Most of you have probably read the CSMS 15-000644. CBP has actually listened to the trade and their own technical staff and have come up with a reasonable and effective revision to the Ace rollout.
To sum up:
- Live deadline is now Feb 29th 2016 instead of Nov 1st 2015
- Mandatory PGA’s at that time are only FDA, NHTSA and Lacey
- By July 16th 2016 all of the other “new” pga’s will become live. We expect to be running pilots for all of these over the next 8 months.
- ACS still dies on November 30th 2016
What does that change for Xtheta (apart from giving us some breathing room)
- Complete our PGA Pilots for FDA, NHTSA and Lacey. We are still interested in any clients bring in FDA regulated Cosmetics, Tobacco, Biologics, Radiation emitting devices and animal drugs and devices. We need to run pilots for these products.
- Circle back and clean up some of the less than optimal code that we have created. We have designed a much improved PSC model and will be implementing that soon. There are a number of other efficiency recommendation we have received from our clients and these will now be implemented sooner rather than later.
- Update our EDI specs (Mainx and AII) to accommodate the new PGA feeds. This will hopefully give your clients time to react and modify their programming.
- Redesign the product database to handle all the PGA’s
What does this mean for you brokers out there?
- Get your customers on board. This means talking to them to identify where they will be getting the new PGA data fields. You can run a spreadsheet from our system showing exactly what agencies they need to work with.
- Make sure your staff are trained. Key people need to read the appropriate ACE documentation and be prepared to understand the new PGA messaging.
- If you have any custom EDI programs work with us to see what changes your customers will need to make
How about our importers?
- Check to see what PGA’s you need to worry about
- If you have any EDI work with Xtheta to change as needed
- Stay in touch with us on a regular basis
You are now in an excellent position to move into ACE completely. In order to make this transition process smoother we will be moving to a weekly update. We understand that this will cause some discomfort for larger users with strict update controls however with the ongoing pace of change we can see no alternative. If you are not comfortable with this please discuss it with us and we can try and come up with alternative solutions.
And may the Force be with you!
