Families — the unit MyTroop is built around

A family in MyTroop is a household — usually one or two adult parents/guardians plus the scouts in their care. The family is the unit of:

• Calendar visibility — events targeted at a den show up for every adult in families that have a scout in that den.
• RSVPs — one RSVP per family, listing each member's attendance.
• Payments — one bill per family per event, payable by any adult in the family.
• Mailings — digest emails go to every adult in the family individually, not "to the family."

Where families come from

Families are created two ways:

1. Automatically when an admin adds a new user — if you don't pick an existing family, MyTroop creates one named after the user's last name ("Smith Family"). Most families start this way.
2. Manually from /admin/families — useful for setting up a placeholder family before adding members, or for renaming.

A family can have multiple adult users (e.g., two married parents, a parent and a grandparent, divorced parents who share custody and want both in the loop).

Adding members to an existing family

In Admin > Users > Add User, type the email of the new user, then in the Family picker choose the existing family from the dropdown. This is the right path for adding a second parent to an existing scout's family.

Don't create a duplicate family — it splits the household's view of the troop and confuses RSVPs and payments.

Moving a user to a different family

Open the user's detail page in /admin/users, click Edit, and pick a different family in the Family dropdown. Save Changes.

Common reasons:

• A divorced parent moves out and wants their own household record.
• A grandparent who was added to one grandkid's family is now also caring for a sibling.
• An incorrect family was assigned during onboarding.

Scouts stay with their original family — moving an adult does not move the scouts. To move scouts, edit each scout from /admin/scouts and reassign them.

Renaming or deleting a family

In Admin > Families, click the family name. From there you can:

• Rename the family.
• Update vehicles (used by transportation signups).
• View the list of adults and scouts.

Deleting a family removes its scouts too. You'll be warned before this happens. If there are still adults in the family, you can't delete it from this page — remove or move the adults first.

Edge cases

• Same scout in two households (shared custody). MyTroop's family model is single-household. Pick one family for the scout's "home" and the other parent can be added as an adult in that same family. They'll see all the same events and RSVPs.
• Family with only adults (no scouts). Allowed and common — committee members who don't have current scouts. They show up in /admin/users and /admin/families but won't appear on event rosters.
• One adult in two troops. Allowed (multi-troop support). The adult will see both troops in their troop switcher and can switch between them. They belong to a separate family in each troop.