Closing date for 2025 filings at FEC bulk

[Matthias Rémy]

I am sourcing 2023-2024 files from the FEC bulk site https://www.fec.gov/data/browse-data/?tab=bulk-data

The FEC updates these continuously, even years after the initial upload as filings are amended. I wondered though if there is a canonical way to check if the datasets are "complete" at any given date, e.g. if all main (unamended) filings have been rendered into transactions in the bulk files. Either a process for checking this or a rule of thumb as to the date after which one can assume the FEC's books are closed. Would appreciate if someone has the answer.

Thanks!

Matthias Lalisse

[Matthias Rémy]

Input from CRP staff especially appreciated, since I'm sure they confront this very question each cycle when producing the Center's 2-year bulk tables, given the many postprocessing steps involved. Anyone from this research community with the answer would be wonderful of course though. An algorithm that checks for transactions in each quarter from each committee would seem fallible to the transaction-level itemization, since a filing only appears in the dataset if transactions were logged within it.