Cookie Bites - Wrapping Up

Cookie Bites

Wrapping Up

Index

Important Dates

Settling Your Troop's Inventory

Settling Your Troop's Finances

Finalizing Rewards

Resources & Support

Final Steps

Important Dates

Mar. 15

Program Ends

Final Rewards due in eBudde

Mar. 23

Troop Late Payment Reports due

Mar. 30

Final ACH emails sent out

Apr. 1

Final ACH withdrawals/ deposits

Apr. 8

Rewards expected to ship

Late April

Settling Your Troop's Inventory

1. Review your Girl Orders Summary to understand your troop's inventory

2. Distribute troop inventory to individual girls as they sell

Settling Inventory Cont'd

3. Work with your troop to sell through remaining troop inventory at booths or wagon walks

4. Distribute Troop Site sales to Girl Scouts

5. Post what's left on the Cookie Exchange or local volunteer social media groups

Paying for Troop Cookies

Initial ACH Transaction

Final ACH Transaction

* ACH = Automated Clearing House

Learn more about the Troop Late Payment Report

Settling Your Troop's Finances

Your final Balance Due to council is shown in a widget on your eBudde Dashboard

Find a breakdown of this Balance Due in your troop Sales Report

Recording Payments in eBudde

You may need to revisit payment records you've kept throughout the season to determine which Girl Scouts still have money to turn in to the troop

Payments made via Digital Cookie will automatically show in eBudde

All other payments (Cash, Check) must be entered in eBudde by a troop volunteer

Phone App

Web

Final Rewards

Final Rewards should be submitted by March 23rd and are expected to ship by late April

Confirm your troop's Girl Scouts have made appropriate selections for reward tiers with multiple options

Click here for a note about Trefoil Rewards

Submitting Final Rewards

Final Rewards selections must be made and submitted in eBudde. You can view a summary of your troop's rewards to see what actions are required before submitting.

Phone App

Web

Resources & Support

Troop Playbook

eBudde Help Center

Neighborhood Cookie Manager

Cookie Volunteer Webpage

GSEM Help Center

Final Steps

Make sure Girl Scouts received all cookies needed for their Digital Cookie Girl-Delivery orders

1.

2.

Ensure all non pre-order cookies given to a Girl Scout are recorded in eBudde

3.

Collect and deposit all order sheet cookie money

4.

Record all cookie booth sales in eBudde

5.

Transfer all remaining cookie inventory in eBudde to members of the troop, even if unsold

6.

Ensure troop members have shared their reward choices with you to update in eBudde

Celebrate your cookie achievements!

Troop Late Payment Report

• Takes the burden to collect off the Troop

• GSEM's Finance team will complete the money collection process

• Troop’s ACH withdrawal amount adjusted down to reflect unpaid caregiver balance

• Adults who never make payment will have a funds handling restriction placed on their account; this includes troop cookie managers and leaders when necessary

• Must be submitted by March 30 via the online form

Troop Late Payment Report

On your eBudde dashboard, a pink widget tracks your troop's Balance Due to council. This number adjusts when your troop receives online payments and orders additional cookies throughout the program. For some troops, the amount owed to council may be a negative number. That means we’ve received more in payments than what your troop owes. In these cases, your troop will receive a deposit from us for those proceeds owed. Your Sales Report tab in eBudde provides you with the summary of the cookies your troop has received, the proceeds earned, payments made to council by the troop or from online sales and the amount of money due for cookies to council. Payments from individual Girl Scouts that you’ve recorded are not part of the sales report. Click the Sales Report button on screen to learn more about this report.

If anyone in your troop earned the pre-order instant reward, that was already shipped to the troop in February. Final rewards are calculated based on the entire season. Note that because troop rewards require at least three GS in a troop to be selling, you will not see these reflected in eBudde. However, you can check your troop PGA to know if you earned one of the troop rewards. We will send email communicate to troops that earned these reward. Click the phone and desktop icons at the bottom of the screen to walk through the process of submitting final rewards of the eBudde mobile app and web browser respectively.

Answer Center

• Contact if you or your Girl Scouts are unable to access eBudde or Digital Cookie
• Backup contact if your Neighborhood Cookie Manager cannot help

• Link below goes to their contact page on the GSEM website

Answer Center

• FAQs and user manuals under the eBudde Help tab

• A full playlist of eBudde training videos on the Little Brownie Bakers YouTube channel

eBudde Training Videos

Trefoil Rewards

• Girl Scouts who have earned Trefoil Rewards may only select the Trefoil option at the highest level they earned

• Trefoil Reward earners will not receive a physical representation of the reward, but can expect a notification email with further information

Girl Totals = Inventory assigned to individual Girl Scouts in eBudde

Troop Order = Total of all inventory credited to the troop

Difference = Inventory in troop's possession that has not been assigned to a Girl Scout

The goal is for the Difference row to read "0" for all varieties by the end of the program.

Here is a summary of of the rewards earned by Georgia P. At the top of the screen, we see the number of cookie packages she sold and then below that, the rewards she's earned are listed, along wiht the number of packages associated with earning that reward. Scroll down and you'll find the reward that was causing the red action required message from the previous screen. At 290 packages sold, a Girl Scout has the option between a t-shirt or Trefoil Rewards. Georgia and her caregiver forgot to make this selection in Digital Cookie, so you'll need to make it for them in eBudde. In this situation you'll want to reach out to the Girl Scout and ask what their selection is, but in this siutation, let's pretend that we know that Georgia wants to select the t-shirt option. You may also notice that we need to select a t0shirt size for Georgia. Let's select the Adult XL option. Do this now.

• Compilation of resources for cookie volunteers in one convenient place
• Tip Sheets
• Important forms
• Links to outside resources

Cookie Volunteer Webpage

Welcome to Cookie Bites Module 6: WrappingUp. In this module, you will learn about settling your troop inventory and finances at the end of the Cookie Program. You'll also review the process for submitting final rewards in eBudde. Throughout this training, you'll use the navigation icons on the right edge of the training window to move through the module. It is recommended that you interact with all features on a page, as this will provide the most comprehensive training experience. If you're ever unsure of what parts of a page are interactive, you can click on the pointing hand icon in the top right of the training window to reveal all clickable elements. The information icon toward the bottom left of the screen includes more in depth navigation instructions if needed.

Each Girl Scout and the inventory assigned to them is listed.

eBudde also calculates:

Total Due: from each Girl Scout by the end of the progam

Paid: what payments have already been made toward their total

Bal. Due: what each girl still owes the troop

There are a few steps associated with settling your troop's cookie inventory at the end of the program. You'll want to review your Girl Orders tab summary to know what final transfers and sales need to be made. It's important that all troop inventory is transfered to Girl Scouts so that they can earn credit for the sales, reach their goals, and earn rewards. Click on the portions of each screenshot to learn more about each of these steps in the inventory finalization process.

You've submitted Georgia's final reward now. Click Okay to return to the Final Rewards page. Explore this process from the desktop view, then continue on in this training module.

Initial Rewards have already shipped to those who earned them, so you'll now choose the Final Reward Orders. Click this now.

Select "Fill Out" by the Final Rewards option in your eBudde Rewards tab.

Needed selections will be noted in red beside each Girl Scout who earned rewards.

Finally, scroll to the bottom of the screen and submit your reward order.

• Monthly task lists
• Detailed explanations of many aspects of the program
• Step-by-step instructions of most common ebudde functions
• Available in print & online

Final ACH Withdrawal

• Takes place April 8

• Refer to the eBudde Sales Report and look for an email on April 1

• Make sure the troop’s account can cover the ACH withdrawal

• If due to Digital Cookie Sales, the troop has overpaid Council, troop proceeds will be deposited via ACH

Return to this main navigation menu

Return to the previous page

Move forward to the next page

Play or pause the main page audio

Access transcript of the main page audio

Scroll down and you'll see that the tshirt option and size are now selected. We can now click "Submit Girl Order"and move on. Do this now.

Your troop's proceeds summary is detailed on the left side of the report. This will include the base proceed rate, reward opt-out rate, and the 2nd tier PGA proceed rate. PGA selling can be found on the right hand side of the report.

At the bottom of the report is a summary of your total troop sales, troop and council proceeds, payments made, and the final amount you owe council at the end of the program.

These are important dates related to end fo the Cookie Program are listed on screen. The program ends on March 15th, so do you best to have all sales finalized by then. Final rewards should be submitted in eBudde no later than March 23rd and Troop Late Payment reports are due by March 30th. Final ACH transactions take place in the first week of April and rewards are expected to ship out to Neighborhoods at the end of April.

Initial ACH Withdrawal

• Takes place March 18

• Withdrawal will be for 30% of troop’s pre- ordered cookies

• If all cookies were paid for through Digital Cookie, no withdrawal will take place

• Make sure troop account funds can cover the ACH withdrawal

Select the "+Distribution" button to assign Troop Site sales to individuals in your troop so they can earn credit towards rewards.

From the Troop Site Distributor you can select which Girl Scouts will receive the credit. This can be distributed evenly amongst the selected girls, or be manually entered by package for each individual.

Do a Troop to Troop transfer on the Transactions tab in eBudde. The transaction should be made by the troop releasing the cookies.

Enter the totals, and make sure the "Remove Product" option is selected. Double count inventory when you hand it off to the other troop.

When you're done, click "Save" in the top right of the window. The cookies will leave your troop's ionventory and become the other troop's financial responsibilty.

Let's review the final steps for a strong finish this Girl Scout Cookie season. First, make sure your troop has fulfilled all existing orders, and sell through any remaining troop inventory at booths, neighborhood wagon walks, or other in-hand selling opportunities. Before the end of the program, all inventory in the Girl Orders tab should be assigned to individual Girl Scouts so they can earn credit toward rewards. You'll want to review your troop's final rewards summary, make any needed adjustments, and submit them before March 23rd. Continue collecting payments until you have all cookie money for your troop. Use tools for payment tracking and explore your Troop Sales Report in eBudde to ensure you have enough in your troop bank account to cover what you owe council. Final ACH transactions take place on April 8th. If you're waiting on payments from your troop, you have until March 30th to submit a Troop Late Payment report. Finally, look for communication from your Neighborhood Cookie Manager regarding reward delivery in late April. And don't forget to celebrate all of your troop's hard work during this Cookie Program! Thank you for all you do!

To navigate to reward selection in the eBudde mobile app, begin by selecting the menu icon in the top left corner of your screen. Do this now.

Rewards are calculated automatically by eBudde based on the number of cookie packages credited to a Girl SCout in the girl orders tab. This is why it is important that all extra troop inventory be assigned to individual members of your troop. Once all packages in your troop inventory are credited to Girl Scouts in the troop, it’s time to finalize the rewards.The deadline to finalize reward selections and submit your troop’s final rewards order is March 23. Rewards calculate automatically in eBudde. While Digital Cookie will show some of the rewards a Girl Scout earned, it won’t show everything; eBudde is the accurate source of rewards eared. If any of your Girl Scouts use Digital Cookie, they may be able to make selections on reward tiers with multiple choices. You can download a report from Digital Cookie to find out if any of your Girl Scouts made selections before you reach out to them.

Neighborhood Cookie Manager

• Volunteer in your area who has years of experience in the role you're in now
• Best contact for questions and advice

• If you don't know who your NCM is, the Answer Center can tell you

The Cookie Program can sometimes feel overwhelming to new troops, as there is a lot to learn. Your Product Programs team and our Cookie Baker have provided a number of tools and resources to help ease the learning process. Explore the resources on this page to learn more about them and where to find them.

If you've already distributed all of the inventory sold to individual Girl Scouts and you still have cookies leftover, we recommend planning troop selling events like lemonade stand style cookie booths or a wagon walk around local neighborhood. You can record these sales through your troop site, but make sure to distribute these and any other troop site sales amongst the Girl Scouts who participated in the events. Finally, if you still have cookies you troop is unable to sell, you can post a listing on the eBudde Cookie Exchange or a local volunteer group on Rallyhood or other social media site. If another troop is willing to take responisbility for your leftover cookies, transfer the inventory to them on the eBudde Transaction tab. Click on the images below step 4 and 5 to learn more about these processes.

Any cookies collected by your troop, whether they be from a pre-order pickup location, cookie cupboard, or troop transfer, become the financial responsibility of the troop. Failure to provide payment for cookies could lead to a funds handling restriction being placed on yours or another adult's membership account. This hold can remain on an account for 2 years after payment of debt, and limits the capacity in which that person can be involved with product programs. Payment for cookies will be collected by Council at two different points during the Cookie Program via ACH withdrawal. Select each button on screen to learn more about the process for these transactions.

As shared in prior modules, it’s very important to track of payments in eBudde carefully. Each physical receipt for payment you've kept from the program should match an entry in eBudde. This will help the process of settling your troop's finances at the end of the program run much more smoothly. You can reference past transactions to determine which Girl Scouts still have money to turn into the troop, or to identify discrepancies if your troop bank account balance is less than it should be. Let's review the process of recording payments in eBudde. Click on the phone and desktop icons at the bottom of the screen to walk through recording a payment on the mobile app and web browser version of eBudde respectively.

Next, select the Rewards option from the menu that appears on the left hand side of your screen.

Enter payments using the "+Pay" button and cookie inventory using the "+Order" button

Comments on the left side of each transaction describe it's origin/purpose

Each line shows the number of packages credited to the Girl Scout in that transaction.

The money due or paid for each transaction appears on the far right.

A summary of your troop's final reward earnings will appear on screen. An overview of what each girl earned is listed in the top portion of the page and then a total number for each reward that you can expect to receive is listed below that. In this example, we see that only one Girl Scout in this troop earned final rewards. Georgia P has erned 7 rewards. For each reward she earned, the total the troop can expect to receive is 1. Notive that below Georgia's name, there is a note in red text that reads “size/catalog selection needed”. This indicates that you must update a choice or size for that Girl Scout. You can click Georgia's name to drill down into her specific rewards summary. Do this now.