Quarterly Reports Due October 31

If you hold a 2015 license, you MUST submit your LE-21 Quarterly Report form by October 31. The report covers the period for July through September. Reports filed after this date will be assessed a $50 late filing fine.

Please make sure you download and use the correct forms from our website, or use the online system.

In addition, please make sure to provide copies of daily forms for progressive bingo (LE-34a/LE-34b), progressive pull tabs (LE-31a), and progressive raffles (LE-34c). The progressive bingo forms should be updated after each bingo occasion and the pull tab and raffle forms should be updated regularly.

If you have any questions or concerns, contact Lisa Marty at lisa.marty@coloradosos.gov.

2016 Bingo-Raffle Licenses

If you plan to conduct charitable gaming activities in 2016, you can apply for your annual license starting on November 1, 2015. This goes for new licenses and renewals. Please visit our forms page to download the license application and contact Program Manager Shannon Bee by email at shannon.bee@coloradosos.gov with any questions.

Why I Cannot File My Next Quarter Report

We have had several licensees call into the office stating they could not file their quarterly report as it was not showing as “available”. You cannot file your next quarter report if the previous quarter is still open. If your prior filing shows “reject”, you will need to resubmit the filing with the corrected information. We will need to approve this correction BEFORE your next quarter report will become available. If your filing has been rejected and resubmitted, your organization will receive a verification from our office, if and when the filing is approved. This will notify you that the next report is now available. Please be diligent and be sure your report has been approved by our office to mitigate timing issues and avoid possible late filings, which may cause fines to be instituted against your organization.

Please also be aware, as long as the rejected filing remains open, even if you file the next quarter by paper, our office will not be able to enter the paper report until the prior quarter has been re-filed and accepted electronically. If the rejected filing has not been accepted by the deadline of the next due quarterly, the organization will still receive a fine for a late filing as our office cannot override the rejected status of your prior filing.

Bingo/Raffle Advisory Board

The Colorado Bingo-Raffle Advisory Board makes recommendations to the Secretary of State's office in its regulation of the charitable gaming sector. All members of the public are encouraged to attend and contribute to this important dialogue. The next Advisory Board meeting is currently scheduled for January.

When: Wednesday, January 13, 2016.

Where: Currently, the location is pending. Please check our website for updates.

Come join the meeting to share your thoughts on bingo and raffle activities in our state.

If you have any questions, please feel free to write us an email at public.licensing@coloradosos.gov.

Interested in being on the Board? There are potential positions available. Please review on our website.

Bingo/Raffle Financial Reports.

Our office is committed to using our state-wide reach to provide timely and accurate data to the bingo/raffle community. We use the information you provide on quarterly reports to publish two informative datasets on our website.

• Aggregate revenue report: this report contains a "roll-up" of total revenue, expense, and profit data for charitable gaming in the state.

• Revenue by licensee: this report contains similar information broken down by individual bingo/raffle licensees. We began publishing this report in response to a request from our Bingo/Raffle Advisory Board.

Our website currently contains reports for calendar years 2013 and 2014 and for the first and second quarter of 2015. We will update the reports on a quarterly basis.

Filing Your Quarterly Report Online!

The bingo-raffle program accepts electronic filing of quarterly reports for both bingo-raffle licensees and manufacturer and supplier licensees. These licensees can submit and pay for quarterly report filings online.

You can access the system and set up your account from our “Forms” page. Please remember, the payment MUST be done via credit/debit card or prepaid account, but ANY credit card could be used (e.g. personal, prepaid card, debit, or a card of the organization), and the information is not stored in any way within our system after the transaction on the quarterly you are filing is completed.

Bingo-raffle licensees will find quarterly filing instructions (PDF) on our website.

If you have already created your online account, you just need to access your file. Your 3rd quarter 2015 report should be available for filing and will be prefilled with some of the prior information from your 2nd quarter 2015 electronic filing, which will help save you time.

Note: If you do not see your 3rd quarter report available for filing, you may have outstanding issues that are not allowing the report to be filed. Please see "Why I Cannot File My Next Quarter Report" in this newsletter.

In addition, please be aware that if you are submitting your quarterly electronically, you MUST complete the filing after you see the “Review” pane by clicking the “confirm and file” button on the bottom of the review screen. If you do not click the “confirm and file” button, your report will NOT be submitted to our office. You can tell if your report has been filed in a couple of ways. First, once you click the “confirm and file” button, you should receive a “receipt” page with a confirmation that your filing was successful. Also, if you go back to the organization’s summary page and go to “quarterly reports”, it should show the report you just submitted in a status of “submitted” and in black, with no link. If it states that the report is “in progress”, and is in blue where you can link to the report, it has NOT been filed. You will need to open the report and go to the “sign” tab, complete any information required and then click “continue”. It will do as stated above, giving you a “review” page with the “confirm and file” button on the bottom of that page, which you will need to click to complete the filing process. Congratulations! You're done!

Investigator Tips

Each quarter, we include a few tips from our Bingo/Raffle Investigators. They gather a lot of information in the field on where licensees have trouble complying with the law, and this is one strategy for using that information to help you. We'll include rule and statute citations with these tips so you can do more research. You can access all bingo/raffle laws using our Bingo-Raffles Law Handbook. Here are this quarter's tips: Don’t forget that the main rule covering raffles is Rule 8. That includes regular raffles, 50/50 raffles, and progressive raffles. If you have any questions, please drop us a line at public.investigation@coloradosos.gov. Please remember that all raffles must be reported, no matter how big or small. As long as the raffle contains the three elements of a raffle, (payment, drawing, prize), it must be reported on your quarterly report. For a regular raffle, any raffle with a prize that has a retail value over $1,000 must first file a void ticket with our office before any sales. There are several key items that must be on the ticket, including the following: License Number; License Name, exactly as it appears on the license; Date, Time, and Place of the Drawing; Ticket Cost; Adequate description of the major prize(s) offered; Date(s) that the ticket price will increase or decrease, if employing such a scheme; Cost if tickets are purchased as a package; The word “RAFFLE”; A statement indicating whether or not the ticketholder must be present to win. We are happy to look over your tickets for these raffles to ensure that all of the key elements are present before you print the tickets. You can send proofs of the tickets to us via fax, email, or regular mail. There is no requirement that we pre-authorize, but it might help save you the trouble of having to print the word “Raffle” on 2,000 tickets if that one small element is missed prior to going to print. If you plan on selling tickets online, displaying winners online, or are employing any scheme other than a regular raffle, please contact our office in advance. There are certain requirements for conducting a raffle like this, including but not limited to submitting screenshots of the website, contact information, how/when the winner will be notified/posted, etc. If you have anything out of the norm, please contact us first. There is no requirement for the raffle tickets if the prize is under $1,000 retail value. The old-style theater tickets will suffice. You don’t need to file a voided copy of those prior to your first sale.

Quarterly Data Points: Annual Profits

The end of the 2nd quarter is the halfway point of the year and in looking at the Gross Amount Wagered on Charitable Games we can see that the 2015 totals are consistent with that of the overall profit from the previous three years.

Games Manager Training

Remember, your organization must have at least one certified Games Manager in order to run charitable games, and we recommend licensees maintain more than one. We continue to offer in-person and online Games Manager training courses.

Sign up for the online eLearning course on our website.

For in-person classes, visit our Games Manager Training page and follow the instructions to sign up for a scheduled class.

Here are the dates/times/places of upcoming scheduled Games Manager training classes:

10/24, 8:30 am, Craig, BPO Elks 577, 43 W Victory Wy

11/7, 8:30 am, Greeley, BPO Elks 809, 3061 W 29th St

You can also sign up to host a Games Manager training course. Follow this link to provide us with a few details about you and your organization, and host a class soon.

Please note that the Games Manager mail-in certification exam is no longer available.

Payment Options for Online Quarterly Filing

Several licensees have questioned the options to pay the quarterly online. When filing online, the system will only accept credit or debit cards, we do not have ACH or the ability to directly transfer funds from your accounts. The card, however, does not have to be linked directly to the bingo-raffle account. A personal card could be used (we do not retain any card information once the quarterly is submitted), and then the person who used their card could receive reimbursement from the bingo-raffle account (we will need adequate descriptions on the schedule A that the reimbursement was for a “loan” to repay the person using their personal card for quarterly report payment). Also, the group has the option of obtaining a prepaid card where it can be loaded with the appropriate amount to cover the quarterly.

The last option for online payment is to set up a prepaid account with our office. This does take a bit of time and has a minimum setup amount of $500 and the balance cannot drop below $250. If this could be an option for your organization, you can find the prepaid account form (PDF) here.