Welcome to Scout

Scout is your church management platform. People, groups, services, giving, and check-in live in one place, and Scout reads the patterns that run across them.

What's where

On a computer, the left sidebar holds every destination in Scout, chunked into groups.

• Dashboard sits on its own at the top. It opens with the Ask Scout bar and a list headed People to reach out to.
• People holds People, Groups, and Teams.
• Sundays holds Services, Volunteer schedule, Check-in, and Events.
• Follow-up holds Forms and Workflows, because a form arriving is usually the start of something.
• Below a divider, with no header of their own: Giving, Reports, and Announcements.

Settings is pinned under the groups, and Help sits at the very bottom of the rail. While your setup is unfinished, a Finish setup · N left pill appears directly above Settings with the number of steps remaining. The small chevron on the rail's right edge collapses it to icons, and Scout remembers that choice in that browser.

Saved lists are not in the sidebar. They live behind the Lists button in the top-right of the People page.

On a phone or tablet, the rail is replaced by a bottom bar with Home, People, Services, and More. More opens the same groups, with Settings and Help in a footer block below them.

The bar across the top of every page holds one search field, Search people and pages… (or ⌘K), which covers both. Finding people in your directory covers what it will and won't match.

You don't need every section to get value out of Scout. Most churches start with People, Services, and Check-in, then layer in Giving and Groups once their team is comfortable.

What Scout reads across your data

Scout reads patterns across participation, giving, serving, groups, and a person's connections to other people, then puts a single read on each person. You'll see that read as a status pill next to their name in the directory, on the dashboard, and at the top of their profile.

There are five: New, Connected, Needs Attention, At Risk, and Inactive. What Scout's statuses mean covers what each one is claiming, and what it isn't.

A status needs history behind it. Everyone an import adds reads New for their first 60 days, so expect the whole directory to sit there at first and the read to start carrying real pastoral detail in month three.

Where to start

If you're brand new, work through Your first 7 days. It's a short plan that gets you from an empty database to running a Sunday.

If you're switching from another ChMS, start with Import from CSV or Import from Planning Center (PCO). Most of Scout's value comes online once your people are in.

After that, take these in whatever order matches your week:

• Inviting your team
• Working your list on the dashboard
• Setting up a serving team, then Scheduling volunteers
• Creating a group
• What your church sees in the app
• Posting an announcement

How to get help

On a computer, click Help at the bottom of the left sidebar. On a phone or tablet, it's the help icon in the top bar, and there's a Help row in the More sheet.

Any of those opens a panel titled How can we help?. Under For this page it lists up to three guides tied to where you were standing, and below that is a link into the full help center. A few sections have no guide written yet: on Events, Forms, and Reports, the panel opens with the full index and no page-specific block.

If you'd rather email someone, support@scout.church goes straight to us.