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Automated Commercial Environment (ACE)

The Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) is the CBP's electronic system through which the international trade community reports imports and exports and the government determines admissibility.

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ACE Systems Back Online After Unplanned Extended Down Time
August 3, 2017 |Customs

The ACE system is "stable and processes are operating normally" following some technical issues that left the ACE Portal unavailable for all end-users, CBP said in an Aug. 3 CSMS message. CBP advised that any manifest, entry and summary filings "transmitted between 07:00 ET and 09:00 ET, August 2, 2017, that did not receive a response should be retransmitted." As a result of the issues, CBP will allow for an additional day without penalty for all payment of duties that were due on Aug. 2, it said. CBP allowed for "downtime procedures" during the outage, CBP said in another CSMS message. The agency also discussed the issues with the trade during an Aug. 2 conference call, freight forwarder Geodis said in an email.

Common Filing Issues Persist Despite Faster FDA Processing Times in ACE, FDA Official Says
August 1, 2017 |FDA

ACE has resulted in faster processing times for imports regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, but some filing issues persist, FDA import director Douglas Stearn said in a July 31 blog post. The proportion of entry lines receiving an automated “may proceed” has increased from 26 percent to 62 percent since adoption of the new system, and 28,374 fewer entry lines have needed additional documents and information. But a study of FDA rejections between November 2016 and March 2017 found that the most common filing problems were the submission of invalid or canceled food facility registration numbers and invalid FDA product codes, Stearn said. Other common filing issues may cause an entry to be rejected before ever making it to FDA for review, including incorrect syntax or omission of required affirmations of compliance, missing or invalid entity information, and missing or invalid units of measure, he said.