This article is for scouting administrators who are responsible for or contribute to the department's overall travel efficiency. Travel Flags is a feature that is turned on for individual users by your ONIT admin, so if you don't see it, ask your admin to enable it for you.

Before you read further, open Travel Settings by going to Itinerary > Scout List and clicking Travel Settings near the top of the page. Enter the home city and state for each scout. This step comes first because every route starts and ends at a scout's home. Without it, the miles, costs, and flags you see later won't be accurate. If ONIT can't recognize a city, the field turns red so you know to fix it.

This article is meant to be read with the app open, section by section. Once home cities are in, the rest of the article will match what you see on screen.

While you're in Travel Settings, you'll also see your club defaults, such as mileage rate and hotel cost, and you can make per scout overrides. It's a good idea to review both, but finish reading this article first. The section called Setting up your club explains what each setting does.

Your scouts already confirm the games and events they plan to attend (e.g., college and high school games, showcases, workouts, etc.). Travel Flags takes those confirmed stops (games and events) and connects them into a route for each scout.

The route runs from the scout's home to his first stop, from stop to stop, and eventually back home, and it is continuous across the whole season. Once the route exists, ONIT can measure it and point out the parts that cost more than they should based on your organization's travel settings.

Throughout this article, the word "stop" means any confirmed game or event. A showcase counts exactly the same as a game. If a scout confirmed it, it is part of the route.

You will see Travel Flags in two places.

The first is the Scout List under Itinerary, where flags, miles, and estimated cost appear next to each scout for any week, month, or day.

The second is the Map, which draws a scout's week as a route.

Scouts do not have to enter anything new for this feature to work. Everything you see is built from stops they have already confirmed, each scout's home city, and a small set of travel settings your enabled user(s) fill in once. The key habit to build with your scouts: confirm every game and event, both the ones they plan to attend and the ones they've already attended.

A flag means "this piece of travel is worth a review." It does not necessarily mean the scout was wrong. Sometimes a long trip is exactly the right call because a particular prospect has to be seen. The flag simply makes sure you see the trip that warranted a travel flag so you can easily identify potentially inefficient travel, then decide for yourself whether it is warranted.

It fires when a scout drives 500 miles or more in a single leg, whether that is from one stop to the next, from home to a stop, or from a stop back home. Your club sets the threshold in Travel Settings, and it can be adjusted for individual scouts. A Midwest scout who covers four states can reasonably have a longer leash than a scout covering Southern California, and the setting lets you reflect that.

It fires when a stop sits far off the path between where the scout came from and where he went next, while he was out on the road. In plain terms, the scout went a long way out for one game or event and then had to travel a long way again to get back on course. A straightforward trip from home to a far series and back is not a detour; that is just a long trip, and the Long Drive flag or the flight count will tell you about it. Picture a scout who goes from Tallahassee to Miami and then up to Raleigh. Tallahassee to Raleigh directly is about 600 miles. Going through Miami makes it about 1,400. That extra 800 miles for one look is what the Detour flag catches.

It fires when, in the middle of a road trip, a scout flies into a stop for a single game or event and then flies straight out to the next stop. Flying to a weekend series or a multi day showcase and driving between stops is normal. Flying in and out for one look is the pattern that adds up quickly, and that is what this flag surfaces. A doubleheader counts as two games, so it does not trigger this flag.

If you ever forget what a flag means, click its pill in the legend at the top of the Scout List and the definition will appear.

In Week View, each scout's row has a column called Travel estimates. Reading it from top to bottom, the first line tells you the scout's travel type, either Driver or Driver + Flyer, and the home city the route starts and ends at. If that city shows in red, ONIT could not recognize it and you should fix it in settings. Below that you will see any flags the scout has this week, shown as red chips.

Click a chip and the stops it is built from will light up in the row so you can see exactly which trip triggered it. Below the flags you will see miles driven with the estimated mileage cost, then flights with the estimated airfare (this line only appears for scouts who fly), then hotel nights with their estimated cost. Those three lines add up to the total estimate shown beneath them. The last line shows the scout's total time in transit for the week.

On the calendar itself, a small pill sits above each confirmed game or event. It shows how the scout got there: the distance, the drive or flight time, and the estimated cost of that leg. When a leg triggered a flag, a red flag chip appears on the pill. A dashed pill under a card means the home rule assumed the scout went home that night, and the pill shows the distance home.

Because the route is continuous, the first pill of the week may show a leg that started at the previous week's last stop rather than at home. Hover over it and the pill will say so.

Games and events use the same colors. A card is green once the scout has confirmed it and gray while it is still unconfirmed. Only green cards count toward travel. A gray card is a placeholder the scout parked on the calendar, not a commitment, so it does not move any number.

The region header above each group of scouts shows a count of flags for that region. If you manage several regions, that count tells you at a glance where to look first. You can customize the regions by selecting Customize View.

When more than one of your scouts is confirmed at the same game or event, the card shows ONIT's usual red count badge. Hover over it to see which scouts are there. That is often the fastest way to spot two people covering the same thing.

Above the calendar you will find the month, week, and day toggle, along with arrows and a today button that move through time in whichever view you are in.

Week is where you read individual legs and flags. It shows the most detail.

Month shows each scout across the weeks of the month. Each cell contains that week's miles, flights, hotel nights, cost, and any flag names, and cells with flags are tinted red. This is the view where patterns become visible. One detour in one week is a judgment call. The same scout with a detour three weeks in a row is a conversation worth having. Clicking any week cell opens that week in the week view.

Two things are worth keeping in mind as you compare scouts in month view. A scout with very few confirmed stops usually was not confirming his games and events, rather than staying home, so check with him before drawing conclusions. And miles run higher in sparse territories where the schools are far apart, so compare scouts against others in their region rather than against the whole organization.

Day shows a single day with larger cards. The travel column shows only that day's legs and any flag touching a stop on that day, with the week's total underneath for context.

Click the Map button in a scout's Travel estimates column to see the week drawn on a map. A house marker "H" shows the scout's home. Numbered markers show each stop in order. Lines connect them. If the week's first leg started at a stop from the previous week, a gray marker shows where the scout came from.

Drives are solid lines, and a drive turns red when it is long enough to be flagged. Flights are drawn as dashed arcs so they read differently at a glance. Nights the home rule assumed the scout went home are drawn as dotted lines back to the house marker. Any stop involved in a flag is a red circle instead of a green one. A small legend under the map repeats these conventions.

Hover over a stop to see the games or events there. Hover over a leg to see its miles, time, and cost. You can zoom and pan as you would on any map. Below the map you will find the flag explanations for the week and the full leg by leg list, including hotel nights and where they were spent.

From the month view, the Map button draws the whole month as one route.

Open Travel Settings by clicking the gear icon in the legend on the Scout List. There are two sections: club defaults and per scout overrides.

Club defaults apply to every scout unless a scout has an override. The Driver mileage rate is the dollar amount per mile your club pays scouts who drive, and the typical starting point is the federal mileage rate of about 70 cents. The Driver + Flyer mileage rate is the amount per mile on a flying scout's driving legs. Some clubs have bought their cross checkers out of mileage entirely, in which case this is set to zero. The car allowance is a flat dollar amount per scout per month, if your club pays one. The airfare per air mile is a dollar amount used to estimate flights, and 40 cents is a reasonable starting point for scouting travel, which tends to be booked close to the date. The minimum airfare is a floor, typically around 200 dollars, so that short flights are not priced as if they were nearly free. The fly above road miles setting is the distance above which a flying scout's leg is treated as a flight rather than a drive, and 300 miles is the usual default. The hotel per night is the dollar amount charged for each night the scout is assumed to be on the road. The home return radius, the home radius with an off day, and the home after off days settings are explained in the next section. The long drive at road miles setting is the distance at which a drive gets flagged, and 500 miles is the default.

Per scout overrides give you one row for each scout. The most important field is travel type, which is either Driver or Driver + Flyer. A Driver always drives. A Driver + Flyer flies whenever a leg is longer than the fly above road miles setting and drives otherwise. Travel type is set once from the scout's ONIT role when the feature is turned on, with area scouts becoming Drivers and cross checkers becoming Driver + Flyers, and after that it is simply a field you can change whenever you like. It is kept separate from the role because some clubs assign the cross checker role to area scouts for unrelated reasons, such as giving them access to prospect grades.

The second field is home city and state. Every leg to or from home depends on this being right. If it is blank or ONIT cannot recognize it, the field turns red and the scout's week is measured from his first stop to his last stop until you fix it. The remaining fields, which are car allowance, mileage rate, long drive threshold, and fly above road miles, can be left blank to use the club default or filled in to override it for that one scout.

Any change you make takes effect immediately, in every view.

Distance is measured between the locations of games and events, which means the ballpark, the showcase venue, or wherever the confirmed stop is. Driving distance is estimated from the straight line distance between two points, and flights use air miles.

Whether a leg is a drive or a flight follows the scout's travel type and the fly above road miles setting, as described above.

Whether a scout went home or stayed in a hotel follows what we call the home rule. ONIT does not know where a scout actually slept, so it makes an assumption, checking three conditions in order. First, if the last stop of the day is within the home return radius, which is 150 miles by default, ONIT assumes the scout went home that night. Second, if the scout has a full day off before the next stop and home is within the home radius with an off day, which is 400 miles by default, ONIT assumes he went home that night. Third, if the scout has two or more off days in a row before his next stop, ONIT assumes he went home no matter how far away he is, because nobody spends two days off in a hotel; the trip home is priced as a drive or a flight depending on his travel type and the distance. If none of the three apply, ONIT assumes he stayed on the road near the stop, and that night is counted as a hotel night.

The next leg of the route begins wherever the scout is assumed to have spent the night, and that carries across weeks. A scout who left home on Sunday and is still on the road Wednesday is on one continuous trip, and the week view shows it that way.

Cost is then miles driven times the mileage rate, plus flights, plus hotel nights times the nightly rate. The car allowance is shown separately because it is a fixed monthly amount and does not change with travel.

There are two honest caveats to keep in mind. The first is that every number is an estimate, and each one is labeled that way. The figures are designed to be directionally right for planning and for comparing scouts, not to match an expense report line by line.

The second is that the estimate is a floor. If a scout actually went home between two stops when the home rule assumed he stayed out, his real travel was more than what is shown, not less, because going home and coming back is always farther than going direct. This is also why you can trust the flags even though the home rule is a guess. The route ONIT builds is the least travel that could have produced the scout's stops, so a flag always describes at least that much real travel. A wrong guess about where the scout slept can change which flag you see, but it cannot invent travel that did not happen.

It is not a mandate. It is a way to see where travel is expensive so that you can ask the question. Sometimes the answer will be that the trip was worth it, and that is a perfectly good answer.

It is not visible to scouts unless your admin turns it on for them. By default it is a tool for the people who manage coverage.

It does not track rental cars, per diem, or the actual price of booked airfare.

Begin by opening Travel Settings and checking every scout's home city and travel type. Fill in your club's mileage rate and, if you pay one, the car allowance.

Next, go to the Scout List in week view and scan for red flags. Click each one to see the stops behind it and decide whether the trip makes sense.

Then switch to month view to see which scouts have flags repeatedly rather than once.

Finally, ask your scouts to confirm games and events a week or two ahead of time, and to go back and confirm the ones they attended. Showcases and combines are often the longest legs of the week, and they only count once they are green. The more your scouts confirm, the more useful every view becomes.