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(Last review or update: February 1, 2006) A. Equipment and Software. Revenue departments can use the same asynchronous modems and software that they use to communicate with IRS computers. All
of the information in Section 3, paragraph A, applies to revenue
departments. B. Two Problems That You Could Encounter. During
your first call to an AKSYS computer, you could experience one or both of
the following problems. A
computer technician from your department should confer with an AKSYS
technician to solve any problems that you might encounter. 1.
If AKSYS disconnects almost immediately (1 to 10 seconds) after you
have connected with it, the probable cause is that the access code that
AKSYS received was not recognizable. This problem usually can be corrected
by entering a correct access code or changing parity. 2.
If AKSYS disconnects, without sending a file to you or without
receiving a file from you, approximately 30 seconds after your computer
has made a connection, the most likely cause is that AKSYS did not receive
an access code. Your
computer technician can make changes to the batch files that initiate a
session with AKSYS. C. Communicating with AKSYS. Interacting
with AKSYS best can be explained by examples.
In the following examples, the revenue department's two-character
postal designator is ZZ, and its access code is LMNOPQ. 1.
Using the toll-free number provided to you by AKSYS, call and
connect with an AKSYS online computer. 2. Between five and
fifteen seconds following connection, your computer
must send your access code in one of the following case combinations.
AKSYS will not prompt. a. LMNOPQ if
you are going to send a file of acknowledgements to AKSYS.
b. LMnopq if you
are going to send a reconciliation file. 3.
Once it has verified that the access code is valid AKSYS will send
THIS IS AKSYS. AKSYS
will prepare to receive a file (or files) from the revenue department. After
it has received a file (or files), or there has been no activity on the
circuit for more than fifteen seconds, AKSYS will disconnect. Every
week of the
filing season, from January 1 to October 31, AKSYS will email to each revenue
department a Weekly Operations Report that includes the results of the
last Weekly
Reconciliation Cycle, a list of the files that AKSYS received from the
department during the preceding week, and information of general interest
to revenue departments. The list of files will include the name of
each file received, the number of acknowledgements that AKSYS counted in
each file, and the time and Julian date each file was processed and its
acknowledgements posted. For example, if a revenue department sends file AC980403.TXT
containing 7,341 acknowledgements to AKSYS, the TRANSAK list that AKSYS
e-mails to the department the following Monday will include
AC980403.TXT, 7341, 0731032 A department’s TRANSAK list could look like this
AC980403.TXT, 7341, 0731032 AC980403.TXT, AD980403.TXT, AE980403.TXT, AF980403.TXT, and
AG980403.TXT are the names of the files the revenue department sent to
AKSYS during the previous week, 7341, 896, 2154, 4156, and 6128 are the
number of acknowledgements that AKSYS counted in each file, and 0731,
0830, 0800, and 1415 are the times, and 032, 033, 034, and 035 are the
Julian dates, that AKSYS processed and posted each file it received. If the number of acknowledgements that AKSYS reports
having received in a file is less than your count, retransmit the file as
a reconciliation file. AKSYS
will pull out the acknowledgements that it did not receive in the original
file and it will post them. If the file you sent is not included in a
TRANSAK file, AKSYS did not get the file and you should transmit the file
as an original acknowledgement file. AKSYS no longer receives files of acknowledgements for personal income tax returns from revenue departments. Instead, the files sent by the departments contain records with fields that instruct AKSYS on how to construct the acknowledgement file. AKSYS reads the information sent in a revenue department's instruction file, creates a file of acknowledgements based on the information, processes the file it created, and posts the acknowledgements to transmitters' current files. D.
Reconciliation Files.
A very valuable option offered by AKSYS is that of reconciliation.
Reconciliation works! By
sending the first two characters of its access code in upper case and the
rest of the access code in lower case, a revenue department can transmit
to AKSYS one or more acknowledgement instruction files that it generated during the
previous week (or days or months) so that AKSYS can make sure that it
received and posted all of the acknowledgements generated by the
department. The department can send a file (or files) containing
instructions for all
of the acknowledgements that it generated and believes that it sent to
AKSYS during all of the previous days of a filing season. AKSYS
will run a reconciliation cycle on each weekend for which it has received
reconciliation files that Friday from revenue departments.
Usually, a reconciliation cycle will begin at about 7:00 pm on Friday
and continue until all of the acknowledgements in the instruction files received from revenue
departments have been checked against the AKSYS Master Data System (MDS).
Revenue departments also can transmit their reconciliation files at any
time during the weekend. AKSYS will post, immediately, all of
the acknowledgements it identified as not having been received or posted.
AKSYS will send to each revenue department that submitted
reconciliation files for a cycle an e-mail report of the results of the
cycle. Revenue
departments also can request a special reconciliation at any time
during the week by transmitting one or more reconciliation files to
AKSYS. AKSYS will run a special cycle that evening and provide the
department with an e-mail report once the special reconciliation cycle is
completed. We recommend that revenue departments avail themselves of the reconciliation options. Reconciliation works! Reconciliation can reduce the number of calls that a department gets from transmitters who are looking for acknowledgements, and it can decrease significantly the length of time that a transmitter might have to wait for a missing acknowledgement. E. Uploading Files to an AKSYS Internet Server. AKSYS can now receive your files through an Internet server. To activate this option for your department, contact AKSYS at 1 800 231-6137 or operations@gee-ay-cee.com. |