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  5. FedACH® Exception Resolution Service Quick Reference Guide (QRG)
  6. General Notes

General Notes

Please refer to the exception case types for additional information.

  • The Exception Resolution Service is offered by the Federal Reserve Banks to Participating Banks to handle ACH exception cases that arise on entries originated or received through FedACH® Services. The Requestor bank can initiate an ACH exception case and a Responder Bank can receive, read and respond to that case.
  • Federal Reserve Banks’ action is based on the depository financial institution’s (DFI) participation in the Exception Resolution Service. Refer to the FedACH Exception Resolution Service Quick Reference Guide (QRG) case types for Federal Reserve Banks’ actions.
  • Exception Resolution Service participant roles are defined as:
    • Participating Bank
      • A DFI that is enrolled in the Exception Resolution Service
      • With respect to an ACH exception case, a Participating Bank is either a requesting bank (initiated an exception) or a responding bank (responds to an exception case)
    • Full-Service Participant
      • A DFI who has elected to enroll in this service will be able to initiate, receive, read and respond to ACH exception cases, download reports of outstanding ACH exception cases and view a 13-month archive of all inbound and outbound ACH exception messages
    • Partial Service Participant
      • On the day the service is placed into operation, the Reserve Banks will automatically enroll all DFIs that are, at that time, enrolled in FedLine ACH Information Service.
      • Automatic enrollment of Partial Service is a one-time event; DFIs are unable to enroll as a Partial Service Participant
      • DFIs with this service role will be able to receive, read and respond to an ACH exception case, download reports of outstanding ACH exception cases and view a 13-month archive of all inbound and outbound ACH exception messages but cannot initiate an exception case
    • Federal Reserve Bank-Offline Service Participant
      • A DFI that has designated the Federal Reserve Bank as an authorized user to access and use the functionality of the application on behalf of the Offline Participant. The Federal Reserve Bank does not assume any rights or responsibilities of the ODFI or RDFI for the cases managed.
  • ACH exception messages are located in the FedACH Exception Resolution Service application and will remain in the DFI’s Inbox as noted below:

    As stated in the March 20, 2020, ACH Operations Bulletin #3-2020 (Off-site), Nacha is providing temporary relief from deadlines for delivery of certain records required under the Nacha Rules. For the duration of the national emergency surrounding COVID-19, Nacha will allow 20 banking days—doubling the usual 10 banking days allowed—for ODFIs to provide a proof of a Receiver’s authorization following the RDFI’s request and for RDFIs to provide a copy of a consumer Receiver’s Written Statement of Unauthorized Debit after receipt of an ODFI’s request.

    The FedACH Exception Resolution Service has been modified to accommodate the extended deadlines for as long as the temporary changes to the Nacha Rules remain in place.
    Information about ACH Exception Message Type, Status and Inbox Duration.
    Message Type Status Inbox Duration
    Acknowledgement Message (ACK) New 5 business days
    Acknowledgement Message (ACK) Reviewed 5 business days
    Acknowledgement Message (ACK) Cancelled End of the calendar day
    Cancel Message (CNCL) New 20 business days
    Cancel Message (CNCL) Reviewed End of the Calendar day
    Open Message (OPEN) New 20 business days
    Open Message (OPEN) Reviewed 20 business days
    Open Message (OPEN) Replied 20 business days
    Reply Message (RPLY) New 20 business days
    Reply Message (RPLY) Reviewed 20 business days
    Reply Message (RPLY) Replied 20 business days
    Reply Message (RPLY) Resolved End of the calendar day
    The messages will be viewable in the Archive for the FedACH Exception Resolution Service once they are removed from the Inbox or Outbox.

  • ACH Exception Case Status indicates the status of the message. Case statuses are noted below:
    • Cancelled – The message was cancelled
    • New – A new message was received
    • Rejected – A message failed during a file upload and was not sent
    • Replied – The message has been replied to
    • Resolved – The message has been resolved
    • Reviewed – The message has been reviewed
    • Sent – A message was created and sent
    • Unsent – A message has been created and saved but has not been sent
  • ACH Exception messages that are in a Sent status in the Outbox will be moved to Archive in 20 business days
  • ACH Exception messages that are in an Unsent or Rejected status in the Outbox will be deleted after five business days
  • User Case Management options:
    • ACH Exception messages can be assigned to a person or team when they are created so that when a response is received or a case is cancelled, the information can be handled by the assigned user
    • ACH Exception messages received from another institution can be assigned to a user or team so that the current and any future messages related to the case can be handled by the assigned user
    • Users can search for messages that were assigned to them or their team
    • Search criteria can be saved and used as the sign-on default for each individual user
    • Search result columns can be customized and used as the default for each individual user

    Resources on user case management features are available in FedLine Home > Training > FedACH > Exception Resolution System.

Supporting Documentation Guidelines

Depository institutions are able to attach up to nine documents of any supported file type to a single message. All attachment files must be free of malware, prior to uploading the attachment(s) to the exception case. Additionally, attachments must not include any macros, hyperlinks or embedded files or the exception case may be cancelled and resolved back to the Requestor.

The following documentation formats are supported using this service and are attached to the case by the sender of the message.
File Type File Format File Size Limit
Audio MP3 5 MB
Audio WAV 5 MB
Audio WMA 5 MB
Compressed ZIP* 10 MB
Document XLS / XLSX 3 MB
Document PDF 3 MB
Document DOC / DOCX 3 MB
Image JPEG 1 MB
Image PNG 1 MB
Image TIFF 1 MB

* ZIP files can only contain the document types listed above.