Crimson Feature of the Month: How to File a Post-General Report

The 2020 election may have been nearly two weeks ago, but campaigns, PACs, and parties still have compliance reports and work to finish. The 2020 cycle has two upcoming FEC filing deadlines – the Post-General Report on Thursday, December 3 and the Year-End Report on January 31, 2021.

In addition to compliance and accounting work, there are many other areas that need to be wrapped up after an election, so please review this blog post from CMDI on What to Do After the Election.

In case you haven’t ever filed a Post-General Report or need a refresher, below are helpful reminders to make it easier to complete your report in CrimsonFiler.

Note: The FEC deadline for the Post-General Report is Thursday, December 3. This covers the period between October 15 through November 23.  Because the deadline is the Thursday following Thanksgiving, we encourage everyone to start preparing as quickly as possible.

How to Update Election Information

1. In CrimsonFiler, create a new Form3. Enter the dates that the Post-General covers. In this case, it would be October 15 – November 23.

2. From the Main tab of the Form3, complete the Election fields under Report Type and click on the  button.

3. Column C will appear in their summary pages.

Raised Money After Election Day? Separate Your Cycle Aggregates.

The Post-General report covers two cycle periods (i.e. 2020 and 2022). Any funds raised after Election Day must be applied to the next cycle, so the Post-General report includes a crossover of the two reporting periods. To file the report, you need to ensure that aggregate totals are also separated by cycle.

1. Create your report in CrimsonFiler.

2. On the Main tab of the Form3, click on the

button.

3. Select the Fund Codes (Ex: P2020, G2020) from the first cycle (i.e. 2020) and select the Fund Codes (Ex: P2022, G2022) for the upcoming cycle (i.e. 2022).

4. After you have selected your Fund Codes, Aggregate options ranging from 1 to 4 will appear. The default selection for all Fund Codes is 1.

5. To aggregate your Fund Codes by Cycle, you can change the Aggregate group for the upcoming cycle (i.e. 2022) by selecting the 2 option underneath the respective Fund Codes (Ex: P2022, G2022). When done, click the

button.

Note: For more information on Advanced Aggregates, access our guide on the HelpDesk.

6. When asked, “How do you want to import records?” select Replace.

7. A confirmation message will appear telling you how many records were imported from Crimson. Click on the Ok.

8. Recalculate your report and review your data as you would with any other report.

Retired Debt after the election?

If you received any donations after the election to retire debt, you will need to combine the old and new cycles together in your report.

To capture the correct aggregate for this, you would pull the old fund codes and new fund codes together. Make sure to review the Debt Retirement guide to see how to use those features in Crimson. If you have any questions about those features, please contact the Crimson Support Team at CrimsonSupport@cmdi.com.