WASHINGTON — The ability to use ACE will be expanded to allow for the creation of more types of “accounts” than the current importer, broker, and carrier accounts, U.S. Customs and Border Protection recently announced.

As CBP extends the definition of an account to include “any entity” doing business with CBP, some of the new ACE participants will include sureties and Foreign Trade Zone operators.

Truck drivers will soon be able to create
and maintain their own ACE account

The first phase of enhanced accounts and master data capabilities, called A1, is expected to be active in early 2007. Entry summary and revenue processing capabilities will be introduced over the next several years in the A2 and A3 phases.

The first enhanced account management features will include cross account access, which will be a convenient tool for users to gain access to data from more than one user-ID and password, CBP says.

Truck drivers will gain the ability to create and maintain their own account, or be able to designate another entity to create or maintain their account.

Users will also have the ability to extend new system abilities to authorized third party entities. Also, the process for merging accounts within the ACE Secure Data Portal will be streamlined, and enhanced validation and duplicate checks will be performed on master data.

Broker management capabilities will become available at a national level for the exam, license, and permit processes. Participating Government Agencies (PGAs) will have the ability to manually store licence, permit, and certificate (LPC) data at an account level and will provide CBP and trade users the ability to view LPC information, CBP states.