U.S. Customs and Border Protection has updated its schedule for deploying additional functionality to the Automated Commercial Environment.
ACE functionality, including data reports, can help importers and others boost compliance and duty savings efforts. For more information, please contact attorney Lenny Feldman via email or at (305) 894-1011.
Air Cargo. An enhancement newly scheduled for March 2025 will enhance the 1X coding in the air environment to facilitate the movement of held cargo.
Aluminum. CBP has pushed back from September to January updates to the entry summary user interface create/edit functionality for non-ABI entries related to an increase in the Section 232 tariffs on imports of aluminum from Russia.
Bills of Lading. The deployment of functionality to release ocean cargo at the lowest shipment level, which will also provide a new user interface for container freight station operators to view information as released at the lowest shipment level, remains on hold.
Business identifiers. CBP still plans to implement in April 2025 functionality that (1) expands the global business identifier proof of concept enrollment process by enabling trade users to submit one, two, or all three of the global identifiers for any party type and (2) adds an additional free text field allowing filers to input additional descriptions about the party/GBI number provided.
Collections. CBP still plans to deploy this October an enhancement that provides the necessary logic to properly post seized refunds upon the transition from the CBP Treasury Forfeiture Fund accounting workload to Treasury’s Administrative Resource Center service provider. An enhancement providing a new user interface that allows CBP personnel to monitor, track, and manage serial numbered forms pads has been postponed from October to December.
An enhancement newly announced for this month would update the lockbox payment posting logic for overpayments and underpayments of bills.
CBP newly plans to deploy in October enhancements that will enable authorized users to (1) unarchive a previous collection to make an adjustment using that collection and (2) add a cash receipt number to a collection. CBP has also announced for (1) January 2025 a feature that will integrate non-tariff bills into the existing interest service within the ACE collections billing module and will include automatic non-tariff interest rate calculation for bills as well as the addition of non-tariff interest rates to the interest calculator screen, and (2) March 2025 a feature that will integrate such bills into the existing debt management lifecycle within the ACE collections billing module and will include late pay penalty calculations for bills, a new automated dunning letter, and new debt management-related fields for dispute dates.
Court Proceedings. CBP still plans to deploy in March 2025 an enhancement creating a new record type in the ACE court case module to create administrative records for Enforce and Protect Act and forced labor cases brought to the Court of International Trade.
De Minimis Shipments. An update requiring the estimated date of arrival when filing an entry type 86 (de minimis shipment) was released July 25. CBP has adjusted plans for further automating de minimis enforcement so that (1) a release providing a warning in ACE when a shipment may exceed the $800 per person/per day threshold is set for Jan. 11, 2025, and (2) functionality that will reject ineligible shipments in ACE will be released no sooner than Feb. 11, 2025.
CBP has moved up from April to February 2025 an enhancement automating the removal and restoration of entry type 86 test participants.
An enhancement adding bond validations for low-value shipments, requiring carriers and operators to provide CBP with any cargo held or selected for inspection and enabling CBP to verify active bonds in ACE, has been delayed from August to October 2025.
DIS Submissions. Enhancements to the Document Image System to facilitate document submissions via electronic data interchange for both import and export vehicle-related transactions remain on track for Sept. 28.
Disabling the option to submit form 1302A (cargo declaration – outward with commercial forms) in the DIS for outward vessels has been postponed from October to April 1. Once this is done such forms will have to be submitted on paper or via ACE Export Manifest.
Drawback. Functionality providing a new class code and enhancing the ACE drawback module to allow for drawback of petroleum Superfund taxes was deployed Sept. 17.
Event History. CBP has postponed again, from Aug. 17 to Oct. 12, an update adding an event history section to the liquidation record in the entry summary user interface to provide users with a complete audit trail for all liquidation record actions on an entry summary. This update will also remove the ability to manually assign a liquidation approver.
Exports. CBP has pushed back from October to spring 2025 an enhancement providing a trade-facing electronic export manifest portal to enable the filing of truck EEM bills of lading prior to departing the U.S. for Mexico or Canada and to allow carriers to add account data.
FAST. CBP still plans to deploy this month an enhancement updating the ACE manifest user interface to (1) add the search option “search shipper/consignee” and a feature to add shippers and consignees and (2) add the ability to convert historical data that does not have FAST information on carrier, consignee, org broker, and shipper accounts.
In-bonds. An enhancement improving the air in-bond process by enabling the Electronic Export Manifest system to link in-bonds with ACE Multi-Modal Manifest, which will accept new messages from EEM that will perform in-bond arrival/export/cancel requests for air carriers, is now set for Oct. 8.
Mass processing. Functionality enabling CBP users to simultaneously update multiple entry summaries to a specific version number or their most recent version number is still scheduled for November.
PGAs. CBP pushed back again, from Sept. 17 to October, an update adding broker account access to PGA documents via the modernized ACE portal.
Quotas. CBP has newly announced plans to deploy Sept. 23 an enhancement creating an ACE validation to prevent the use of post-summary corrections to change non-quota entries to quota entries.
Reports. An update adding a prompt in ACE Reports to identify the subject company whenever a report is run or scheduled has been added for October. This change will enable CBP to restore the ability for trade users with access to more than one account to schedule reports for delivery by e-mail.
Sanctions. A newly-announced enhancement implementing the collection of new data elements to enable targeting of merchandise subject to sanctions on Russian diamonds and seafood is scheduled for April 2025.
Steel. CBP has moved up from February 2025 to Nov. 21, 2024, the anticipated deployment of an enhancement supporting the addition of the steel melt and pour field to CBP Form 7501.
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