CBP Posts Reports on Recent ACE Release 5 Workshops on Reconciliation, Liquidation, Financial Statements, Etc.

(These workshops are attended by members of the Trade Support Network (TSN), called Trade Ambassadors, who are importers, brokers, carriers, and other members of the trade community.) The following are highlights of CBP's summary of seven ACE Release 5 workshops held in late March-April 2005:

Licenses, permits, and certificates - March 30, 2005. CBP states that the joint post summary and account management workshop focused on post-summary licenses, permits and certificates which are usually transactional, and blanket licenses, permits and certificates which apply to every transaction related to the account.

CBP notes that while ACE would like to move toward scanned images of invoices, certificates, etc., there is a question as to whether International Trade Data System (ITDS) Participating Government Agencies (PGAs) will be able to accept scanned images in lieu of paper documents, in light of concerns that a scanned image can be manipulated.

Reconciliation - April 12, 2005. According to the report, the reconciliation workshop reviewed with the trade, among other things, the following recent CBP policy decisions (partial list):

IASS reconfigured entries will be flagged for reconciliation;

The expectation is that ABI/EDI will support electronic transmission of all data (i.e., no line item data spreadsheet from the trade); and

The trade will have the ability to retroactively flag entry summaries for reconciliation - if before liquidation.

Entry summary edits for duties, taxes, and fees - April 13, 2005. According to the report, at the entry summary workshop session the e-Customs Partnership (eCP) provided a walk-through of screen mock ups supporting the planned duties, taxes, and fees (DTF) functionality. The report notes that much of the discussion focused on functionality that the Post Release team has not yet built (including changing field labels, creating custom validations (duplicate entry summary numbers), creating new account types, adding all logic into currency conversion, etc.) CBP notes that the final product will most likely look vastly different from the one that was demonstrated at this workshop, but the business processes will function the same as demonstrated.

Reference files - April 13, 2005. The reference files workshop focused on issues such as whether additional fields and information will be available to ABI users as well a portal users, and included a discussion of the following reference files which are now available to the trade to extract: AD/CVD file, Region/District/Port File, Country Code File, Foreign Port Code File, Zip Code, Carrier Code File, Gold Price, Currency query file, Harmonized Tariff Schedule file, etc.

Census edits - April 14, 2005. According to the report, the Census edits workshop addressed the process and vision for the Census edits in ACE.

Liquidation - April 14, 2005. According to the report, the following liquidation topics were discussed at the liquidation workshop: system generated liquidation status changes, manual liquidation, reliquidation, and close out.

Financial Statements - April 27-28, 2005. The financial statements workshop addressed issues related to how the trade uses daily statements today, how the trade interfaces with the bank, billing statements, entry summary billing statements, national statements, entry summary receivable data, supplemental charges billing statement, refunds, etc.

March 28-April 15, 2005 Trade Engagement Biweekly Report (Report No. 9, dated 05/16/05), available at http://www.cbp.gov/linkhandler/cgov/toolbox/about/modernization/trade_support_network/report_workshop/report_060805.ctt/trade_06082005.doc.

April 25-29, 2005 Trade Engagement Biweekly Report (Report No. 10, dated 05/27/05) available at http://www.cbp.gov/linkhandler/cgov/toolbox/about/modernization/trade_support_network/report_workshop/report_06162005.ctt/trade_06162005.doc.