or centrally, see the total across the group, and download a shopping list when it is time to order. Districts get badge insights too, across every connected group.
- Badge insights with completion trends, status by section and a breakdown by badge type
- Top Award progress by section across your group
- Programme coverage and gap analysis, with suggestions for the requirements that would finish the most badges
- Badge stock per section or central, with low-stock levels and a full history
- Shopping list PDF, filtered by stock location and section
- Nine badge reports, from the A3 progress poster to a CSV of every badge awarded
- District badge insights across connected groups, in beta
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