BillTrack50 Help Center

A video on this topic is also available if that is more your style, you can view it here.

The easiest and most simple method to find an individual bill is to use Quick Search feature. This option is available to both subscribers and free users. IMPORTANT NOTE: Quick Search ONLY searches bills from the current session, if you want to find an older bill then you will have to search using a bill sheet instead! If you choose to search by bill sheet, we will cover how to search using bill sheets towards the second half of this guide. Please note that searching via bill sheet is only available to subscribers!

Method 1: Quick Search

You can get to the Quick Search page from the navigation panel on the left, labeled as “Bills” in the “Quick Search” section. Alternatively, you can type into the search bar at the top to search bills without going to the Quick Search screen. Both options will generate the same results, though Quick Search offers some extra options for searching.

On the Quick Search screen or in the search box, type in the number of the bill you are searching for, with no space between the letters and numbers of the bill, and then type enter or click search. Bill numbers need to match the state format, for example some states us “H” or “HB” to designate house bills, some use “A” or “AB” because they have an Assembly. If you can’t find your bill try adding (or removing) a B to HB or SB. You can also see this list for more details on bill number format.

If you are using the Quick Search screen you can narrow your results by choosing from a list of states (you can also choose United States for Congress, and/or Washington DC for the DC City Council). You can alternatively prefix your state abbreviation, like COHB1001 or USHR2.

If you have a list of bills in an Excel spreadsheet or an email or elsewhere you can copy those bills and paste them into the Quick Search box. If they are formatted correctly, especially not having a space between the letters and the number, pasting bill numbers can work quite well. Just make sure you switch your search to and “any of” search instead of an “all of” search.

Remember, Quick Search only searches the current session. To search for historic bills see method 2 below!

Once you click “Search” you will see a list of bills that match your search. When you find a bill you might be interested in, you can click on that bill’s number to be taken to its page.

If you are a subscriber, you can also click on the “+” next to its State to add that bill to one of your bill lists to track! When you click the “+” a window will pop-up with a list of your bill sheets, simply click the “+” next to the corresponding bill sheet and it will be added to that sheet. If instead of a “+” there is an “X” then that means this bill is already on that Bill Sheet, clicking on the “X” will remove it from your sheet; see the image below for more details.

Method 2: Searching using a Bill Sheet

The other method available to you is to search for bills from a bill sheet. As mentioned above you can simply paste a list of bill numbers into an “any of” type search. If you are looking in a single state in a single session searching a list of bill numbers can work well. Otherwise you’ll probably get a variety of unwanted results along with the bills you do want.

To search properly scroll down to the bottom of the query tab; you should see a section that says “Include Bills” and below it is a box labeled “Bill Number”. To enter a bill number in this box start by typing the two letter abbreviation for the state (or US for federal bills) and then pause until the drop down list appears showing you your options in that state. If no drop down box appears that probably means you are using a newly created bill sheet; make sure you’ve chosen the states your bill sheet should cover and then save your sheet. Saving the sheet helps the system know what to show you in the drop down box. Below is an example image of what the drop down box looks like.

Now that you see the format of the bill number you can either keep typing to narrow the drop down list further, or you can scroll and choose your desired bill from the list. If you have chosen more than one session (as in the image above) then be careful to pick the bill from the correct session.

IMPORTANT NOTE: When you are done, be sure to hit “Save” otherwise your changes won’t be saved!

You can add as many bills to the bill number box as you need. You can also come back and remove bills from the bill number box later buy using the x next to each individual bill number.