In an effort to increase the awareness of the requirement to resolve all AES Fatal Errors, the U.S. Census Bureau’s Foreign Trade Division will modify the AES Compliance Rate calculation to include outstanding Fatal Errors. This modification will provide AES filers a complete Compliance Rate that reflects a filer’s effort to maintain compliance with the Foreign Trade Regulations.

Beginning with the April 2012 AES Compliance Report, the new Compliance Rate will be implemented and filers will receive additional information regarding any unresolved AES Fatal Errors. The report will display the details of shipments with unresolved fatal errors including the Shipment Reference Numbers, AES Response Codes and AES Response Narratives. A listing of the most frequent unresolved fatal error(s) and their associated reason and resolution will be provided on the report.

Two weeks following the AES Compliance Report, filers with remaining fatal errors will receive an AES Fatal Error Report as they have in the past. Only one AES Fatal Error Report will be sent to filers each month, rather than two per month as disseminated currently.

As with the current calculation, the new rate will continue to take into account the number of monthly AES Compliance Alerts per shipment. However, the rate will include the number of unresolved Fatal Errors for the specified month.

To maintain a high compliance rate, filers should:

1. Make sure your AES Compliance and AES Fatal Error Reports are sent to the appropriate person in your company
2. Minimize the total number of monthly AES Compliance Alerts
3. Monitor and resolve outstanding Fatal Errors as soon as they are received
4. Properly suppress or resubmit rejected shipments
5. Familiarize yourself with Appendix A– Commodity Filing Response Messages to correct Fatal Errors

Filers with few or no Fatal Errors will continue to see similar compliance rates under the new calculation. Filers with increasing numbers of unresolved Fatal Errors with respect to their number of shipments filed can expect significant decreases in their monthly compliance rates until these errors are addressed.

As a reminder,15 CFR Part 30 – Section 30.9 states that these errors must be corrected and EEI resubmitted prior to export for shipments filed predeparture and as soon as possible for shipments filed postdeparture but not later than ten calendar days after departure.

The new calculation will increase awareness of each filer’s overall compliance with the Foreign Trade Regulations and help filers become more proactive in “getting it right the first time.”