Compliance reporting works best when good habits are built into the everyday work of your committee. This page covers the practices that keep your records clean, your team accountable, and your reports defensible if something ever needs to be revisited.
Who this is for
Operating committees, treasurers, and committee staff running day-to-day compliance work — especially in your first reporting cycle or when bringing on new team members.
What you’ll find here
Three practices that pay off across every report you file: recordkeeping, access limits, and bank reconciliation.
Recordkeeping
A filed report isn’t the end of the story. If a discrepancy comes up, an agency audits your committee, or you need to amend a report, you’ll want clear backup that documents what was reported and why.
Retain records for at least the period your agency requires.
- The FEC requires committees to retain records for at least 3 years.
- The California FPPC requires committees to retain records for at least 4 years.
- Other jurisdictions set their own retention rules — check your filing agency’s current guidance for what applies to you.
Collect full donor information at the time of the donation. Most filing agencies require the donor’s legal name, address, occupation, and employer for any donor who meets or exceeds the itemization threshold. Recording differentiating details — middle initials, employer info, occupation — also helps prevent mismatches between similarly named donors.
Collect information from every donor, even small-dollar ones. A small-dollar donor can hit the itemization threshold over time as their contributions aggregate. ISP only reports the information that meets the threshold for itemization, so collecting full information from everyone never results in over-disclosure — it just means you’re never caught short.
Good records save time, reduce media scrutiny, and prevent the scramble of contacting donors after the fact to fill in missing details.
Access limits
Limit access to data and finances to exactly what each person on your team needs to do their job — and no more.
- Banking information. Share account numbers and credentials only with people who need them.
- Check signatories. Consider requiring two signatures for checks over a set amount.
- Credit and debit cards. Issue cards only to responsible parties, and keep a sign-in / sign-out procedure for shared cards.
- Petty cash. A small, well-documented petty cash account handles incidentals transparently.
- ISP user roles. Assign each user the role and feature access that matches their responsibilities, and revisit those assignments as your team changes.
The goal is to keep your decision-makers aware of every financially or legally significant activity, with clear checks and balances in place.
Bank reconciliation
Reconcile every financial account in ISP against its bank statement on a regular cadence — monthly is a good target. Doing it consistently catches errors while they’re small and easy to correct, and confirms that what ISP shows matches what the bank shows.
Related help files
If you need help
Not sure how to set up roles, schedule reconciliations, or organize your records inside ISP? Contact ISP support and we’ll walk through it with you.
