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24.36. Schedule D - How to Report "Rolling Debt" Across Multiple Reporting Periods

Using "Memo Group ID" to Link Debts to the Same Entity Together

If a committee has more than one unpaid bill to the same entity they can link those bills together so that they pull as one unpaid bill by using the following steps:

1) Go to the record with multiple unpaid bills and edit the first of the bills that need to be linked together.

2) Click on the Advanced Linking tab and search for the record in question under disbursements, then click on the record from the drop-down list. This will cause a blue Records Found button to appear. Click on the Records Found button and select the second unpaid bill that needs to be linked. Repeat for each unpaid bill that needs to be linked.

3) When you enter the payment transaction for these credit cards, you do NOT enter them as bill payments in Linking > Unpaid Bill History like you normally do for unpaid bills. Rather, you need to enter them as expense transactions, and then follow step 2 above to link the payment to the unpaid bill. This will pay down the debt on your FEC report and reduce the outstanding debt amount by the amount of the linked expense transaction.

4) If there are memos that need to go along with the payment, those memos can NOT be entered as sub-vendors. Rather, they need to be entered as memo expense transactions (hover over the "Financial" tab at the top, and then select "Memo Expense"). Then you need to follow step 2 above to link each memo expense to the expense transaction acting as the bill payment.

5) Lastly, for each expense transaction acting as a bill payment, it is also necessary to ensure that the Compliance field "Memo Group ID" has the exact same value entered in the expense, as well as in each of the memo expense transactions that go along with the bill payment expense. To do this, open the expense transaction and click on Linking > Advanced. Then click on "Show Custom Fields" to reveal the compliance field "Memo Group ID". Enter whatever value you want in there (1, 2, A, B, C, etc.) — you simply need to make sure that it is a Memo Group ID value that has not been used yet. Save the expense. Then you need to open EACH of the memo expense transactions that go along with this bill payment expense and enter the exact same value into the Memo Group ID field. Save each memo expense transaction after you do this.

If all of that is in place properly, your debt transactions will be paid down by those linked expenses, and each expense's corresponding memos will pull to your FEC report properly.

NOTE: If the Memo Group ID field is not in your database, please email support@aristotle.com to request that it be added.  

 

For example, these 2 Unpaid Bills are linked to show as only 1 debt on the FEC report: