A bill sheet is basically a saved search. Bill Sheets form the basis of our tracking and sharing services. The bill sheet grid itself has quite a bit of functionality. Then once you have your bill sheet just like you want it, you can build alerts, widgets, and stakeholder pages based on it.
Making a Bill Sheet
Making a bill sheet is simple. Click the button to get started (which changes depending on if you have any bill sheets in your account):
1) There are four steps. First, you have to choose what state(s) you want to search. This is the only setting you can’t change later, because it affects the price of the bill sheet. Enter the two letter abbreviation for the site, separating a list of states with commas. Or use the plus the check off a list of states, or to quickly choose all states. Note that Federal bills are listed under US. Then give the bill sheet a name, something meaningful to you. Bill sheet names must be unique. Then you can add a description, which only you will be able to see, or you can leave this field blank.
2) The second step is to set up your search. You can see this blog post for hints on building your search. But the basics are, you want to use words that will actually appear in the bills you are interested in. Use quotes around phrases. And you can use a wildcard, *, at the end of a word to get variations of that word. You can try out the search on this screen to get a few initial results and see if you are in the right ballpark. You’ll be able to fine tune the query after you’ve built the sheet, too. You can skip trying out the search if you are confident in your words.
3) The next screen shows you your pricing options. Our pricing is for annual subscriptions. $500/state for unlimited searches, or $500/search across all states, or $3000 for unlimited bill sheets, across all states. See our pricing sheet for more details. The system keeps track of what you’ve purchased, so if you are searching a state(s) you’ve already paid for, that will be subtracted from your total. You are not billed immediately, but rather invoiced at the end of the month. So you have a chance to make sure the bill sheet is what you need before you pay for it. If you are having issues, or would like to remove the bill sheet from your account before you pay for it, please contact info@legination.com.
4) The final screen asks you to enter (or confirm) your billing address, and agree to the terms of service. Then voilà, you have a shiny new bill sheet. (If you get an error on this step, the most common culprit is that you didn’t choose a unique name for your bill sheet.)
Using the Grid
After building a bill sheet you are presented with a grid showing you information about the bills that match your search. You can click on the header of any column to sort by that column, and click on the header again to sort the other direction. You can grab columns and move them around. You can grab the edge of a column to make it wider.
When you click on a row it automatically expands to show you all of the information in that row, such as the full title or summary. To collapse that row click on it again, or click on a different row.
Perhaps most importantly, you can click on the bill icon in the first column to see the full bill details. See this blog post for details about the bill details screen.
You can also filter, add new columns (from settings), and export. See the next section for details.
Bill Sheet Tools
Underneath the bill sheet grid is a collection of tools:
Refresh: The first button simply runs the search again, in case anything has changed since you opened the sheet.
Filter: The second button, the magnifying glass, is for opening the filter. This lets you narrow your sheet by the value in any particular column. The filter button opens up a blank row at the top of the bill sheet.
In the blank field enter the text you want to filter on – a state code, for example, or a bill number, or a word to filter by in the name or keyword columns. This will narrow the bills to just those containing the text you entered. To undo the filter, erase the text you entered.
Edit: The next button , the pencil, is one way to edit a column you have added (you add new columns from the settings button, see below.) You can edit by either double clicking the row you want to edit, or by highlighting the row you want to edit and clicking the pencil. Either way will bring up a form for you to enter text (including html) in your column(s).
Settings: The little gear is for bring up the settings screen. From this screen you can turn on and off what columns you want to see in your grid. You can also check on new columns at the bottom, for your own comments. You can change the order of the columns, and their size, from the settings screen too. You can also change the order and size from the grid itself. Finally, if you don’t like the rows expanding to show the full data when you click on it, you can check the box to permanently expand all rows. This can be helpful, depending what you are trying to accomplish.
You can save your settings as the default settings for future bill sheets by setting this bill sheet as your template from the manage tab (see the manage tab section for details.)
Export: The last button, the disk, simply exports the grid out to Excel. It will export all the columns you currently have displayed. Once you have the spreadsheet of course you can edit it and share it however you like.
Removing Bills from a Bill Sheet
You can remove an individual bill from a bill sheet using the X in the first column. This will remove the bill from the bill sheet so it doesn’t appear in the grid any more, remove it from any widgets and stakeholder pages you have set up, and remove it from consideration for alerts. If you change your mind you can unhide bills from the manage tab (see below).
You can also remove groups of bills by adding words to the “none of” box in your query. See below for details.
Bill Sheet Tabs
There are are series of tabs above the bill sheet which let you fine tune your bill sheet’s query, share your bill sheets publicly and privately, and edit various settings.
Bill Sheet Tab
The Bill Sheet tab takes you to the grid.
Query Tab
You can revisit the query tab at any time to fine tune your search. For an extensive discussion of setting up effective queries see this blog post.
Alerts
Alerts lets you decide what you would like to be alerted about for this group of bills. We run our updates each evening, and send out alerts once early in the morning. The alert email is a simple grid summarizing what has happened with the bills you are watching. You’ll get one email with all of the alerts for all of the bill sheets you’ve set alerts on. You’ll be able to click through to affected bills right from the email. Here is an example of what will be emailed to you:
The emails will come from donotreply@legination.com, so you might want to add us to your white list. You can also set up a rule to distribute the alerts to others. They will be able to click on the bills and see the details, but they won’t be able to click on the bill sheet title to see the whole list (unless you share your password with them, which we don’t really recommend.)
You can change your alert settings at any time.
Widget
If you would like to share a group of bills on your website, you’ll want to try out our widget. You can share the bills with everyone who comes to your site, or you can put the widget on a page that is behind a password; your choice.
You decide which bills and set up a bill sheet, and we keep the latest action and other details updated for you. The most rows you can display in a widget is 100; more might slow down your site. You can change the appearance of the widget from this tab, or by editing the java script directly. You can narrow a widget to a single state, so that you can use one bill sheet to drive a whole collection of widgets, in case that is helpful to you.
For some examples of how people are using widgets see the trending bills widget on our home page, or see these case studies.
Stakeholder Page
Stakeholder pages are a way to share more information then you can with a widget. You choose which columns to share (including any of the columns you have added with your information), and you choose if the stakeholder page is public or private. If you make the bill sheet private you invite people to view it individually. Further you can choose to have us host the page, or you can embed it in your own website. See this blog post for full details about making and using stakeholder pages or see these case studies for some examples.
Manage Tab
Way off to the right is the manage tab, which lets you change the name of a bill sheet, get back hidden bills, or set up a template. These options are self explanatory, except for templates.
Change Alerts Tab
The first screen you see when you log on is the change alerts tab. This tab shows you what has happened with your bill sheets since yesterday.
You can click on a row to go to that bill, or click on the title of the bill sheet to go to that bill sheet grid. You can expand or collapse this grid by using the little arrow in the right.
Note this grid doesn’t show all the bills on the bill sheet, just those that have changes since yesterday.
Bill Sheets Tab
The bill sheet tab gives you a compact list of all of your bill sheets. You’ll be able to see how many bills are on each bill sheet, as well as how bills you have hidden (as a handy reminder). You can sort this grid by clicking on the name of the column. This tab also lets you delete bill sheets you don’t need any more.
One extra feature on this tab is the ability to combine sheets. Simply check the CS box on all of the sheets you want to see together, and a combine sheets button will appear. This will put these sheets together on your screen, although it doesn’t actually create a new bill sheet. You can filter this combined view, sort it, and export it. The combined sheet will throw together all of your custom columns, so it’s best if you combine sheets that match (for example, that were made with the same template.) You can combine anything, just be warned the results might be confusing if you have a variety of different custom columns.
Stakeholder Sheets Tab
Like the Bill Sheets Tab, the Stakeholder Sheets Tab is a summary of the Stakeholder Pages you have created, as well as all of the Stakeholder Pages you’ve been invited to see. This is where you can see what sheets have recent comments, as well as launch into a Stakeholder Page, or delete a page you don’t need any more.
You can always reach out to us in email, on our contact form, or give us a call if you’d like some help or are have suggestions for how to make the Bill Sheets more useful. There’s also more information in this instructional video about all of the pay features.
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.