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Welcome to the Secretary of State's Candidate and Political Committee On-Line Reporting System. Updated 09/21/2007

SETTING UP A USER ACCOUNT

1) Fill out the vital candidate information and application to obtain logon & password.
2) Sign the registration form before a Notary Public and mail to the Secretary of State's Office.
3) Committees will need to provide the committee name, treasurer name, phone #, and an email address.
4) Call 827-3600 or (800) 477-3632 and talk to Patricia Lemus or Lupita if you have questions.
5) After your account is set up you will be provided with a user name and password.  You can change your password at any time.
 

INITIAL SETUP OF YOUR ELECTRONIC REPORTING ACCOUNT:

1) Enter your User Name and Password.
2) Enter Opening Financial Balances:
    a. Enter the opening balance: $0.00 if this is your first electronic campaign report or the closing balance from your last paper report.  This balance  should match your campaign bank account balance.
    b. Enter the opening debt:  $0.00 if this is your first campaign report or the total unpaid campaign debt from your last paper report.  Click "Save".

IMPORTANT NOTE:  The opening financial balances can be corrected at any time.  Please remember, however, that this balance is the opening balance for the first electronic report you file.  Subsequent balances will be carried from one report to the next automatically.  CAUTION: Changing the system opening balance after you have filed reports will change the opening and closing balances for all the filed reports.  The system will not allow you to submit current reports until you amend each filed report to reflect the new system opening balance.
 

FILLING OUT AN ELECTONIC REPORT:

Selecting a Report:

1) Go to the menu bar at the left and click on "Select Report."
2) Find the report date you need to work on and click on it.
    a. If you have not entered data on the report before, look in “New Reports”.   Then click “Start New Report.”
    b. If you have entered data previously in the report, look in “Reports in Progress”.  Then click “Edit Report.”
    c. If you want to view a previously submitted report, and it is after the report due date, look in Submitted Reports.  Then click "View Report.".
    d. If you must amend a previously filed report, and it is after the report due date, look in “Amendable Reports.”  Then click “Amend Report”

Entering Data into a Report:

Note: If this is your first use of the system you will be prompted to data enter the Basic Filer Information page (the first tab on the left).
          To save this data, simply click on another tab at the top.
 

1) Adding a new monetary contribution record (Form B1):
    a. Click on the Monetary Contribution tab at the top of the page
    b. Click the “Plus” (+) icon in the left hand column to add a new record.
    c. To exit the record without saving, click the “X” icon in the left column.
    d. Manually enter the date the contribution was received or click on the calendar icon to select the correct date.
    e. Name of Contributor:
        i. Click the check box if it is an anonymous contribution
        ii. Or enter an organization name
        iii. And /or enter first, middle and last name of an individual contributor
    f. Address of Contributor: Enter Street Address, City, State, and Zip code
    g. Enter an Occupation
    h. Enter the Amount of the Contribution
    i. Press Enter or click the “Floppy Disk” icon in the first column to save the record.

2) To edit a record you have already saved, click the “Pencil” icon in the first column of the record you want to edit.  Click the "Floppy Disk" icon to save the new information.

3) To delete a record you have already saved, click the “X” icon in the first column of the record you want to delete.

4) The In-Kind Contribution, Loan Contribution, Loans Forgiven, Expenditure, and Loan Repayment screens all function in the same manner as the Monetary Contribution screen.

5) Forms A & A1 are automatically calculated from the information you enter in the other screens.

6) Please note that there are separate tabs for the Loan Contributions (B3), Loans Forgiven (B4), and Loan Repayments (C1) screens.  It is important that you data enter debt transactions in these screens so that the program will  properly identify them as debt related and properly calculates your unpaid campaign debt.

7) Special Events Worksheet: NOTE: This is ONLY a worksheet.  The worksheet is to be filled out to declare that you had a qualifying special event.  Amounts from this worksheet are NOT applied to Form A: Financial Summary.  All Special Event unidentifiable contribution totals MUST also be entered on form B1, Contributions.  All individual Special Event expenditures MUST be entered on form C, Expenditures, so they are correctly applied toward your financial summary.
 

SUBMITTING YOUR REPORT ELECTRONICALLY TO THE OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE:

1) Click on the "Submit Report" button at the lower left side of the screen.
2) You should see a message saying your report has been successfully submitted.
3) You may receive a message indicating an error has occurred.  For example "You cannot submit a report with a closing balance less than zero".  In this case your report has NOT been submitted and you MUST make changes and resubmit.

Notes:  If you make a change to a submitted report before 5:00 PM on the date the report is due, you may
simply resubmit the report as outlined above.  If you change a report after 5:00 PM on the date the report is due, you must open and submit an "amended report".

 

UNSUBMITTABLE REPORTS:

You may get the following message when you attempt to submit your report:
THIS REPORT IS NOT SUBMITTABLE. See reason(s) on next page."

You must fix the problem before you will be able to submit your report.
There are several reasons you will get this error on the first page of a printed report:

1) You have a negative Closing Balance for the Reporting Period.  The closing balance should equal the balance in your campaign checking account.  You should not have a negative bank account balance so you should not have a negative report closing balance.  To fix the problem determine where your campaign report deviates from your campaign bank account. Fix the report problem so you no longer have a negative balance.

2) There are earlier reports that must be submitted prior to the one you are printing out. 

The system gets the starting balance for a report from the ending balance of the previous report.  So, if you change an earlier report, or even start an earlier report, you will get this error.  Here are some things to check

Go to the Select Report Screen
Review the Reports in Progress list
Delete any reports in Reports in Progress list that you do not need to submit
Submit any earlier reports that you need to submit.
Once the only report in Reports in Progress is the one you want to submit, you should be fine.
You can also get this error when you amend a previous report or change the system opening balance.  Changes to prior reports will change the beginning and ending balances of subsequent reports.  The system requires you to amend subsequent reports and will tell you exactly which reports need to be re-submitted.  To do so, go to the "Select Report" screen, open the earlier report(s) in the Amendable Reports section, make sure they are correct, and click "Submit Report". 
 

PRINTING YOUR REPORT:
1) To print out the current version of a report for your records click on the "View/Print Current Report" button at the left side of the screen.
2) Documents will be automatically converted to Adobe Portable Document Format (pdf).
3) Be patient.  It can take quite a while to convert the document and download it back to you in pdf format over a dialup modem.
4) Click the print button at the top of the screen (it looks like a printer) to print the report.
5) Check for the current date and time following "Date Submitted:" near the top of the report.  This is your proof that your report was successfully submitted electronically
 

SUBMITTING YOUR NOTORIZED COVER PAGE:

A report filed electronically shall be electronically authenticated by the candidate or the treasurer of the political committee using an electronic signature in conformance with the Electronic Authentication of Documents Act and the Uniform Electronic Transaction Act.

CHANGING A SUBMITTED REPORT:

If you decide you need to change a report you have submitted you may do so. Go to the Amendable Reports list, highlight the report you want to change, and click "Amend Report"
    a. If it is before the report due date you will be able to change the original report and resubmit it.
    b. If it is after the report due date the original report will be left unchanged in the "Submitted Reports" list.   An amended report will be opened for you to change and submit.
 

TECHNICAL NOTES AND TROUBLESHOOTING:

1)  Your browser must meet the following requirements to utilize the New Mexico Candidate and Political Committee Reporting System

a. Internet Explorer v6.0 (or later) installed OR
b. Netscape v6.2.3 (or later) installed
c. Cookies enabled
d. JavaScript or Active Scripting enabled
e. Run ActiveX Controls/Plug-ins enabled
f. Pop-ups enabled
g. Adobe Acrobat Reader installed

2) The application default is to display only the last 20 records you have entered into any data entry screen.  This feature is to make the program more responsive for users with a slow Internet connection.  You may display all records by clicking on the "View All" radio button in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

3) It is easiest to work with the system if your screen resolution is high enough that you don't have to scroll left & right to see the whole screen.  1024 * 728 works well  (From the desktop, right click, go to properties, and settings to change).

4) For those of you with lots of data entry: You can have multiple people doing data entry at the same time!

5) You can sort expenditure or contribution records by clicking on column titles such as date or amount.  To restore the default sort, click on a different screen tab at the top of the page and then back to the original tab.

6) Printing Troubleshooting:

a. When you choose "View/Print Report," your report will appear in a new browser window.  Your computer must allow pop-ups for this function to work.  Windows XP service pack 2 and above, recent versions of Netscape Navigator, and may security programs block pop-ups.  You should be able to enable pop-ups for this site only.

For those of you using Windows XP and MS Internet Explorer, take the following steps to allow pop-ups for our site:

Open Internet Explorer
Go to the tools drop down menu
Select "Pop-up Blocker"
Select "Pop-up Blocker Settings"
Enter *.state.nm.us under "Address of Website to Allow"
b. The pdf version of the report will appear in a new, separate, browser window.  If you click on the "View /Print Current Report" button and nothing happens, you probably are not looking at the new window.  Minimize your current browser window and look to the bottom of the screen to see if there is a second open browser window button you can click to bring up your pdf report.

c. Be sure you have the latest version, v7, of Adobe Reader loaded on your computer.  To download the latest version, go to http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readermain.html.

Click on the following link to access PFRS: https://secure.sos.state.nm.us/webethics/.