Almost everything that exists today about how to register in the SGC is on video. Great for someone with time and headphones, terrible for someone with the secretary's office open at 10 PM on a Tuesday who just needs to know one thing: what comes first. This guide is the written version of that, in the order the records actually depend on each other.
The SGC — the Club Management System of the South American Division (SAD) — is the official place where your club exists before the church. The SAD states plainly that clubs are directly responsible for entering member records, medical forms, Classes, Honors, Units, assets, calendar, documents, treasury, Annual Insurance, online reports and event registrations into the system. Here we'll cover the first five, which are the heart of the secretary's work.
If you don't have access to the system yet, start with the SGC guide: what it is and how to log in. If you already have a login and password, go ahead — and have this year's member list on hand.
Where to start: what's the right order for the records?
The classic mistake of someone opening the SGC for the first time is starting at the end — logging honors before an active member even exists, or creating a unit before there's anyone to put in it. The system's logic works in layers: first the club exists, then the people, then the groups, then what those people earned.
It's worth pinning this sequence to a piece of paper taped inside the secretary's notebook. It doesn't change when the system changes its layout — and the SGC got a revamped version, unveiled by the SAD in December 2024, with screens different from the ones shown in older tutorials.
| Order | Record | Mandatory minimum | Who usually does it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Club data | Updated information, mainly geolocation coordinates and history text | Director or secretary |
| 2 | Members | Full name, date of birth, email and active status, with a role matching age | Secretary |
| 3 | Medical form | Filled out by parents or guardians, updated within 12 months | Secretary, based on what the family reports |
| 4 | Units | 6 to 8 Pathfinders per unit, with a counselor assigned | Associate directors |
| 5 | Classes | At least 1 class per active member (leadership doesn't count) | Instructors and secretary's office |
| 6 | Honors | Minimum of 5 honors per active member | Instructors and secretary's office |
What's an official rule and what's the club's choice: the minimums in the columns above come from official documents — the Pathfinder Club Administrative Manual and the SAD's public club classification criteria. The exact menu names, button order and a few extra fields can vary by system version and by your Association or Mission's guidance. If the screen doesn't match what you read here, the content still holds: the packaging changed, not the requirement.
How do you register a new member in the SGC?
There are two paths, and most clubs use both in the same year. The first is online pre-registration, where the family fills in the data themselves. The second is the record typed directly by the secretary's office, for someone who joined mid-year or doesn't have internet at home.
For the pre-registration path, here's the outline:
- The club generates the enrollment code. It's a short code, generated per club (not per member) inside the SGC, and it can be renewed as many times as needed.
- The family opens the club's public page on the Encontre um Clube portal and chooses to start the member pre-registration. Without the code, the form won't open.
- The parent or guardian fills in the data — full name and date of birth among them — and accepts the terms, which are built into the enrollment screen itself.
- The club confirms or declines. What arrives is a pre-registration: it only becomes a member once the board accepts it inside the SGC.
Transparency note on this section: the pre-registration flow detailed above comes from a SAD notice dated December 1, 2022, signed by the SGC webmaster, which circulates reproduced on movement blogs — it's not an open official page. The exact code length and field layout may have changed with the new system version. What's stable is the logic: the code belongs to the club, the filling-in belongs to the family, and the confirmation belongs to the board inside the SGC.
What the record can't be missing: full name, date of birth (it's what defines the age class and the wing), email and the active flag. Email seems like a detail, but it isn't: the member's access to the virtual card uses the club code, the registered email and the date of birth — all entered by the club in the system. A record without an email means a member without a virtual card.
One precaution that avoids year-end headaches: anyone who left the club needs to be deactivated, not erased from memory. A member left marked as active still counts toward the Annual Insurance and drags down the percentages on criteria that require 100% of active members up to date. The same logic applies in reverse: someone who joined in August needs to be registered in August, not in December. If your club's secretary's office still runs on a notebook, it's worth reading the club secretary's guide before migrating everything at once.
What varies: the list of paper documents the club requires at enrollment (printed form, ID copy, proof of address, outing authorization) is set by the club itself and by your Field's guidelines. What's common to all is the registration in the system — that part isn't optional.
Medical form: why does it expire every year?
Because the SAD's official guidance for directors states it clearly: the medical form is valid for 12 months. And there's a detail almost every secretary discovers too late — even if nothing has changed about the Pathfinder's health, the form needs to be confirmed and updated in the SGC, so the update date always stays within the 12 months. The natural moment to do this is when the club's activities restart.
In the official club ranking, the medical form is worth up to 75 points, and the criterion requires 100% of active members with their form updated. There's no middle ground: it's the percentage of members up to date that determines the score.
The educational why: the medical form doesn't exist to score points. It exists for the day the club is three hours from home, at a campout, and someone needs to know whether that Pathfinder is allergic to a medication or takes something regularly. Filling it out just to fill it out protects no one — it's worth sitting down with the parents once a year and actually reviewing it. It's the same duty-of-care logic behind every child-protection rule inside the club.
Read alsoClub management system: SGC, spreadsheet, or app?How do you register units — and what does the rule require?
Here the rule is quite specific, and it comes from the Pathfinder Club Administrative Manual: all Pathfinders must be divided into units, grouped by gender and approximate age range, and each unit must have 6 to 8 Pathfinders — the number the manual considers appropriate for the program to work. Each unit is led by a counselor and, at most, one associate counselor.
The step-by-step in the system follows this structure:
- Create the unit with a name, wing (girls' or boys') and the responsible counselor already registered as a member — that's why registering people comes first.
- Link members to the unit, respecting the approximate age range and the 6-to-8 limit.
- Record the internal roles. Unit captain and unit secretary are elected by the members themselves at the first meeting of the year, with a term of three months to one year, as decided by the club's Executive Committee.
- Keep the Unit Corner report up to date — worth up to 150 points, tied with Annual Insurance and the Field Ranking as the highest-weighted criterion, and it requires 100% of active members with the data filled in. Watch out for a detail that trips up a lot of people: under the official criterion, this report isn't filled out in the SGC record — access belongs to the counselor, via the Encontre um Clube portal. One more reason for the unit to exist in the system before December.
What varies: the unit's name, pennant, cheer and visual identity are the club's choice — no rule requires an animal, plant or star. The board decides that together with the unit itself. If you want to understand the logic behind all of this before typing anything, it's worth reading the article on the unit system.
The why: the unit isn't an administrative drawer, it's the club's pedagogical core. A unit of 15 Pathfinders isn't a big unit — it's a unit that doesn't work, because the counselor stops knowing each one personally. The 6-to-8 limit exists to protect the relationship, not to complicate the paperwork.
Classes and honors: who registers and who approves?
This is the most costly point of confusion in the SGC, so let's separate it clearly: the club registers, but the club isn't who approves. The Administrative Manual states plainly that evaluating the completion of Classes, Honors and scarf-admission requirements — and approving the awarding of the badges — is the exclusive responsibility of Regional Coordinators, and of District Coordinators when authorized by them. The manual also advises that these evaluations happen at least three weeks before the investiture or awarding ceremony.
In practice, this means loading everything into the system at the last minute doesn't speed anything up: without an evaluation, there's no approval. The regular classes follow age — Friend (10), Companion (11), Explorer (12), Ranger (13), Voyager (14) and Guide (15), each with its own color, plus the six corresponding advanced classes. If the question is which class each Pathfinder is taking, the class card explains how the record works.
| Criterion | What the official criterion requires | Ranking points |
|---|---|---|
| Annual insurance | 100% of active members enrolled in the current insurance inside the SGC (leadership doesn't count: they have Integrated Insurance through Youth Ministries) | up to 150 |
| Unit Corner | 100% of active members with data filled in on the Unit Corner Report, accessed by the counselor on the Encontre um Clube portal | up to 150 |
| Class cards | 100% of active members (except leadership) with requirements filled in, even partially — also via the Unit Corner, through the counselor | up to 100 |
| Medical form | 100% of active members with an updated form | up to 75 |
| Record updates | 100% of active members reviewed and updated in the current year | up to 50 |
| Membership terms | 100% of active members with authorization collected via the SGC, the Encontre um Clube portal and the Events Portal | up to 50 |
| Secretary logins | Active secretary, with at least 48 logins per year (average of 4 per month) | up to 50 |
| Classes | At least 1 class per active member (leadership doesn't count) | up to 25 |
| Honors | At least 5 honors per active member | up to 25 |
| Club data | Complete record, with geolocation and history text — all-or-nothing criterion | 0 or 25 |
The table above only covers the criteria tied to records. The official classification has 15 criteria totaling up to 1,000 points — the rest cover asset inventory, activity calendar, documents, treasury and the Field Ranking. Above 800 points, the club earns 5 stars; 500 to 799, 4 stars; 300 to 499, 3 stars; 150 to 299, 2 stars; below that, 1 star.
Leadership classes follow a different rule. Under OMD 018/2022 — published on May 31, 2022 and officially listed by the SAD as "Leadership Class Registration" — since June 1, 2022, leadership classes have been handled through the virtual card tool, linked to the SGC and the Encontre um Clube portal. In practice, filling in and tracking the Leader, Master and Advanced Master card happens on the virtual card page inside the Encontre um Clube portal, logging in with the SGC code. The official flow is: the director or secretary fills in one of the requirements in the SGC to unlock the candidate's card; the candidate submits the requirements as files (PDF for text, JPG for photos, no larger than 2 MB); once it reaches 100%, the card sits pending for the director to review and recommend for investiture; then it goes to the Regional Coordinator, where that role exists in the structure, or straight to the Field. Once approved by the final authority, the class is automatically added to the member's record, with no extra steps.
It's also worth noting OMD 015/2018, from July 4, 2018, which, according to the SAD itself, covers the registration of leaders, master leaders and advanced master leaders across South American territory. Its official PDF is scanned as an image and isn't searchable, so here we stick to what the SAD states publicly: an official leadership registry exists, and it's what provides the documentary backing for investiture. Summaries circulating on blogs add deadlines and registration counts per level; since we couldn't read the official text, we don't repeat those numbers. For the step-by-step on earning an honor from scratch, see how to earn an honor.
Which mistakes cost the most points at year's end?
Every year it's the same story: December arrives, the club scrambles, and discovers it lost points over small things. The official classification closes on December 31, and the SAD itself recommends filling in your Field's ranking gradually, rather than all at once.
| Common mistake | What happens | How to fix it |
|---|---|---|
| Former member still marked active | They count toward Annual Insurance (which requires 100% of active members enrolled, not counting leadership) and drag down the other criteria that require 100% of active members | Deactivate as soon as they leave, not in December |
| Secretary only logs in during November | A criterion worth up to 50 points requires an active secretary with at least 48 logins per year | Log in every week, even just to check — the requested average is 4 logins a month |
| Expired medical form | Loses up to 75 points and, worse, the club travels without reliable health information | Review with families when activities restart, every year |
| Record with no email | The member can't access the virtual card | Collect the email at enrollment, along with the guardian's phone number |
| Member with no unit | They're left out of the Unit Corner Report, the 150-point criterion | Assign everyone to units of 6 to 8 right at the start of the year |
| Honor taught but not logged | It doesn't enter the record, and the club falls short of the minimum of 5 per active member | Log it the same month the honor was evaluated |
| Evaluation scheduled at the last minute | Without the Regional Coordinator's evaluation there's no approval, and the investiture has no backing | Schedule it at least three weeks before the ceremony |
| Incomplete club data | The criterion is all-or-nothing: without geolocation and history, zero points | Check it once a year, at the first board meeting |
Notice the pattern: almost none of these mistakes are technical. They're routine mistakes. And the classification itself assumes as much: one of the criteria literally requires the secretary's presence in the system — at least 48 logins a year, roughly one a week. The club that treats the secretary's office as a weekly habit reaches December without surprises; the one that lets things pile up spends November chasing medical forms in the WhatsApp group. If Annual Insurance is still hazy for you, the article on the club's annual insurance fills in the picture.
What only the SGC handles — and what's left out?
This needs to be said plainly: the SGC is irreplaceable, and no other tool takes its place. The member's official registration with the church, Annual Insurance, club classification, transfers between SAD clubs, the virtual card and validation for registering at official events all happen there — and only there. Any system that promises to replace that is promising something it can't deliver.
What the SGC's public list of functions doesn't cover is the week between one meeting and the next: telling parents about a schedule change, storing campout photos with image consent, reviewing an honor on the screen with the unit, organizing a fundraiser. That piece has historically lived in spreadsheets, paper and message groups — and that's exactly where Desbravai, which is free, aims to help, without touching anything official.
| Club need | SGC (official) | Desbravai (day-to-day) |
|---|---|---|
| Official member registration and transfers | Yes — only in the SGC | Doesn't replace it |
| Annual Insurance and club classification | Yes — only in the SGC | Doesn't do it |
| Virtual card and official class history | Yes — only in the SGC | Doesn't do it |
| Communicating with parents and the week's schedule | Not on the public list of functions | Yes |
| Photo gallery with consent control | Not on the public list of functions | Yes |
| Honor quizzes at the meeting | Not on the public list of functions | Yes |
How to read this table. The SGC column was built on the list of responsibilities the SAD published when it announced the system — an old text, from the launch — and on the public classification criteria, checked on July 12, 2026. The thing is, the SGC was rebuilt in December 2024, with dozens of new features and an internal area that's login-locked. In other words: "not on the public list" isn't the same as "doesn't exist in the system." If your Field tells you one of these functions is already in the SGC, the SGC wins — this comparison describes what can be confirmed from outside, not what exists in there.