Scary ACE Error in AESDirect Filing

Shipping Solutions users have been filing their Electronic Export Information (EEI) with AESDirect via the ACE portal for a few months now, and every time I help someone do their first filing, I learn something new. For example, one of our Shipping Solutions users got the error message shown below.

It doesn't matter that you can't read the details. The point is, it's a scary looking error message that begins HTTP Status 500-Request processing failed. This must be a big deal!

After a little research, however, it was determined that the user had a Schedule B number entered for her line items but no Unit of Measure. This tiny oversight resulted in the scary Status 500 error.  (It actually wasn't an oversight, but more on that later.)

If you have entered a valid Schedule B number, meaning it exists, not that it is necessarily the correct one for your item, you must also have a Unit of Measure selected, or you will get the Status 500 error message when you upload your information from Shipping Solutions to AESDirect. It doesn't even have to be the correct Unit of Measure. You just have to have one selected when you upload to AESDirect. If you have provided the wrong Unit of Measure, AESDirect will give you an error message but actually fill in the correct Unit of Measure for you. All you will need to do is edit the item and click Save.

Of course you can avoid the error by providing the correct Unit of Measure. See my Unit of Measure blog post for how to determine the correct Unit of Measure for your Schedule B code.

If you have an invalid Schedule B number, meaning it doesn't exist in the Census Bureau's list of Schedule B numbers, then AESDirect will not accept the number, so it will not give the Status 500 error even if you are missing a Unit of Measure. Your item will be uploaded but the Schedule B code will be blank. If you try to submit the filing, AESDirect will give you an error message telling you the Schedule B code is missing. You can then fill it in and save it.

Regarding the oversight mentioned earlier, the Shipping Solutions user told me she intentionally left off the Unit of Measure when uploading her EEI to AESDirect. She always enters her units of measure after uploading to AESDirect because then her 32 line items are combined into two line items, and she only has to enter the unit of measure twice instead of 32 times. This is a legitimate time-saving method.  

However, because of the Status 500 error, she will now need to fill in her Unit of Measure in Shipping Solutions before uploading to AESDirect. To save time, however, she can enter the Unit of Measure on just the first item for each Schedule B number. So, if she has only two Schedule B numbers, she will need to enter the Unit of Measure on the first item in her shipment using each of the two Schedule B numbers.

To save even more time, however, she could enter the Unit of Measure on each item in the Shipping Solutions Product Database so that when she adds a product to her shipment, the Unit of Measure will pull in with the item. This will eliminate the need to ever think about the Unit of Measure again!

It is possible there are other combinations of data that will create the Status 500 error. If you have encountered it during your AESDirect filing, please let me know!

This article was first published in May 2016 and has been updated to include current information, links and formatting.