Note: “PRL Reporting Software” in this document refers to the Option A, B, and C programs distributed by the Pesticide Reporting Service Bureau.
NOTE: For purposes of this document, “Certified Applicators” includes certified commercial applicators, technicians, and anti-fouling paint applicators (i.e., all applicators whose certification id number begins with “C”, “T”, or “B”). “Certified Applicators” does not include Private Applicators or apprentices.
If you have questions about the Pesticide Reporting Law or the electronic reporting process that are not covered here, contact either the NYS DEC or the Pesticide Reporting Service Bureau.
identity.txt
file located on my computer?C:\Program Files\NYSPRL folder?There are five ways that you can submit an electronic PRL report. See Submitting Reports for details.
Yes, with rare exceptions. In fact, uploading directly from version 6 of the Client
Software (Options A, B, or C) is the quickest and easiest way to submit your report.
Click the “Upload Report To NYSDEC” button on the registration form
and follow a few simple steps. See the documentation files that were installed with
the client software, opened from the Help – How to Submit Files to DEC
menu item, for more details.
The exceptions? Some users in a tightly controlled enterprise environment might not be able to use the direct upload method. One of the other methods, such as uploading through the website or sending your report by email can be used instead.
To submit by email, send an email to prlfiles@nysprl.com. Indicate the report year in the subject line. (Note: the report year is the year for which you are reporting pesticide applications or sales — this may be the previous calendar year.)
Attach the report files to the email. Do not put your report in the body of the email; this will delay processing of the report. Instead, you should send the report files as attachments to the email; you may need to consult the help for your email program on how to do this, as the procedures can vary quite substantially.
You must also attach the file identity.txt. This file might be created
for you by the software you use to enter your pesticide use or sales data, or you
can create it yourself. Please DO NOT
include identity information in the body of your email; doing so will slow down
processing of your submission. DO attach the identity.txt
file to your email submission.
Not much information needs to be included in the body of the email. Include the name and phone number of a contact person whom we can call if there are any problems with the submission.
If you have attached a complete identity file, you do not need to include
business registration numbers, certification ids, or commercial permit numbers in
the body of the email; all of that information should be in either identity.txt
or in the report files themselves. Repeating certification ids and commercial permit
numbers in the body of the email might slow down processing, because Service Bureau
staff will need to compare the information in your email against the files you have
submitted. The most reliable way to ensure that the data you need to report are
properly processed is by submitting the data in correctly formatted report files.
For PRL Reporting Software Options A and C, your
report is contained in text files (extension .txt). For Option B, report
data is in Microsoft Excel files (extension .xls).
If you upload files through the
web site, your files may include text files (extension .txt), Microsoft
Excel workbooks (extension .xls or .xlsx), Microsoft Word
documents (extension .doc or .docx), and “zipped”
file collections (extension .zip).
For email submissions, we might not be able to process reports containing file types not mentioned above.
Even for text, if your files are not formatted according to the PRL ASCII Text File Specifications, we might not be able to process them. Report submissions containing files that do not meet file specifications are classified as “e-converts” and require special handling that will delay processing; depending on the file type and format, those submissions might be rejected.
If your computer is not set up to display file extensions, use your mouse to right click on the file. Choose Properties. The extension is listed on the "General" tab in the Files of Type field.
Scanned images of paper forms, even if stored as PDF files, are not acceptable. Image files cannot be processed.
In general, PDF files cannot be processed. If you are creating a PDF from some
other electronic format (e.g., using Save As PDF from Microsoft
Excel) send the original file instead.
Include all of the files containing the report data that you have entered. However, include any particular record of pesticide application or sales only once. For example, if you create “interim” copies of report files — if you enter data into a report file, save it, open it again later to add more data, then save it with a different name, and so on — include only the final version.
Please do not send us the shortcuts (extension ".lnk")
that are installed on your computer’s desktop. These are just pointers to
the software on your computer; they do not include any of your data and we
cannot use the shortcuts from the Pesticide Reporting Service Bureau. A shortcut
can usually be identified by the small arrow that points up and to the right in
the file icon. It can also be identified by checking the file properties. To do
this use your mouse to right click on the file. Choose Properties.
If a tab called "Shortcut" is visible in the Properties window, then the
file is a shortcut.
If you are using the MS Excel spreadsheet eForms (Option B), please do
not send us any .xls files from the C:\Program
Files\NYSPRL folder. These files are empty workbooks intended
for starting a new report form.
If you submit your report by any means other than uploading from the PRL Reporting
Software or through the web site, always include the identity.txt file.
identity.txt file
located on my computer?That depends on how you created the files and choices you or the software you used made when the files were saved. If you are using software from another vendor or creating the files yourself, either you or the software chose the file location.
If you are using the PRL Reporting Software Option A, B, or C from the Pesticide Reporting Service Bureau, you have a lot of flexibility in where you choose to save the files.
First, you will have chosen a “Report Root”, a location where all of
your NYS PRL files should be saved. The PRL Reporting Software installation program
defaults to the C:\ drive, but you can change that location at either
installation or while running the program.
The PRL Reporting Software then defaults to saving your files in a subfolder of
the Report Root. There is a separate “Report Folder” for each report
year. The Report Folders are created by the software as needed; they are named
PRLyyyy, where “yyyy” is the report year. For example, if you
accepted the default Report Root at installation, your report files for 2011 should
be saved in the folder C:\PRL2011.
The PRL Reporting Software displays the current location for the report folder
in the upper right corner of the Registration form. The identity.txt
file is automatically saved in the report folder. When you save report data files,
you have the choice of saving them to the current report folder or to a different
location. We strongly recommend saving to the current report folder,
which should be the default.
A Report Folder named PRLyyyy, where “yyyy” is the report
year, is created by the PRL Reporting Software Options A, B, and C as the default
folder for storing report files that you save. The Report Folder is created as a
subfolder of the Report Root, one Report Folder for each report year. The default
setting for Report Root is your C:\ drive.
Click the "My Computer" icon on your computer's desktop or use the Windows Explorer.
There are many different email programs in use by the regulated pesticide community. Each of these programs uses different methods to attach files to an email message. In most cases, however, once the attachment window is open, the process of locating a directory within that window is quite similar.
To find the folder when attaching the files to the email message you will send to the Service Bureau, open up your email program’s attachment window. Typically, the window will have a field at the top called "Look In", "Browse", or something similar. Click the down arrow at the left side of this field. A drop down list of folder names will appear. Point and click the mouse at the "Local Disk (C:)" folder. A new list of folders will be displayed in the large area below the "Look In:" field.
Use the scroll bar to scroll the list until "PRL2010" appears. The scroll bar is a horizontal bar with outward facing arrows at either end. Click the arrows with the mouse to make the bar move and scroll the folder list. Alternatively, your email program's attachment window may have a vertical scroll bar. A vertical scroll bar is used in the same way as a horizontal scroll bar.
When you find the "PRL2010" folder, click it with the mouse. Your report
files and the identity.txt file will appear. Highlight each of these
files by clicking them with the mouse. To select multiple files, hold down the CTRL
key while clicking on each file. When finished, click the "Open" or "Attach"
button at the bottom of the window. This will attach the files to your email message.
Yes. See Submitting Reports — Conventional Mail for details. For additional information on submitting paper reports see the The Pesticide Reporting Law (PRL) page on the NYS DEC web site.
Yes, but other methods are likely to be easier and more efficient. See Submitting Reports — FTP for details.
More information on installing the PRL Reporting Software.
Options A, B, and C all require Microsoft Windows 2000 or later. For Windows 2000, some additional updates to Microsoft Windows may be required before the “Upload to NYSDEC” function works. Option B requires Microsoft Excel 2000 or later; some (minor) functions are disabled in versions earlier than Excel 2003.
The full text of the error message is usually:“Error 1925: You do not have sufficient privileges to complete this installation for all users of the machine. Log on as an administrator and then retry this installation.”
When installing the PRL Reporting Software under Windows 2000 or Windows XP, you must be logged on as an administrator (or any user account with Administrator privileges). For Windows Vista or Windows 7: depending on how your system is set up, you might need to be logged on as an administrator or at least know the username and password for an account with administrator privileges.
Some older versions of the PRL Reporting Software’s installation program
checked for existing earlier versions and refused to install the PRL Reporting Software
if an earlier version was present. If you get this error message, you must first
uninstall the previous version. Open the Control Panel (from the
Start menu, possibly under the Settings item depending on
the version of Windows). Select Add/Remove Programs. In the “Add/Remove”
dialogue, navigate to whichever of OptionA, OptionB, or
OptionC you previously installed, and click on it. Then click the "Change/Remove"
button and follow the prompts to uninstall it. Once the old version is removed,
you can go back to the Service Bureau website and install the new version.
Current versions (version 6 or later) of the PRL Reporting Software will install as updates to the prior versions. Nevertheless, it may be a good idea to uninstall the previous version before installing the new version. Uninstalling the new version is not usually required but can help avoid confusion caused by having more than one version of the same program installed at the same time.
Microsoft Office is not used by either Option A or Option C, so you can install the current version of those programs without problems.
Option B currently requires at least Microsoft Excel 2000. There were significant changes in the VBA Macro language used by Excel between Excel 97 and Excel 2000 (and smaller changes between Excel 2000 and Excel 2003). We are no longer able to support use of Option B with Excel 97. (It might work. Many of the functions do work, but others will produce “Compile Error” messages.) As an alternative, you can use the Option D (“No Code”) workbooks.
For more information, see the user guides installed with the software or available online.
Commercial Sales Permits are issued to businesses that sell pesticides either for resale or end-use in New York State. They are relatively rare — most pesticide businesses do not have a Commercial Sales Permit. If your business does not have a Commercial Sales Permit, do not enter anything in this box!
Commercial Sales Permit numbers are issued by the NYS DEC; they consist of an “R” followed by five numeric digits. Enter the Commercial Sales Permit Number for your business in this box. A Commercial Permittee must include a Form 25 or Form 27 or both as part of the PRL report.
If your business has more than one Commercial Sales Permit, you may enter one number here and provide separate Form 25 or Form 27 for each of the Commercial Sales Permit numbers. However, we recommend that you send separate PRL submissions for each Commercial Permit.
If you need to report for multiple applicators, include Form 26A (“List of Commercial Applicators and Technicians”) in your report submission. List all of the certified applicators employed by your business.
Unless all of the applicators on whose behalf you are reporting made no pesticide applications during the report year, you must also include at least one Form 26 (“Applicator/Technician Pesticide Annual Report”).
You may submit a single Form 26 combining the pesticide applications made by all of the applicators on whose behalf you are reporting, even though only one applicator will be explicitly shown on the Form 26 (for Option A or B software).
Although it is not required by the DEC, you may maintain separate Form 26s for each applicator entered on Form 26A. To do this with Option A, check the box labeled “Check here if you wish to maintain separate application files …”. Each time you open a blank Form 26, a list of the applicators from your Form 26A will be shown. The applicator name and Certification ID of the applicator you select will be written to the header area of the empty Form 26.
Form 26A is used to submit a list of certified applicators employed by a registered pesticide business or agency or by a non-registered business making pesticide applications (such as a golf course, cenetery, greenhouse, etc.). A business that employs one or more certified applicators may submit Form 26 (Applicator/Technician Pesticide Annual Report) and Form 26A (List of Commercial Applicators and Technicians) on behalf of their employees. All certified applicators employed at any time during the reporting year must be included (even if no applications were made by certain individuals) and all applications made by all employees for the year must be reported. Please do not include the names of those employees that are commercial pesticide apprentices.
There are two main cases:
Report Root for each branch.Not all pest control products used for pest management are registered, regulated pesticides. Some of the common examples are glue boards used for rodent control or EPA-exempt insecticides formulated entirely from natural botanical extracts. These pest control products do not have EPA Registration Numbers and do not require registration with New York State. These products do not need to be included in your PRL report.
Note: Be certain that the product in question is exempt from reporting requirements — and that you have not just missed the EPA Registration Number on the pesticide label. If you have any questions or concerns, contact the NYS DEC.
All quantities used (or sold) must be reported using one of the Acceptable Units. These units are all clearly defined units for weight or volume. Reporting quantities as “EA”, “BLOCK”, “STATION”, or similar descriptive units is not acceptable. Convert all such quantities to acceptable units.
Here are a few common examples (not intended as a recommendation or endorsement of the particular products shown):
Note: A common error is to use the percentage of active ingredient rather than the net weight (or net volume) per unit. Be careful that you use the correct conversion.
The net weight (or volume) of each pre-packaged unit should be indicated on the pesticide label. (Unfortunately, not all manufacturers make that information easy to find.) If you need assistance locating the correct conversion factors, contact us.
You should choose “Enable Macros.” The software does not work correctly without macros enabled. Information from the Registration form that identifies the business or applicator will not be copied to the worksheet and many of the user-assistive features will be unavailable.
Information on what macro settings need to be enabled and how to set them can be found here. Many of the features of the program will not operate correctly without macros enabled.
When you start the Option B program, the Registration form displays. You should enter contact and identifying information into that form. The spaces in the header area of the Excel workbooks (for name, certification ID number, etc.) are filled by the program using the data you entered in the Registration form. There are two main reasons for that information to not appear in the Excel workbook:
You can enter some identifying information directly on the Excel workbook without going through the Option B program and the Registration form. However, you cannot enter the report year or any contact information. Using the Option B program to open the Option B workbooks is more effective.
If you cannot paste data into one of the option B forms, try “disabling” macros when you open up the form. Be aware that none of the software features will work when you “disable” the macros. After you paste in the data, save the form and close the software. The next time you open the form be sure to “enable” macros.
Note: We have not observed this behavior in recent versions of the Option B workbooks. If you are using the Excel workbooks distributed with Option B version 6 or later and have this problem, please contact us so we can investigate the issue.
C:\Program Files\NYSPRL folder?This is the default program installation directory. Depending on what PRL Reporting
Software Option (and version) you are using it may contain the Option A,
Option B, or Option C programs, blank “templates”
for Option B Excel workbooks, and supporting libraries (DLLs); older
versions of the Client software installed each Option into its own subfolder. There
is no reason for you to access any of the files in these folders. The report files
you save are not kept here.
For electronic submissions, two reply emails are typically sent. The first is simply an acknowledgement that we received your submission. For uploaded reports, it is sent to the email address given in the submitter’s contact information. For emailed reports, it is sent to the email address from which the submission was sent.
The second is sent after we have successfully processed the report submission.
For uploaded reports, it is sent to the email address given in the submitter’s
contact information — just like the first email. For emailed reports, it is
sent to the email address in the identity.txt that should have been
included in the report submission; if there is no identity.txt, the
original email address is used instead.
We generate a “First Email” as an acknowledgement of receipt shortly after we receive your report.
There are several factors that might further delay or prevent delivery of the First Email, including:
If you uploaded your report (anytime) or emailed it to us (during the peak reporting season) and have not received the First Email response within a day, you should contact the Pesticide Reporting Service Bureau to confirm that we received your report.
That depends on (1) how many reports we received at about the same time as yours and (2) theformat and data quality of the report you submitted. The confirmation email is sent when we have finished processing your report.
PRL reports for the current report year that comply with formatting standards for electronic reports and that pass our preliminary data validation are usually processed quickly. Our goal is to complete processing of submissions that have no problems within a week after receipt. Of course, a heavy rate of submissions or unforeseen issues may slow sometimes delay processing. During the 2010 report year (processing during early 2011), most report submissions were processed by the next business day.
PRL reports that do not comply with formatting standards (“e-Converts”) or that fail data validation can be significantly delayed. We try to complete the processing of those submissions within three weeks of receipt, but some submissions may take longer. In some cases, we are not able to correct formatting or data quality problems and the submission will be returned to you for correction.
When you receive the confirmation email, it should tell you several things:
One of the most important parts for you to examine is the list of applicators. The email shows the Certification ID and the name that the DEC has recorded for that Certification ID for every certified applicator included in your report. Confirm that all of the applicators that should be in your report are in the list and that no one who should not be in your report are in the list.
Note that your report should not include apprentices, because they do not have Certification IDs of their own.
Common problems detected with the applicator list are:
The second problem will typically result in the Confirmation Email including an applicator whose name you do not recognize. The Service Bureau is sometimes able to correct mis-entered Certification IDs, especially those on a Form 26A. (We can look up the name you provided and guess which Certification ID should have been entered.) However, not all such problems are caught and corrected when the report is processed.
Errors in the applicator list can be corrected easily. Contact us and we will process the corrections and send you a new Confirmation Email.
identity.txt
file: the email address is in the identity file.identity.txt
file: the email address from which the original submission was sent.identity.txt
file: email address might not be available. In this case, no Confirmation Email
will be sent.The Service Bureau maintains a list of Certification IDs, Business Registration Numbers, and Commercial Sales Permit Numbers included on electronic reports that have been received and processed. The Service Bureau also periodically receives a list of Certification IDs, Business Registration Numbers, and Commercial Sales Permit Numbers included on paper reports. Those identification numbers are combined with the from electronic reports.
You can search the current list with our Report Status web page.
Note: It is possible (though rare) for an identification number to be removed from the list accessed through the Report Status page. If a company submits a list of applictors with an incorrectly entered Certification ID then later corrects the error by removing the incorrect Certification ID, the incorrectly reported Certification ID will be on the list between the time that the original report was processed and the time of the correction.
A PRL report file is “compliant” if it is either:
.xls file created from one of the Excel workbooks
provided by the Service BureauIn addition, the file name should follow the naming conventions shown for text files or Excel files, as applicable. The critical parts of the file name are the “Form Prefix” and “File Extension”.
In both cases, we know how the data is laid out in the file, so we are able to automatically extract the data for storage in a database. Files that are “not compliant” require manual processing to convert them into a compliant format.
A PRL Report Submission is “compliant” if all of the files in the submission are compliant.
An “e-convert.” is a report submission with one or more electronic files that need to be converted to a standard “compliant” format.
This assessment is made automatically as your report submission is received. Sometimes, especially with email submissions, there may be additional files attached to your email that are not part of your report but that can cause your report to be considered an e-convert. For example, if your email program uses a decorative background image for your emails, we receive that image as a attached file. There is no way to automatically determine whether the image is just decorative (so we can ignore it) or a scanned image of a PRL form (which should not have been sent but is part of the report). The files in the submission need to be examined by a human.
The automatic handling of report submission includes several rules intended to determine whether the submission can continue to be processed automatically or requires human intervention. Operationally, then, an “e-convert.” is a report submission that must be pulled out of the normal workflow for individual attention.
In some cases, we are able to manually extract report data from the problem files. Sometimes, we cannot convert the files (either at all or in a reasonable period of time). If we cannot convert the files, the submission will be rejected and you will be asked to re-submit.
Because e-converts need individual manual processing, they often take much longer to process than the standard “compliant” reports. You can help ensure that your report submission is processed quickly and accurately by following the guidelines for compliant reports.
When you download and install the Pesticide Reporting Service Bureau software,
it creates an icon on your desktop. This is a “shortcut” to the actual
program, placed there for your convenience in accessing the program, just like many
of your other desktop icons. It is important to remember that these icons are not
the actual programs or data files. If you attach the shortcut to your submission,
you are not attaching the data files we need — you are attaching a set of
directions to your computer for how to find the data files or program. If you look
at the list of files attached to your submission and you see any whose names end
in .lnk, then you have attached a shortcut. See Where
are the report files and the identity.txt file located on my computer?
for the likely location of the files you need to submit.
People often use different shorthand notations for dates. In order to process your submission in a timely fashion, we need to have all dates in a predictable format, rather than try to figure out what shorthand was meant. The preferred date format is MM/DD/YYYY — in other words, 2 digits for month, followed by 2 digits for day-of-month, followed by 4 digits for year. Each part should be separated by the slash character “/”.
Our processing software is generally pretty flexible about interpreting dates. If you received this message, the date format you chose is not one that our software was able to automatically interpret.
Questions and answers that do not fit clearly into other groups.
At the Service Bureau home page, the item “Download one of our electronic reporting options” will take you to a page with information about our various PRL Reporting Software applications and links to download software or electronic copies of PRL forms.
Please remember that the PRL Reporting Software options are not “the files to send to the Pesticide Reporting Service Bureau.” They are programs that will help you enter your report data on your computer to create the files you should submit.
No, we do not provide online data entry for your pesticide report data. If you are a commercial applicator or technician who did not apply any pesticides during the report year or you are a commercial sales permittee who did not sell any pesticides, you may report to us online. Select the item “If you did not make applications or sales in 2011” on our home page and then follow the directions on the next page.
No, you are only required to report the names and certification numbers of the commercial applicators, technicians, and aquatic anti-fouling paint applicators. You do need to report any pesticide applications made by apprentices.
Maybe. The format for PRL text files was designed to make it easy to extract the data into a database. The format was not designed to make it easy for humans to read.
Each of the “fields” in a record ends with a “pipe” (|) character. There are several fields at the start of each line that repeats information that would be in the header area of a printed form. Each record is one a separate line. So, for example, one line from a Form 26 file might look something like:
0|C1234567|12345|12455-79|Contrac Blox|12|OZ|7/11/2011||60|123 Sesame St|New
York|10210|
Different forms will have different numbers of fields. You can see a more detailed description in PRL ASCII Text File Specifications.
If you are making an electronic submission, then do not also submit your paper records. Sending both will only cause confusion and delay. Similarly, do not scan any records kept on paper submit the image files — image files such as .GIFs or .PDFs cannot be processed at all and will just be returned to you.
If you have only kept your records on paper and are not comfortable with electronic submission, please send copies of the paper reports to the address at this link. (We strongly encourage you to submit electronically. You will get one immediate confirmation that your report was received, and electronic submission also saves the cost of postage.)
See the contact information.