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Preparing for your NYSDEC Report submission
Preparing for your NYSDEC Report submission

Instructions on how to submit your annual pesticide use report

Beau O'Hara avatar
Written by Beau O'Hara
Updated over a week ago

Hello,

This message is meant for those of you who do business in New York State. If you do not do business there I apologize for your receiving this message and please disregard it.

Your NYSDEC report is due February 1. We have a report for you to run at Reports > NYSDEC

We have personally spoken with the powers that be at Cornell University and they confirm that our report is within the state's compliance and that it meets their requirements.

According to the state there is no need to wait until February 1 to file your report. Reports may be filed as soon as you have finished documenting material applications for the year just ended. 

You can choose between two reports to send to the state:
NYSDEC Grouped by Date (the report lists materials sequentially by date)
NYSDEC Grouped by Tech (the report lists materials sequentially by tech)

Note This article contains links that take you out of our system. We are not responsible for their content.

Tip Do not wait until January to run the report. Run the report every month to identify errors and mistakes. Following this method allows you to run the report once in the new year and you're done with it.

The NYSDEC report can take a long time to generate so you might want to do some housekeeping on your accounts during the year to eliminate incorrect entries, which creates the need to regenerate the report more times than necessary, which is a waste of your time.

Fix your accounts before you set time aside
to run your report

The state will reject your form if there are errors in it or if the data is not in CSV format (i.e., do not send the report as a PDF file, do not send it as an Excel spreadsheet). 

If you send a PDF file you will get a response from the state that looks similar to this:

You do not want to get that response, send the CSV file.

The areas of focus in the report are in user name (and certification ID number), materials and in customers' address information.

USER NAME AND CERTIFICATION ID NUMBER

Make sure your technician has a first and last name. Make sure it's the same name as it appears on their state license.

Make sure their certification ID number (license number) is the same as it appears on their Pesticide Applicator/Technician Certification.

Make any necessary adjustments at settings/users & routes.

MATERIALS
Be sure to enter the EPA Registration Number and not the EPA Establishment Number. Establishment Numbers have a state abbreviation as the second part of the number (e.g. 99999-NY-002). Do not use this number.

Make sure your EPA Registration Numbers are correct. According to the state, the top issues are: hyphens missing, numbers omitted, numbers transposed, periods used in place of hyphens...

If an EPA number is missing that material will not appear in the report. Check your EPA Registration Numbers at Settings/Materials. Compare the number with the material label.

Note Glue boards, tin cats, EcoVia EC, etc., should not appear in the report so remove any numbers or text (EXEMPT, N/A, NONE, 0, etc...) you may have for those materials from the EPA Number text box.

While you're checking the EPA numbers, make sure you check the product name. Do not include the active ingredient or manufacturer’s name in the Material name field - include just the product name. 

Material Quantity

The Quantity column will show 0.0 in the following scenario:

The tech entered the actual amount of the chemical used and applied a dilution rate to the chemical. After dividing the actual amount with the dilution rate, the amount is so small the system shows 0.0.

To fix this either report the actual chemical measurement (1 oz?) and use None as the dilution rate, or report the water amount (1 gallon?) and use the dilution rate.

The easy fix is to change the dilution rate through a bulk update of the dilution rate. For more information about this, see Bulk Update Materials - Update incorrect entries for your Materials reports

CUSTOMER ADDRESS INFORMATION
You must have the address, city, state, zip code, and county entries in each customer's Location page entered properly; otherwise, the report will generate errors and if you submit it that way the state will reject your form.

  • Address & city: Make sure the address is not a PO box. The municipality name should match the zip code (e.g., 11375 should be Forest Hills, not Queens). Make sure the city is spelled correctly. Examples include: Brooklym, Broklyn, Bk... instead of Brooklyn, etc.

  • State: Must be NY, not New York. If the NY is missing in the state field, or if New York is used, that customer's material history will not show in the report.

  • Zip code: Make sure zip codes have 5-digits, not 4, not 5+4.

  • County: Use the county name. Your spelling of the county entries in each customer account must match up exactly to the county names in the County Codes for the Pesticide Annual Reports. Do not enter the county code number, do not enter an abbreviation, do not misspell, do not leave it blank, do not put the word 'County' in the field.

    Fixing Customer Address Information

    To find and fix your accounts for missing zip code and county entries go to Reports > Service Location List and click the County column, for starters. The ones that are missing will be at the top with the County column having blank cells.

    To populate the county field for accounts that have no county, in the first row, right-click the service location in the Location column.

  1. Click Open link in new tab

  2. Click the newly opened tab

  3. Click the brown Edit button

  4. Update the County field

  5. Click the green Save button

  6. Close the tab

  7. Rinse and repeat

  8. When finished with the counties repeat with the City, State and Zip Code columns

Note The steps above show you how to find missing entries. Scroll down the page to find incorrect entries (Queen instead of Queens, New York County instead of New York, 4-digit zip codes, Brooklym, Broklyn, Bk... instead of Brooklyn, etc.). 

Tip If a location needs updating and [x] Same as billing address is checked, open the customer's billing page and make the update there.

To save the final report for submitting to the state

  1. Click the Export button in the upper-right corner

  2. Click CSV

  3. Save the CSV file for electronic submission

For more information about the state requirements for the NYSDEC form, or if you have any questions about the content of this email, see the dec.ny.gov web site: Common PRL Report Issues.

For information about the actual report submission process, see the Cornell web site: Submitting Your Electronic Report

You can also contact the NYS DEC Bureau of Pest Management at:
Phone: 518-402-8748 (Monday-Friday 8:30-4:45)
Email: prl@dec.ny.gov
Web site: www.dec.ny.gov/chemical/27506.html


This article is emailed annually the first week of January to all businesses registered in New York state.

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