Campaign Spending Commission

Posted April 12, 2024

Aloha,

The Hawaii Campaign Spending Commission (“Commission”) announces the launch of its updated Noncandidate Committee Filing System (“NCFS”) today.  The focus of the update was to allow the Commission to utilize the latest technology in creating a more secured system, and it also presented us with the opportunity to make a few changes to the system at no cost to you.  The updated system has a similar look and feel of the prior system, so the learning curve will be minimal.  We also added a new schedule for 501(c)(4) nonprofit organizations operating as noncandidate committees to report donations to the nonprofit aggregating more $10,000 during an election period, if the donor provides written consent to the nonprofit that their donation can be used for a political purpose.  Finally, we added these new enhancements to provide an improved experience for our users:

• A new streamlined look to the “Organizational Report” screen that allows you to enter information into designated tabs (i.e., Noncandidate Committee, Depository (Bank), Chairperson, Treasurer);
• An updated “Reporting Deadlines” screen that lists your upcoming reports and deadlines based on your applicable reporting track;
• A new “Add Transaction” screen with a streamlined approach to entering transactions into the NCFS that:
  • Provides a single-entry point for entering transactions (i.e., contributions received, donations received, other receipts, contributions to candidates, expenditures made, unpaid expenditures, durable assets);
  • Allows you to enter a transaction directly from a new name entry;
  • Includes a search feature that provides suggestions of names already entered into the NCFS (based on your search) to prevent a name from being entered twice and then allows you to enter a transaction for that name.
• New sub-menus for “Receipts” and “Expenditures” under the “Schedules” menu making it clearer what schedules are for reporting campaign funds flowing into the noncandidate committee as receipts (Schedules A and C) and what schedules are for reporting outflows from the noncandidate committee as expenditures (Schedules B1, B2, D and E) (i.e., money in as receipts and money out as expenditures);
• Updated Schedule A through E screens with an improved search feature that provides suggestions of names associated to transactions already entered into the NCFS (based on your search) making it easier for you to pull up a history of transactions for that name; and
• An updated “Export Data” screen with improved filtering features that allows you to print and export the data into more formats such as PDF, Word, Excel, XML, CSV and RTF.

An updated NCFS User Manual is available here to help you navigate these new enhancements and all other areas of the system.  Updated training videos will be posted at a later date.  The NCFS Public Site was also updated to include a new look, but there were no enhancements made to the site.  Also, for the few noncandidate committees that are using the NCFS Import System, this system has been discontinued and will no longer be accessible.  We thank you for your understanding and apologize for the inconvenience.

We would like to thank our ETS technology team of Jennifer Silva, Jimmy Thai, and Kyle Muranaka for their assistance with making this update possible.

If you have any questions, please call our office at (808) 586-0285.

Thank you,
The Campaign Spending Commission