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39.1. Form 3
FEC Form 3 is used by quarterly filers to disclose the financial transactions which took place in a given period.
Accounts - Select the filing committee you would like to run the FEC Form 3 report for. Additionally, you will need to select the bank accounts whose transactions you would like to disclose in the report.
Form Information
Report Schedule - Select the appropriate report Schedule (such as April Quarterly, or 12 day preceding) from the drop down box. If you are not sure which Report Schedule you are reporting on, please contact your FEC analyst.
Report Start Date - Set this date to the first date of the reporting period you are reporting on. If you are not sure what your reporting dates are, please contact your FEC analyst. Transactions in your dataset with a transaction date on or after this date (and before the Report End Date) will pull to the report.
Report End Date - Set this date to the last date of the reporting period you are reporting on. If you are not sure what your reporting dates are, please contact your FEC analyst. Transactions in your dataset with a transaction date on or before this date (and after the Report Start Date) will pull to the report.
Itemization Threshold Start Date - Set this date on or before the Report Start Date. Any transaction with a transaction date after this date, which is linked to another transaction with a transaction start date between the Report Start and End Date, will pull to the report. People generally set this date to either the first of the current year, or the day after the previous election.
Election Date - Set this date to the most recent or applicable election. If you are not sure what Election Date you need to have on your report, please contact your FEC analyst.
Itemization Threshold Start Amount - Set this amount to the amount above which transactions pull to the report. For instance, if you want all transactions above $200.00 to itemize, set this value to $200.01. To be clear, the transactions below this amount are still calculated in the summary totals, but simply do not itemize.
Itemization Threshold End Amount - Set this amount to the amount below which transactions will pull to the report. For instance, if you want all transactions below $99999.99 to itemize (and above the Threshold Start Amount) you will set this value to $99999.99.
Cash on Hand at Beginning of Period - Set this amount to the amount of cash on hand your campaign or organization has at the beginning of the period. This value can be taken from Line 8 (Cash on Hand at Close of Reporting Period) of the summary page of the previous report.
Current Period - Set this value to the current election cycle period, for instance, Primary or General. If you are running a pre- or post- report setting this field will specify whether it is a pre- or post- general or primary. If you are not sure what to set as the current period, please contact your FEC analyst.
Election State - Set this value to the State Code of the State in which the election the candidate of this committee is participating in.
Sort By - Check off the box which represents how you would like the report ordered. For the purposes of grouping memo entries with their parent transactions, it is recommended to use "Natural Order", though technically it is fine if the memos are not physically next to their parent transactions.
Amend a Previous Report - Check this box if you are amending a previous report you have filed with the FEC. If you check this box, you will need to fill in the Amended Schedule ID field with the FEC report number of the original report it is amending. The format of this field must be FEC-XXXXXX (e.g. FEC-123456). Additionally, in the Amendment # field you will need to put the number which this amendment is in the sequence of all previous amendments. For instance, if this is the 2nd amendment to the original report filed with the FEC, you will put a 2 in this box.
Form 3 Schedules
Print 3Z-1 - this schedule has been eliminated from the FEC reporting requirements.
Schedules A through D - Select the schedules for which you would like to disclose financial information for. If you check off a box, and there are no transactions that are to be reported for that type of schedule, the schedule will simply not print on the report. For this reason, it is recommended that when running the report, unless you have a specific reason for not including a particular schedule, that you select all schedules.
Other Schedules
Form 3Z-1 - This section is no longer necessary to use, as the FEC does not require the filing of the Form 3Z-1 anymore.
Print Text to Report - If you need to attach a short text memo to your report, type that text directly into the box (do not copy and paste text from Microsoft Word, or other word processing applications except for Microsoft Notepad). Lastly, make sure to check off the box.
Fill in Empty Occupation with 'Information Requested' - Check this box if you would like the program to automatically fill in, on the FEC report, occupation fields for individuals whom you have no occupation data for with the text - "Information Requested".
Fill in Empty Employer with 'Information Requested' - Check this box if you would like the program to automatically fill in, on the FEC report, employer fields for individuals whom you have no employer data for with the text - "Information Requested".
Change Address - Check off this box if your committee has changed its address since the last report was filed.
Auto Generate Line 11a - Check off this box if you would like the system to automatically calculate and enter the amounts for Line 11ai and 11aii cycle total before this period. If you would like to manually enter these numbers then you will need to check and then uncheck this box, and then enter those amounts in the fields that appear below the box.
Form Actions
Previous - Click on 'Previous' to go to the previous tab of the report, for instance, going from Form Information to Accounts.
Next - Click on 'Next' to go to the next tab of the report, for instance, going from Accounts to Form Information.
Generate Report - Click on 'Generate Report' to generate a report with the options and parameters selected in the different tabs of this particular compliance report.