TradePost Archives > October 15, 2008 > this article

Shipment reference numbers in AES

October 6, 2008
World Trade\Interactive

The Census Bureau issued Sept. 26 a memorandum (Foreign Trade Regulations Letter No. 2) stating that the reuse of shipment reference numbers in the Automated Export System is now prohibited. Once an SRN has been assigned by the filer it cannot be assigned to future shipments.

Census previously required SRNs to be unique for five years. When AES filers recently attempted to reuse SRNs following the five-year period, however, an analysis of AES revealed that the system is not configured to allow such reuse. Considering that a complete redesign of AES would be required to add this capability, Census is instead opting to prohibit the reuse of SRNs.