Written by: Paul Barnes | July 23, 2021

In this quick post, we will cover how you can set up email alerts in BillTrack50 in three easy steps. An “alert” is simply a helpful daily email that offers an overview of what happened with the bills you are tracking yesterday. You can always review your alerts for your bill sheets on the alerts section of the Navigation bar.

Importantly, you can only set up alerts for yourself. If you would like to set up alerts to send to someone else you will need to add that person to your account. (more info on adding users here) and then share this post with them so they can set up their own alerts.

If you would prefer to watch a video on Setting Up Alerts, then please look at this video.

Step 1. Alerts are set up independently for each bill sheet. Some bills you might want to follow closely, some you might only want new bill alerts, and some you might not want updates on at all. So to get started, click on the bill sheet that you want to set up alerts for, then click on the “Alerts” tab.

Step 2. On the Alerts tab you will see a page that looks like the one below.

On this page you have many different alert options, grouped into bill alerts (1-6) and event alerts (7-8). They are as follows:

  1. New Bill: A new bill is a bill that has just been added to your bill sheet; it is “new” to you. Usually that will be because a bill was introduced that meets your search criteria. But it can also happen when a bill is amended and your key words appear in the new version of the bill, or if you have set your bill sheet only to look at bills that have crossed over then the bill will show up as “new” when it crosses over and gets added to your sheet.
  2. New Vote: A floor vote, or in the states where we have the data, a committee vote was held on a bill.
  3. New Action: Any action recorded in the action or status section of the state legislature website for this bill. To see example actions see the action tab on any bill, items like “Amendment No. 1 read and adopted and the bill ordered engrossed.” or “Returned by the Committee, with the recommendation that it Do Pass”.
  4. New Version: A bill has been amended and a new version of the bill published.
  5. Sponsor Change: A legislator adds or removes their name to the list of sponsors of a bill.
  6. Associated Document: A new document has been posted on the state legislature website, often a new version of the bill, but can also be fiscal notes, vote information, or other documents related to the bill.
  7. Add Bills to Event Schedule: Adds bill hearings related to bills on this bill sheet to your Event Schedule list, which is located on the navigation panel, second item down. The Event Schedule shows hearing scheduled in the next 30 days.
  8. Send Daily Event Schedule Email: Turning on this setting will send you a second daily email listing all bills scheduled for hearing in the next 7 days.

Step 3. Once you are done picking your alert options merely hit save! Your alerts will start arriving tomorrow morning.

Repeat this process for each bill sheet you want to set up alerts for.