AES Compliance Best Practices

The AES Compliance Best Practices is available in its entirety in the following formats:

• Adobe Acrobat file (.pdf) (1,257k)
• Microsoft Word Document (.doc) (778k)
  

Overview of the AES Compliance Review Program

In October 2006, the U.S. Census Bureau (Census Bureau), Foreign Trade Division (FTD) developed the Automated Export System (AES) Compliance Review Program.  The program seeks to assist companies in correcting reporting practices that do not comply with the Foreign Trade Regulations (FTR), Title 15, Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), Part 30.  Section 30.10(b) of the FTR authorizes the Census Bureau to visit companies with the purpose of reviewing all documentation pertaining to export transactions.  The ultimate goal of the program is to educate and bring all AES filers into full compliance with the FTR.  Failure to comply with reporting requirements may result in delayed shipments, referrals to export enforcement government agencies, civil fines and/or criminal penalties.

Over the years, the AES Compliance Review Program has evolved into annual effort by the Census Bureau to assist companies in achieving and/or maintaining compliance. We continue to visit companies that are performing exceptionally as measured by their monthly compliance rates to obtain relevant information that we can include in our outreach efforts.  We also visit companies that may require assistance improving business processes and work closely with those companies to ensure that they have the resources and information needed to do so.

With the recent revision of the compliance rate calculation considering outstanding fatal errors as a weighted factor affecting compliance, we have completed another round of compliance visits in 2012 as an additional form of outreach.  It is pivotal for companies to keep in mind that outstanding fatal errors must be resolved and this influenced the revision of the compliance rate calculation.

We have compiled findings from the ongoing AES Compliance Review Program along with feedback from the exporting trade and expertise from various branches in the Foreign Trade Division of the Census Bureau to create this “Best Practices” manual to share with AES filers.  While this document is not all-inclusive, it does provide a plethora of pertinent information and examples of best practices that could assist exporting companies in meeting the FTR compliance standards.  We acknowledge that there are numerous processes and strategies that can be successfully employed to achieve and maintain compliance with the FTR reporting requirements, but we consider this manual a starting point and reference document for companies as they begin or review their current operations.