Understanding the Shipment Manager and Fatal Errors in ACE AESDirect

As a filer in ACE AESDirect, it is important to become familiar with its new screens and functionalities.  The Shipment Manager screen displays all of the high-level information related to your shipments and shows every transmission for a particular filing.

The first column on this screen is the “Shipment Reference Number” (SRN).  This will show the unique identifier that the user assigned to the shipment.  Entering the SRN in the search bar is the easiest way to locate a particular filing.  However, this will only find shipments that were submitted through ACE AESDirect.  In order to retrieve shipments filed in Legacy AESDirect, you must click on the green “Amend AES Filing” button and complete the required details.

The second column is the “Status” and will show as either Accepted, Rejected or Draft.  When the Electronic Export Information (EEI) is started in ACE AESDirect, the system will automatically create a Draft in the Shipment Manager.  This will ensure that the most recent information is saved if the user were to exit the application before submitting. A Draft means the shipment has not been submitted or processed in the Automated Export System (AES).

Once the EEI is successfully submitted and processed in the AES, it will appear in the Shipment Manager as either Accepted or Rejected. If the user is unclear whether their export filing is Accepted or Rejected, they should look at the “Last Updated/Filed” column.  The most recent submission under a SRN is the current status of the shipment.  DO NOT attempt to cancel any Rejected transmission.  This will cause a Fatal Error even if the transmission already had an Internal Transaction Number (ITN).  The ITN that was received will become invalid.

As you can see in the image below, after the user received an Accepted shipment, he/she attempted to cancel the Rejected line from 03/07/2016 at 15:51:35 for that SRN.  This generated a new Fatal Error with submission type Cancel.

Resolution: To resolve the failed cancellation attempt, the user must amend the previous submission from 03/07/2016 at 15:54:08 and resubmit.  Then the shipment becomes Accepted again and the ITN is now valid once more.

Remember, a Rejected status is possible even after an ITN has been issued.  You should check to make sure the most recent submission is Accepted to ensure the ITN is still valid.  For more information about how to properly address Fatal Errors, refer to Appendix A in the AESTIR.

For further information or questions, contact the U.S. Census Bureau's Data Collection Branch.

Telephone: (800) 549-0595, select option 1 for AES

Email: askaes@census.gov

International Trade Management Division Website

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