How do I update FBAR software? Nothing seems to work and I continue to have A2 Error rejection.

[itonewbie · Accepted solution]

Could you explain what this A2 Error is?

Special character error (A23) is what many users encounter because characters such as hyphen, period, and space are not acceptable for FBAR filing.  You may refer to this article for more information:

https://accountants-community.intuit.com/articles/1733215-2017-form-114-fbar-conditional-acceptance-...

[Taxes-by-Rocky]

Appears to be a "batch" error......one can only guess at what that means.....

https://accountants-community.intuit.com/questions/1719425-some-helpful-fincen-fbar-links

I've been told Intuit is working on....

[Taxes-by-Rocky]

@garythompsoncpa

Gary, did you have any luck with the A2 error.  I am waiting on Intuit for a reply with the same issue.  Thanks.

[garythompsoncpa]

I attempted to remove all special (illegal?) characters and have resubmitted the Form 114.  I am waiting to see if it will be accepted.  I submitted 4 of these forms, two were accepted, 1 was conditionally accepted and the one that has been rejected twice I am waiting for an answer.  All four of these Forms originally had the "illegal characters" in the original filings.  Very frustrating to put it mildly.

[itonewbie]

That's a quirk with FBAR, unfortunately.  If FinCEN could validate the form real time before submission, it is not clear why Intuit cannot do the same though.  We file all of ours directly with FinCEN and never had a problem with acceptance once submission is done (although it still takes up to 2 business days for FinCEN to process the form and confirm the acceptance).

[Taxes-by-Rocky]

We're going for round three.....failed to dot an I and cross a T.  Godspeed!

[Taxes-by-Rocky]

Absolutely the worst FBAR filing season.  Nothing in the ProSeries formatting matches the requirements of the FinCEN system....whose tolerances are near zero.  Not even the firm name is accepted since it has a comma in it, seriously?  Ironically, you can't even override the formatting of certain fields in ProSeries.  Anyone know if this will be fixed before 10/15?  Even the phone number and EIN/SSNs are in the wrong format.  Someone at ProSeries please read the FBAR Line Item Instructions on pages 8 through 10.  Thanks.

[AshleyatIntuit]

Third Party Preparer Information on Part II: Line 47- 51  (verify entries do not contain illegal characters) that's been a good chunk of the ones i've seen but if the rejection persists, to be honest, i would just file thru FINCEN.  (my opinion)

[Taxes-by-Rocky]

That means you guys need to modify my firm name in your system which I can't do.  [Phone number and EIN formats as well.]

I just sent your tech support people to pages 8 - 10 (or maybe 12) of the FBAR Line Item Instructions:

https://www.fincen.gov/sites/default/files/shared/FBAR%20Line%20Item%20Filing%20Instructions.pdf

It would appear that FinCEN has increased their tolerances and you guys need to catch up on the programing side (I'm guessing).

Thanks for the help and follow up Ashley.....

[AshleyatIntuit]

We just pushed an in-product alert too... "We are currently in the process of manually receiving delayed acknowledgments from FINCEN but have seen an increase in Error A2: The element is recorded for an inappropriate party type. For  steps to resolve..." that calls out the article and steps above for just checking those lines.  it's kind of a two fold issue... First there are significant delays in acks and then secondly the reject error.  I will try to keep you guys in the loop with any new information as we have it. :+1:

[AshleyatIntuit]

Here is some information around that error https://accountants-community.intuit.com/articles/1755337-2017-form-114-fbar-error-code-a2 . 

[itonewbie]

Filing direct with BSA will eliminate this problem.  All forms are validated for illegal characters before they could be submitted.  The downside, however, is that only discreet filing is allowed.