Girl Scout Cookie Mom

Mrs M, that was great advice! Thank you very much.
Now its not a completely "thankless job"..lol...

I was Cookie Mom for the last 2 years. I enjoyed the job but found it to be a thankless job.

1. You have the option to have the customer pay at the time of order or at delivery. I recommend that you collect money up front. It is just cleaner that way.
2. Tell the parents to make a copy of their order form before they turn it in to you...just in case.
3. When you sort out the orders, count, count,and double count. Make the parent confirm the number of boxes with you before you hand off the cookies.
4. Incentives....do you want them or not? Get that out of the way up front!
5. Booth sales....do you want to do them or not? We didn't do them with our troop for the first year.
6. Plan a meeting just to talk cookies with the girls. Make a role play activity out of it. Get the girls excited. Have them learn about the various types of cookies. Maybe have them draw thank you notes that they can attach to their cookies when they are delivered to their customers. Involve the girls.
7. Be very clear about checks...how to be made out and the proper dates. I had several checks dated Jan 2010 when it was actually Jan 2011. Also, people would make out the checks directly to the troop when, in fact, they were to be payable to Girl Scouts. If the checks bounced, the troop's account would incur bank fees so its best if it goes through the GS account. I made several people go back and get corrected/new checks.
8. After the fact, I learned that the troop typically pays your $12.00 membership fee as the Cookie Manager. No one offered to pay my fee despite the fact that I helped the troop earn thousands.
9. Gifts of Caring (GOC): These are boxes of cookies that can be purchased by customers and donated to either a local charity or the GS will donate them on your behalf to selected organizations. Usually the organizations selected by GS are folks in the armed services. One year we donated to a various local charities and the second year we let the GS organization take care of it (significantly easier!!).

Buy a expanda folder to keep all information in.

Permission slips, if parents are divorced or separated make sure you have both of them sign a permission slip.

Keep back ups of the order form. You will need cause parents mess them up and so do the buyers.

Spreadsheet! It will save your life.

Keep track of all checks, name, check number, amount. Have a worksheet for each girl. Number of cookies she is going to sell and amounts. THis is year is going to be new for everyone since they changed to direct sales.

Extra cookies make sure you know who you gave what to...that messed me up last year. I thought I could do extra cookies in my head and remember.
My cookie mom last year (I am a leader) up and quit in the middle of cookie sales...please don't do that to your leader. Good luck.

Double check everything!! Order forms, money, the bank deposit slips, cookies, and the rules. I agree with another poster - collect money at the time of ordering and make sure all checks are made out to council. That way there is no way for the troop to get burned. Make sure parents sign for everything. When they turn their money in at pre-order count it and have them initial a receipt. When they pick up cookies, have them sign the receipts provided by council. Double check your rules. I know as recently as two years ago, Daisy scouts were not supposed to do booth sales, at least in Chicago. That may have changed by now. The time involved varies. If you don't do booth sales, it isn't really much. There is an hour or two getting your pre-sales orders in and then plan on a few hours for cookie delivery, again depending on the way it is handled. We've had sales managers who would not let troops have access to cookies until they had been counted and sorted by troop. And we've had other years where leaders or cookie moms helped unload the truck, count and separate by troop. Either way, once the cookies are separated by troop, I highly recommend sorting them by girl right on the premises and then having parents pick them up. That way you don't have to transport them. I pretty much plan on an half a day for delivery. Once cookies are delivered, if you don't do booth sales there is very little left to do.

Hi. I have been a leader for our troop for four years. I have somehow inherited the job of cookie manager, too.
The new online ordering is well organized and pretty easy to use. Make sure you have your password for the system before you start.
Two things that I found helpful...
1. Have everyone turn in the money to you when the orders are due, not after. They can even write one big check/cash and then collect the rest on their own. That way you are handling less money. * Double check the orders for correct money.*
2. Have a lot of room to spread out when dividing the orders. Have a buddy who is in charge of crossing off the boxes as you go helps a lot, too. (This could even be a child if old enough.) Much quicker and less mistakes with a buddy. *Again, double check!*
It's really not that bad!

Ummm, I do this with my sister. There's "help" and there's "I'm here to kinda help." More people is not neccesarily better.

My sister and her MIL could have handled it but my mom thought she was helping. It turned into a mini nightmare. Next time we're telling her a different day so she won't show up and try to take over the process.

Unload, seperate, and go slow. Double check and then make the pile for each girl. We were PERFECT and we had an INSANE amount of cookies to deal with.

have them come to you - you can hand out materials at the meeting prior to the start of the sale, Print up a quick easy dates sheet (start order taking, end and turn in orders by this date, pick up cookies at ? by this time on this date, turn in money by this date) but they should hand in orders to you and come to you to get the cookies and to bring you the money.
Have them collect money as they take orders. They can drop that off with their order if you want.
Call any girl that doesn't turn in an order. Don't rely on emails since email can go down at someone's house.
Tallying up the orders only takes an evening, same with the cookie sorting, takes about an hour for a large troop, and the money turning in again, another few hours. It's really not that great of a time committment.

When I was Cookie Manager, I made copies of the order forms for each of the girls as well as copies of the checks. Then if there are any questions about the amount a person paid, or if the banks inadvertently comes up with a different amount then you, you have proof. Its sounds like alot of work, but it was well worth it for our troop one year.
And I agree with other posters, double check everything!!

Folding table, small chair. Lots of thin mints. Though honestly I do not like the more healthy ones they are making. The bad ones were a lot better. In front of grocer store or in a strip mall.