Information for Third-Party Vendors That Provide Electronic Filing Software
Campaign finance reports required to be filed with the Texas Ethics Commission may be filed electronically using software provided free of charge by the Ethics Commission or may be filed using software provided by third-party vendors. Software provided by a third-party vendor must comply with either the PDP (acceptable only through August 31, 2012) or XML data formats specified below and must be transmitted in a manner specified by the Ethics Commission.
THIRD-PARTY VENDORS AND NEW FILING FORMAT: New reporting requirements are effective September 28, 2011. Third-party vendors must modify their campaign finance software to comply with the new requirements, which are described in the Texas Electronic Reporting Format version 13.6 below.
PLEASE NOTE UPCOMING DEADLINES:
- 11/01/2011: All third-party filing software must comply with the previous Electronic Reporting Format (ERF) version 13.5 or higher no later than November 1, 2011. On November 1, 2011, the Texas Ethics Commission parsers will no longer accept any reports filed with a PDP_ver lower than 13.5.
- 01/01/2012: All third-party filing software must comply with the current Electronic Reporting Format (ERF) version 13.6 or higher no later than January 1, 2012. On January 1, 2012, the Texas Ethics Commission parsers will no longer accept any reports filed with a PDP_ver lower than 13.6.
- 09/01/2012: All third-party filing software must comply with the new XML format described in the Vendor Pack no later than September 1, 2012. On September 1, 2012, the Ethics Commission parsers will no longer accept any reports filed in a PDP format. A verbose description of the XML format is contained in the Vendor Pack, including a document with a side-by-side comparison of the ERF fields and their new XML counterparts.
Click here to download the new Vendor Pack.
Last Revision: September 29, 2011