At the December 7, 2011 COAC meeting, CBP officials provided an update on the status of the planned test of Automated Commercial Environment Simplified Entry (SE) in the air environment. Officials stated that CBP’s target date for the first SE filing is late January 2012. CBP also plans to test SE in the ocean and rail environments after M1 is deployed and hopes to soon include additional complexities (PGA entries, etc.) in the test.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted an updated version of its spreadsheet of ACE ESAR A2.2 (Initial Entry Types) programming issues.

Trade Support Network (TSN) Committee members are expected to meet on December 7, 2011 to discuss a number of Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) topics, including ongoing issues with Post Summary Correction (PSC), such as its functionality in the ACE Portal, the visibility of data elements for original entry summary filers, and the possibility of using the PSC framework to transition ACS drawback to ACE.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection states that rail carriers will soon be sending rail manifests into the ACE M1 production environment. This requires that all brokers or self-filing importers participating in Rail Line Release create Entry Banks in ACE. The ACE Entry Bank numbers must be unique and cannot overlap with the ACS Entry Bank numbers. CBP warns that anyone currently receiving releases using Rail Line Release must create their ACE Entry Banks using the ACE Secure Data Portal as soon as possible. Refer to the User Guide in CSMS #11-000208 dated 09/02/11 for more information, or reach out to your Port Entry Bank contact.(CSMS #11-000302, dated 12/05/11)

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is announcing a December 4, 2011 free webinar for rail and sea carriers titled: Navigating ACE for Rail and Sea Carriers: How to Get the Most Out of Your Portal Account. The webinar will provide a walk-through of the available capabilities on each portal tab including in-bond authorization, ocean conveyances, assigning access privileges, references and tips and tricks on effectively managing the account. Attendees will be able to follow along in their own account should they choose to do so. The time of the webinar is 1:00 -2:30 p.m. Eastern time. See notice for details of registration. (CSMS #11-000301, dated 12/05/11)

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is taking steps to conduct a test of Simplified Entry (SE) in the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE). This test will initially be for the air mode and will require 12 data elements, with three data elements being optional, and will be filed in lieu of the CBP Form 3461 electronic information. The current CBP Form 3461 consists of 27 data elements, while the Importer Security Filing (ocean) normally requires ten data elements. When the three lists of data elements are compared to one another, it appears that the SE data omits a number of CBP Form 3461 data elements (such as the description of merchandise), while borrowing heavily from the ISF data list.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a notice stating that nine out of 40 applications were accepted in response to its November 9 notice seeking volunteers to participate in a test concerning Automated Commercial Environment Simplified Entry (SE) capability. The initial phase of the test will be open to entries filed in the air transportation mode only. According to CBP, the nine applicants accepted met all of the selection criteria in the November 9 notice.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a CSMS message announcing that on November 18, 2011, the ACE CATAIR Importer/Consignee Create/Update Chapter was updated to clarify the submission of foreign postal codes in the Importer/Consignee Create/Update (TI) transaction. The updated CATAIR Chapter is available here. The 2011 CATAIR Change Record is available here.

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials, the delayed "limited deployment" testing of M1 (ocean and rail e-manifest) user screens by CBP officers at the ports of Baltimore, MD; Buffalo, NY; and Brownsville, TX is now scheduled to begin on December 5, 2011. This pilot test will allow CBP to assess the use of the ACE M1 system by its officers and early adopters in the trade.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted the draft agenda for its Advisory Committee on Commercial Operations of Customs and Border Protection (COAC) meeting on December 7, 2011. CBP has also posted the following presentations, draft recommendations, and other documents (note that if the links below have expired, these documents are available here):