ACA Update: Getting Software IDs

This will be a short post because I'm going curtail blogging until I get the ACA How-To pages updated for tax year 2016/processing year 2017 done. BUT, this post will be about the travails of getting your software id. Well, maybe not travails but it took a while to get it.

If you developed the healthcare software last year and got your software accepted after testing, then this year you do not have to go through testing. BUT, you do have to get another software id. What's not mentioned is that in going through the application for your software, your responsible officer will have to go through the rigmarole of supplying personal information and PIN id. At least two responsible officers will have to do this, so be sure to include enough time for them to do this.

Our first problem started with trying to update the ACA application, in the software section, when we were trying to add a new software. The site would not let us update very easily. My HR VP had to get on the phone with the help desk to resolve this issue. So be aware of this possible issue. Both our responsible officers signed up their lives on Wednesday.

Next, you will have to wait at least 48 hours before you receive a software id, but your software will still be in test mode. Last Friday, I finally saw the software id, maybe in the afternoon, so I went ahead and started to do some testing because I needed to a) refresh my memory on the relevant steps necessary and b) test the new programming logic. Here's where I encountered the second problem: during testing, the IRS's AATS site did not recognize our TCC code. It's the same code as last year so the IRS air system should have recognized the TCC code.

I left Friday afternoon, hoping that it was going to take another 48 hours to get the TCC recognized by the air system. But I was concerned.

On Monday morning, I tried testing again and our TCC code finally went through. Whew! But the software id was still in testing mode.

So I waited another 24 hours in the hopes that the software would go into production. On Tuesday afternoon, one of the two statuses for the software id turned into production.

So I thought, maybe in another 24 hours, the other one would turn into production. But this morning, the status was still showing T for test, so we put in a call to the help desk. The help desk folks said that we are ready to submit in production. The key section that needed to show production was the Software IDs. Below is a picture of what our statuses look like in e-Services/ACA application:

So, we'll see later when I try to submit our final load. Right now, I'm waiting for all corrections to come in. There is a stack of returned envelopes due to incorrect addresses. I want to get in as many corrections as possible before submitting. I'd rather reduce the amount of corrections because I am a little weak on the corrections process.

Finally, I'm going to hold off on blogging for a while because I want to update the ACA pages with the latest information to take into account the changes I made in order to create an xml without empty tags. So it may be a week or two before I post another blog.