Over the past 18 months we have all been working to reduce rejections. Great news, in November rejections reduced to 14.49% knocking just over 1% off the previous record low. As such we would like to congratulate all of you for all the hard work you have all put in.

Following this huge success we would like to reward you for your hard work and have introduced a competition. In order to win the competition all you need to do is reduce your organisations rejections. The winner of November’s competition is City of Liverpool College who between two of them reduced their rejections by 21% from October to November. Congratulations to Suzanne and Karen who have both won a voucher for the store of their choice.

This competition is going to be running monthly for the next 4 months so it could be your turn to win next time.

If you have any questions, please contact the ACE Support Team.

Dealing with rejected ACE claims, for the last 6 months of this year is estimated to have cost £118,000. So, remember – every rejected ACE claim is costing YOU money! The total cost of dealing with ACE rejections in 2015 was £250,000. Surely this money could be put to better use!

As part of our continuous efforts to provide all of our ACE users with high quality customer service and support, we have just launched a series of 7 short videos. These are aimed at Centre users who use ACE to submit Apprenticeship Certification claims, although all ACE users will benefit from viewing them.

The overall aim of the videos is to ensure that, in the majority of cases, all ACE claims made are successful on their first submission. As a complete set, the 7 videos demonstrate the key stages of creating, updating and submitting an ACE claim and how to avoid the most common mistakes that result in a claim being rejected. They also show you where you can access additional guidance and support resources and how to create your own ACE reports. You can easily produce reports to help you manage and monitor your Apprentice records and rejections.

The 7 videos can be accessed through a link at the top of the ACE Knowledge Base Tab. Please take time to view these – their average length is under 3 minutes.

Our ultimate objective is to reduce the overall monthly average rejection rate to 10% or less and our current milestone target is 15%. The YTD average is currently fluctuation around 17 – 18%.

If you are struggling to reduce your ACE rejections then please contact the relevant Certification Body for help and support. The Federation’s Support Team are also available to guide and support you.

Let’s all try and make August the month where we hit our 15% milestone!

If you have any feedback on these videos, and if they have helped you to understand more about how to make a successful ACE claim, then please let us know by e–mailing us at ace.helpdesk@fisss.org