WASHINGTON — Development of new ACE Entry Summary, Accounts, and Revenue (ESAR) features is expected to continue through this summer. Upon completion and testing of the prototype, U.S. Customs is expected to begin activating the new capabilities early next year., the agency says.

In the first of three phases of delivery, the ability to use ACE will be expanded to allow for the creation of more types of “accounts” than the original importer, broker, and carrier accounts.

Some of the new ACE participants will include sureties and Foreign Trade Zone operators. Corresponding system master data will be integrated into ACE for all new account types.

The first phase of enhanced account capabilities, called A1, is expected to be active in 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. Users will also have the ability to extend new system abilities to authorized third party entities.

In addition, 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, licence, and permit processes.

Additional government agencies participating in the ACE program will have the ability to manually store license, permit, and certificate (LPC) data in accounts and will provide CBP and authorized trade users the ability to view LPC information, CBP states.

Furthermore, 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.