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  5. 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 financial institutions to handle exception cases.
  • The Exception Resolution Service may be used for all of a participant's ACH exceptions (i.e., a full network service regardless of operator). This includes ACH entries that have cleared and settled through FedACH, ACH entries that have been cleared through another operator, and on-us entries that were cleared directly by the participant.
  • The Exception Resolution Service may be used by FedNow® participants (both sending and receiving financial institutions) to communicate in relation to an exception that arises with respect to a message sent through the FedNow Service.
  • The Requesting Exception Resolution Service Participant (Requestor) can initiate an exception case and a Responding Exception Resolution Service Participant (Responder) can receive, read and respond to that case.
  • Federal Reserve Banks’ action is based on the financial institution's participation role in the Exception Resolution Service. Refer to the Exception Resolution Service Quick Reference Guide (QRG) case types for Federal Reserve Banks’ actions.
  • Exception Resolution Service participant roles are defined as:
    • Full Service Participant
      • A financial institution that is enrolled in the Exception Resolution Service as a full service participant can initiate, receive, read and respond to, and close exception cases, download reports of outstanding exception cases and view a 13-month archive of all inbound and outbound exception messages
    • Partial Service Participant
      • A financial institution that is enrolled in the Exception Resolution Service as a partial service participant can receive, read and respond to an exception case, download reports of outstanding exception cases and view a 13-month archive of all inbound and outbound exception messages; they cannot initiate an exception case
    • Offline Service Participant
      • For ACH exceptions only, a financial institution that is enrolled in FedACH Origination and Receipt may designate the Federal Reserve Banks as an authorized user to access and use the functionality of the Exception Resolution Service application on behalf of the offline service participant
  • A full service or partial service participant may elect to designate an agent to access and use the service on its behalf.
Exception messages are located in the Exception Resolution Service application and will remain in the financial institution's inbox as noted below:
 
Information about 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 10 business days
Cancel Message (CNCL) Reviewed End of the Calendar day
Open Message (OPEN) New 10 business days
Open Message (OPEN) Reviewed 10 business days
Open Message (OPEN) Replied 10 business days
Reply Message (RPLY) New 10 business days
Reply Message (RPLY) Reviewed 10 business days
Reply Message (RPLY) Replied 10 business days
Reply Message (RPLY) Resolved End of the calendar day
  • The messages will be viewable in the archive for the Exception Resolution Service once they are removed from the financial institution's inbox or outbox.
  • 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
  • Exception messages that are in a Sent status in the outbox will be moved to the archive in 10 business days
  • Exception messages that are in an Unsent or Rejected status in the outbox will be deleted after five business days
  • User Case Management options:

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

    • 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
    • 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

Supporting Documentation Guidelines

The following document 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.