If you’ve received a BillTrack50 Company Account Invitation, this blog post is for you.
BillTrack50 is a website for researching, tracking, and sharing legislation. A company or organization you are associated with has added you to their account, and is inviting you to see legislation they think is important. You’ll be able view those bills, set up alerts, and search for other legislation you might find interesting. It’s exciting! Let’s get started!
First, simply click on the link in the email. This will take you to our simple registration page, which asks for your name, email address, and the password you would like to use. If you have previously created an account, no problem, just log in with the link at the top of the form. You will still have access to the bills you have been invited to see.
Once you have registered you will be required to validate your email address. This is an easy process, just check your email and click on the validation link we have sent you, and then click through to your account. If the email doesn’t come in a minute or two, please check your spam folder. If you still can’t find it, contact us and we will get yo sorted out.
Now that you have an account and you are logged in, you will see your dashboard. The dashboard shows you the bill sheet(s) you have been invited to see, and any bill sheets you have made for yourself. You’ll see a grid summarizing everything that has happened with these bills since yesterday. To view additional information, simply click on the name of the bill sheet and you will be taken to the bill sheet itself, listing all of the bills. If the creator of the bill sheet has added columns for comments, position, etc, and you have been given permission, you can write on the bill sheet by double clicking in the square you want to edit.
Of course you can click the bill number to read any bill, either from your dashboard or from the bill sheet. Notice when you are reading the bill there is a “highlight search terms” check box. Check this box to highlight in yellow the words that make this bill important. Also notice the sponsor names are links to more information about that legislator. For lots more information about all the features of the bill detail page, see this blog post.
You can also set up alerts to be notified when new bills are introduced, or when something happens with one of the bills you are following. From the dashboard click on the name of the bill sheet you are interested in (or go to the bill sheet tab and click on the bill sheet there). Now go to the alerts tab. Choose what you would like to be alerted about, click save at the bottom, and you are all set.
Alerts go out once a day, early in the morning, and look just like the grid above. You’ll be able to click on the bill sheet or click on an individual bill right from your email.
Hopefully you find your new BillTrack50 account useful and fun to use.
About BillTrack50 – BillTrack50 is a user friendly free service that provides legislation research in all 50 states and federally. BillTrack50 also offers legislation and regulation tracking across the nation with tools to help organization stay on top of changes (bill sheets and alerts) and share legislation they are tracking with key stakeholders (legislator scorecards, widgets and stakeholder pages). If you are interested in learning more about how BillTrack50 saves organizations time and money, sign up for a demo and try it out BillTrack50 Pro for a month, for free.