CBP to Increase Efforts to Encourage Migration of Export Filers to ACE

CBP will begin an effort in February to encourage export filers to transfer over to the Automated Commercial Environment, said Cynthia Whittenburg, director of policy and programs at CBP’s trade office, at a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Commercial Operations (COAC) held Jan. 13 in New Orleans. Following deployment of Automated Export System functionality in ACE on Nov. 30 (see 1512010022), CBP hopes to shut down the Census Bureau’s legacy system “as soon as possible,” she said.

Companies that aren’t voluntarily switching over to ACE will start getting notifications in mid-February, said Whittenburg. CBP will select chunks of Employer Identification Numbers (EIN), and notify companies that aren’t using ACE that “we expect you to start transitioning,” she said. CBP expects to run through all EIN numbers and send notifications to non-ACE filers by mid-spring.

Overall, 98 percent of AES export processing capability has so far been deployed in ACE, said Debbie Augustin, executive director of CBP’s ACE Business Office. Right now CBP is working to finish integration with export partner government agencies (PGAs), she said at the COAC meeting. Functionality for the Environmental Protection Agency and Agricultural Marketing Service has been completed, and work continues with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Drug Enforcement Administration, Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, and Fish and Wildlife Service.

Since the rollout of AESDirect in ACE at the end of November, CBP has seen over 40,000 shipments filed in the new system, and the number is “growing every day,” said Whittenburg. Filings in the legacy system fell by around 100,000 shipments last month, she said, adding that the average of total shipments per month is about 900,000. Taking into consideration the holiday, CBP expects “to see a huge increase over the next month, or at least the next couple of months,” said Whittenburg.