Importing All Your OSM Badges at Once

OSM keeps badge records in four separate exports per section — Challenge, Staged Activity, Core and Activity. Scoutworks takes them all together. Drop the whole set in, check a single preview of exactly what will change, then import.

And because OSM exports the section a young person is in today, you can add their earlier sections to the same import. A Scout who joined as a Squirrel has four sections' worth of history; bring the lot in one pass.

Where to find it#

Go to Badges in the sidebar, open Badge Actions, and choose Import Badge Records. If you are working through the Migration Hub, the same importer opens from Open the badge importer.

Step 1 — Choose the section#

The first thing the importer asks is Which section are these exports for? That choice is applied to files as you add them, which is all most imports need — you export one section, drop the four files in, done.

You can also leave it on Detect for me and let Scoutworks work it out from the badge sheets themselves.

Step 2 — Add the exports#

Drag and drop the OSM exports, or click to browse. Scoutworks accepts .xlsx and .xls files, up to 24 files at 10 MB each — comfortably enough for all four badge types across several sections.

You don't need to tell it what each file is. Scoutworks reads each workbook and labels it Challenge Awards, Staged Activity Badges, Core Badges or Activity Badges, and tells you whether it recognised the layout. A file marked Worth a check still imports — it just means the column headings weren't quite the usual shape, so give it a second look.

Every file row carries its own section, so you can change any of them. That is what lets you bring a young person's earlier sections in alongside their current one: set your Scouts exports to Scouts, switch the Cubs ones to Cubs, and import them together.

Step 3 — Choose how badges are recorded#

One choice, applied to everything in this import:

Then press Generate preview.

Step 4 — Check the preview#

This is the point of the whole thing: nothing has been written yet. The preview shows exactly what the import would do, and you can walk away from it with no trace left behind.

At the top you get the totals — New badges, Badges updated, Members affected, and Awards this unlocks — so you can sanity-check the scale before you look at the detail. Underneath, each member gets a row you can expand, with their badges chipped as New, Updated, or Already recorded, alongside the requirements being signed off and any activities being counted.

Anything that needs a decision from you is called out first:

• A file with no section, if you chose Detect for me and Scoutworks couldn't tell. Some badges appear in more than one section's programme, so a file of those alone can genuinely look like either — Scoutworks asks rather than guessing. Pick one and it imports.
• A name matching more than one member — two Harry Smiths, or siblings with the same initial. Choose the right person, or skip them.

The list of files you uploaded sits below the totals, and it shows the section Scoutworks settled on for each one — which you can change here. Worth a glance every time: this is your last chance to correct a file that has been read as the wrong section.

If the import includes badges from a section a young person has already moved up from, the preview says so — "12 badges from Cubs — recorded against the section they were earned in." — and so does the results screen once it has run.

Below that sits Not included in this import, headed nothing here is an error. It lists names that didn't match anyone in Scoutworks, badges Scoutworks doesn't recognise (usually retired, pre-2025 or custom badges), a row called Dates for earlier staged levels when your files include staged badges, and any notes about the files. None of it blocks the import.

Step 5 — Import#

When the preview looks right, press the button. It tells you what it's about to do — Import 148 badges — so there's no ambiguity about the size of what you're committing to.

Nothing changes until you press it.

What comes across#

• A badge belongs to the section it was earned in. Import a Cubs export for someone who is now a Scout and their Cubs badges are recorded as Cubs badges — they don't become Scouts badges, and they don't displace anything. This is also what lets a top award work: a young person keeps the Chief Scout's Silver they earned as a Cub, and Scoutworks awards it from their Cubs badges even though they have moved up.
• Each badge keeps its own date. A badge earned in 2019 is dated 2019, not the day you migrated, and a young person's badges keep the individual dates they were earned on rather than all sharing the most recent one. Staged activity badges are the one exception: OSM dates only the most recent level, so earlier stages arrive blank.
• Counts come across one for one. Nights away, hikes and time on the water take the running total from your export, and an activity recorded once against a Challenge badge counts once.
• Staged activity badges need only one export. They span every age group, so a single download already carries a young person's whole history — you don't need to re-export them per section. Swimmer and Air Activities are included. Where OSM records the stage a young person reached but not which optional activities they chose — Air Activities stages 2 to 5, and any sheet labelled (Pre 2025) — Scoutworks awards the stage from the level OSM recorded and leaves the individual requirements blank rather than guessing at them.

Running it again is safe#

You can re-upload the same files as many times as you like. Anything already in Scoutworks shows as Already recorded and is left alone — you won't get duplicate badges, and you won't get a member's badge history overwritten. So if you're not sure whether a file went through, just run it again and read the preview.

Name matches you resolve are remembered too, so sorting out an ambiguous name once means future imports already know the answer.

Tidying up an earlier import#

If you imported a section a while ago and the records don't look right, run the same files through the importer again. You don't need to delete anything first, and doing so would lose the completed-versus-awarded distinction you've set by hand. A re-run:

• Puts the right date on badges you've already imported. Badges already in Scoutworks are re-dated from the rows in your file, whether they're sitting at completed or awarded — including any that came in with no date at all.
• Adds badges an earlier import missed. They show up as New in the preview, so you can see exactly what's being filled in.
• Recalculates nights away, hikes and time on the water from the total in your export, and clears out entries an earlier run left behind.

Two things a re-run deliberately won't do:

• It won't take a badge back. A badge you've marked as awarded stays awarded, and one sitting at completed stays ready to award. A re-run only ever adds or corrects.
• It won't reduce an activity count that's already too high on a Challenge badge. Scoutworks can't tell which of the recorded sessions are the real ones, so it leaves them to you. Open the badge from Badges, expand the requirement on that young person's row to see the sessions logged against it, and remove the ones that shouldn't be there using the bin icon. Re-run the import afterwards and the correct sessions come back in.

What's next#

• Exporting badge records from OSM — getting the files out of OSM in the first place.
• Moving from OSM to Scoutworks — the full migration checklist.
• Badge and evidence issues — what to check when a badge doesn't look right.