The Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Secretary of the U.S. Senate released the LD-203 Contribution Reporting system, effective June 30, 2008.

Resources:

For more information visit their website.

http://lobbyingdisclosure.house.gov/

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/resources/pdf/LCUserManualV1.pdf

Although Trail Blazer does not directly submit your lobbying disclosure report, you can use Trail Blazer to generate an Excel that can be manipulated and uploaded.

This article assumes prior working knowledge of Trail Blazer and Excel.

The short summary of your steps:

1. Query Trail Blazer for invoices falling within your date range.
2. Export results to a CSV file.
3. Open the CSV file with Excel.
4. Manipulate the file to conform with Lobby Disclosure requirements
   see Using Microsoft Excel to Create an XML Import File below OR
   http://www.senate.gov/legislative/resources/pdf/LCUserManualV1.pdf
5. Save the Excel file in XML format.

1. Open and login to Trail Blazer.
2. Go to [Financial] [Disbursements] and
3. open [Invoices]. Select your date range of the report and click [Search]
   Note: The resulting list may not be limited to contributions to lobbyists and candidates and may require sorting once exported to Excel.
4. Click the [Export] button and save results to a CSV file (a format directly readable by Excel)
5. Format Excel file to conform with example at the bottom of this page.
6. Save the file in XML format.
7. Follow the filing instructions given at https://ld.congress.gov:4433/LC/

• Save the LDC.xsd and LD3Export.xls files to a local or network drive;

• Open LD3Export.xls:

• Enter all PAC names to be referenced for contributions in Column A, titled name;

Column B is blank by design and should contain no data.

• Enter each of your contributions in column C – H using the following criteria:

• Enter one of the following contribution types in column C, titled type:

• FECA

• Honorary Expenses

• Meeting Expenses

• Presidential Library Expenses

• Enter the appropriate PAC name in column D, titled contributorName. PAC names entered in

column D must also be listed once in column A or the import tool will fail to validate it;

• Enter the appropriate Payee name(s) in column E, titled payeeName. Separate multiple Payees

with a comma. (80 character limit);

• Enter the appropriate Honoree(s) in column F, titled recipientName. Separate multiple Honorees

with a comma. (200 character limit);

• Enter the dollar amount for the contribution in column G, titled amount. Do not enter a leading

$ You do not need to enter the decimal point for whole dollar amounts but you may do so to

indicate cents;

• Enter the contribution date in MM/DD/YYYY format. (include slashes /) in column H, titled date;

• Repeat these steps to enter each of your contributions.

Example of format:

tags: ld-203 ld203 ld 203