OneDrive Folder Download Link: Leader Tools
Parent Survey
The top half is a thinly-veiled etiquette contract, and the bottom is to solicit the degree of engagement I can expect, and what things they're able to help with. Feel free to alter to suit your needs.
Attendance Tracker
Color-coded spreadsheet for keeping track of what was done at each meeting and who attended. There's an Instructions tab that gives some extra insight into ways to use it beyond the obvious. The coolest part is that the color-coding is all conditional formatting, so you can't break it with normal copying and pasting. This is awesome for multi-level troops!
Financials Helper
Many councils provide a Financial Tracking spreadsheet to help fill out their annual report the way that they need, but for those that don't, or if you want something a little different, feel free to try this one. Please read the Instructions tab first. There are some helpful hints in there and even some keywords you can type in certain fields to break your running balance up by statement month for easier balancing.
OLD - Not Updating
Direct link to this section's OneDrive: OLD - Not Updating
I'm not personally updating these files/sections any more, but that doesn't mean there aren't useful things in there. Use at your own discretion.
Badge Planning Cards
I made little cards that have each of the badge themes on them with the badges that go with that theme so that as the girls vote for what they want to do, it's easier to grab all of those cards and move them around on the calendar to get a schedule setup for the year. And because I like them to be uniform, I designed a cut file in .svg format that can be used with a Cricut to cut them all out. Just use the 18 card .svg for the first 3 pages and the one labelled for Daisy Petals for the last page.
If you pick different colors of cardstock for each page, you'll even end up with themed cards. One page is all Journeys, one has the High Adventure and Progressive Sets, one has Financial/Annual stuff, and one has the rest of the badges (good to fit into a normal meeting).
Badge Planning Cards
Badge Planning Card Cut File
Badge Planning Card Cut File
After importing the .svg files, make sure they're sized to 8" wide to match up with the Word doc.
Multi-Level Year Plans
Back when I was in a troop with all 6 levels, we created a Year A and Year B plan so that we could alternate what badge families we were focusing on. That let us minimize the number of times that girls were earning the same badge more than once by accident and also let them move up to the new content at the next level up every two years as they bridged. (Progression!) There are a couple of versions in there as we made changes based on new badge offerings or the girls' changing wants. I did not keep these up as my troop's needs changed, but you are free to use them as a starting point.
My Leader Binder
The rest of this page is dedicated to my Girl Scout Leader Binder of Power™. These are documents/spreadsheets I've created to help me keep my troop organized. Some of them have been revamped and are in the main Leader Tools OneDrive, but there are also some older versions that I tossed in the OLD folder.
I use a large zippered binder to maintain all of my troop's badge tracking, financials, permission slips, etc. The binder I use is this one: Awesome Zipper Binder and it has served me well so far.
If you're curious how I set up my leader binder, you can check out the following:
I have 4 sets of the 8-divider tabs with the following sets:
In front of set 1:
A zipper pouch that has the top pouch holding the checkbook and any money or receipts that have been turned in. I move the receipts to the bottom pocket after they have been recorded in the financials spreadsheet. The back pocket has all of the extra deposit slips in there for product sale deposits for council.
Then a single page blank receipt log where I write down exactly who gave me money, how much, and why. All of the parents know not to walk away until they see me write that down. The back of that page has a to-do list for when I need to remember to do something for someone later.
Set 1:
Roster and Attendance
Year Plan
Daisies*
Brownies*
Juniors*
Cadettes*
Seniors*
Ambassadors*
*We have all 6 levels, and these sections contain a copy of my troop-level tracker and a page for each girl right behind it.
Set 2:
Dues (just tracking dates of when they got paid)
June**
July**
August**
September**
October**
November**
December**
Set 3:
January**
February**
March**
April**
May**
Next June**
Balance Sheets
Permission Slips (the annual kind)
**Each month has a print-out of the bank-statement followed by photo copies of every receipt and transaction to make it easier to balance. The Balance Sheets section uses my home-made financial tracker to help build the end-of-year report automatically, and I just print it after I balance each month.
Set 4:
Fall Product Sale (final printouts)
Cookie Sale (final printouts)
Uniforms (pictures of each level's uniform placement guides)
Notes (normal notebook paper)
The other 4 tabs are blank at the moment and get used as I have special needs throughout the year.
If you're curious how I set up my leader binder, you can check out the following:
I have 4 sets of the 8-divider tabs with the following sets:
In front of set 1:
A zipper pouch that has the top pouch holding the checkbook and any money or receipts that have been turned in. I move the receipts to the bottom pocket after they have been recorded in the financials spreadsheet. The back pocket has all of the extra deposit slips in there for product sale deposits for council.
Then a single page blank receipt log where I write down exactly who gave me money, how much, and why. All of the parents know not to walk away until they see me write that down. The back of that page has a to-do list for when I need to remember to do something for someone later.
Set 1:
Roster and Attendance
Year Plan
Daisies*
Brownies*
Juniors*
Cadettes*
Seniors*
Ambassadors*
*We have all 6 levels, and these sections contain a copy of my troop-level tracker and a page for each girl right behind it.
Set 2:
Dues (just tracking dates of when they got paid)
June**
July**
August**
September**
October**
November**
December**
Set 3:
January**
February**
March**
April**
May**
Next June**
Balance Sheets
Permission Slips (the annual kind)
**Each month has a print-out of the bank-statement followed by photo copies of every receipt and transaction to make it easier to balance. The Balance Sheets section uses my home-made financial tracker to help build the end-of-year report automatically, and I just print it after I balance each month.
Set 4:
Fall Product Sale (final printouts)
Cookie Sale (final printouts)
Uniforms (pictures of each level's uniform placement guides)
Notes (normal notebook paper)
The other 4 tabs are blank at the moment and get used as I have special needs throughout the year.