BillTrack50 Help Center

Getting Ready Webinars

At the end of each year, we want to make sure you are set up for success during the new session(s). We have delivered a series of webinars which cover the same ground, you can watch them on demand at these links:

1. Tuesday, Nov 14, 11:00 am Eastern (on demand here)
2. Wednesday, Nov 29, 1:00 pm Eastern (on demand here)
3. Thursday, Dec 7, 2:00 pm Eastern (on demand here)
4. Monday, Dec 18, 4:00 pm Eastern (on demand here)
   

You can also contact us or simply grab time on the calendar for personal help.

If you’d like to keep up with new features, tips, and other BillTrack50 announcements you can subscribe to our monthly newsletter here. And for a run down of all the cool new stuff we've added this year, head over to this blog post.

Now let's get your account ready for the new session, which is as easy as 1 - 2 - 3. And possibly 4.

1 Housekeeping

This is the time of year to make sure your account is 'shipshape and Bristol fashion'. Follow this guide and you'll be new session ready in no time!

A Review Users

Firstly, make sure everyone on your user list should still have access, review their permissions, and make sure you haven’t forgotten to add new folk. All subscriptions have unlimited users so you can be as generous as you need. We just ask you to please review your list at least once a year and remove inactive accounts. See this guide on how to add users. See this video on our tool to quickly review user permissions.

B Review Your Bill and Regulation Sheets

Go through all your sheets and make sure they are useful and valid. Delete any that you don't want to keep, archive those that you don't think you'll need next year, and hide sheets you want to keep but don't need frequent access to. To hide a bill sheet choose "manage users" from the account menu, click the edit link next to your name, and go to the appropriate tab for what you want to hide (bill sheet, stakeholder page, regulation sheet, etc). Find the item you want to hide by using the filter at the top or simply scrolling down and finding it in the list. Then set the permission level to none for everything you'd like to hide and click save. You can always come back to the user management and give yourself permission to see these items again in the future if you need them.

C Review Your Queries and Alerts

When you're happy you have all the right bill and regulation sheets, look at the queries. Are all the terms still valid? Do you need to add or reformulate any terms? Can you be even cleverer with your searches to get better results? If you are working on an evolving topic, you might want to take a minute to turn on the keyword column and browse through the results to make sure you are familiar with all the terms currently being used by the states you follow, in case there are a few words you should add or remove.

As you work through your sheets looking at queries you should also double check that your alerts are set how you want them. Remember that when you first create a sheet, or when a sheet is first shared with you, the alerts won't be set. So it is worth double checking that you do have all the alerts turned on that you think you do.

If you’d like a consultation on adjusting the query terms or structure, or discuss your alert options, feel free to grab a convenient time on our calendar.

2 Taking Snapshots

When you're happy that your sheets are working well, it's time to move your account into the new session(s).

Taking a snapshot of your 2023 bill sheets and archiving them will ensure you can access your current list of bills, and any associated information you have added, in future years. Archiving sheets at the end of the year is also a good way to build up a library of issues you’ve tracked over the years for you to mine for trends, share with others, or use to create a “lifetime” scorecard to look at legislators across the years.

Firstly go to the 'Manage' tab, click 'Copy' and choose a sensible name for your saved sheet, probably something including "2023":

Then go to the Manage tab of your new sheet and click the 'Archive Bill Sheet' box:

We recommend archiving the copy of the bill sheet, not the original sheet itself. Keeping the original sheet active means you won’t need to change your widgets or stakeholder pages and your users won’t need to reestablish their alert settings. Once you have archived the copy, you can hide it from yourself until you need to refer to it again using our user management tools (see detailed instructions in the Review Your Bill and Regulation Sheets section above).

Watch this video to see archiving in action.

Note: you can also take snapshots of Regulation sheets using the same process, if you like to keep your regs in tidy batches.

3 Rolling Over

Now your 2023 bill & reg sheet information is safely archived, time to roll over the original sheets to 2024.

A Updating the Timeline

If your bill sheets are set to the current session then they will roll over for you automatically. 

Pre-filed bills will be added as we receive them, and 2023 bills will drop off your sheet on Jan 1, 2024, except for those states with two year sessions -- bills from those states will remain on your sheet. You may want to take snapshots (as described above) before the end of the year to save any data you’ve added before the bills drop off.

Keep in mind that if your bill sheets cover more than the current session, then you are necessarily using the timeline, so you will need to go into the 'Query' tab and extend the 'Session Years' slider to include 2024:

You can also use the timeline, instead of setting the bill sheet to “current session”, and wait to move your sheets forward when you are ready. You can also manage exactly when and where you see pre-file bills using the timeline, see this post.

Please check any widgets, maps, or stakeholder pages you have on your website are still working after you are done taking snapshots and rolling over your sheets. If you archived your snapshot and rolled over your main sheet then you should be fine. But if something has gone haywire, don't panic, reach out to us and we will sort it out for you. It is a good idea to check that your widgets/maps/stakeholder pages/calendar feeds are working and looking good on your site at least once a year in any case.

B Removing Old Bills

Any bills you added by bill number or by using the +  will stay on your sheet until you remove them. Luckily removing old bill numbers is easy. Open your bill sheet, go to the Query tab, and scroll to the bottom to see the bills you have listed by bill number. You can use the little x next to the bill number to remove individual bills or you can use use the Remove tool beneath the bill number box to remove all out-of-session bills at once.

Bills from 2023 sessions will not be considered out of session until Jan 1, 2024. After that date, you can use the Remove tool by first hovering over the Remove link to highlight in red which bills are about to be eliminated to review the bills about to be removed, then actually click on the remove link to remove the bills that are out of session. Note: you must click the save button at the bottom of the query tab for the changes to go into effect.

The hidden tab also offers you an easy way to manage your hidden bills and remove old bills from the hidden list that are no longer relevant. The "Clean All" button will remove any bill that no longer matches your query - probably because it doesn't match your current date range but maybe you changed your search terms or state coverage. Be careful though, the "Clear All" button will clear ALL the hidden bills. So click carefully!

Note: like the Remove link on the query tab, the clean button will remove 2023 bills (for one year states) starting Jan 1, 2024.

For a detailed explanation of how to manage bills added by bill number as well as hidden bills, see this video.

C Rolling Over Regulation Sheets

You might also want to review the dates on your regulation sheet queries. Because regulations don’t come in nice tidy sessions, regulation sheets include a date range option so you can limit the time span you search. If you read your regulations regularly and remove ones you don’t need, that’s great, the date range won’t matter to you. Otherwise, you might want to review your regulation sheet queries and change the date range you are searching for to make sure the period makes sense for what you are trying to accomplish. Consider using the query option to search on a rolling number of months to make keeping your regulation sheets under control a lot easier.

4 Account Status Review

BillTrack50 subscriptions do not auto renew, so remind yourself when your subscription is due. Click on 'Account Management', click 'Subscriptions', check you're subscribed to the correct products and note your renewal date(s). When the time comes return to subscription management and click 'Renew Subscription' and then 'Checkout and Pay'. You'll only see the 'Renew Subscription' button if you're within 30 days of the end of your subscription period:

You might want to consider adding our "Afternoon Alerts" option to your account. Of course reach out to us if you'd like to discuss your subscription and payment options.

That's it! Now you're all ready for whatever the new year may bring.

Cover photo by Galina Nelyubova on Unsplash