About the Award

This award category is intended to recognize excellent source data and proper use of the ACES^® and PIES^® data standards. Each submission will be one ACES xml file (and its matching PIES xml file). The ACES xml file can ONLY contain Year, Make, Model (BaseVehicleID) applications. This award judges ACES and PIES files on a variety of areas that ACPN deems as essential when creating best in class ACES and PIES data. Please see the judging guidelines for this award for more details.

This award is separate from the “Receiver’s Choice Award.”

Eligibility 

Submissions must meet these requirements 100% to be considered for judging:

• Company Type: Manufacturer/Remanufacturer
• Company Membership: Auto Care Association member in good standing.
• Subscription Status: Must have active VCdb and PAdb subscriptions.
  • To check your subscription status, please contact membership@autocare.org. To purchase a subscription, please visit our subscriptions page.
• Conference Attendance: Must have at least one representative from your company present at the upcoming Annual Auto Care Connect conference to receive the award.
• Each submission must be one ACES XML file that must ONLY contain Year, Make, Model (BaseVehicleID) applications, and its matching PIES XML file.
• Both ACES and PIES XML files must be a file produced for a trading partner.
• Both ACES and PIES XML files must pass XSD validations.
• The ACES XML file must be versions 4.2 or 5.0.
• The PIES XML file must be versions 7.2 or 8.0.
• Both ACES and PIES XML files must utilize October 2026 or newer published database versions (VCdb, Qdb, PCdb, PAdb), and must be cited in the headers of each file.
• The ACES XML file must use Qdb qualifiers partially or fully (If the ACES file does not use both Qdb qualifier or notes (<note> tag) for any application, the file passes).
• The PIES XML file must use PAdb attributes partially or fully.
• No Labels for reference database ID's present in ACES and/or PIES XML (Seen as XML comments or element values).
  

Award Format

Judging

Judging of this award is done in-house by the Auto Care Association, utilizing the AutoCareVIP.com catalog assessment tool to process the ACES and PIES XML files. All files will be assessed within a week of the submission. All ACES files will be validated against the most recent release of VCdb, Qdb and PCdb at the time of file submission. All PIES files will be validated against the live Autocarevip.com database at the time of file submission. The ACPN Leadership Council then takes the raw scoring information provided by the catalog assessment tool and applies weighted percentages to the general area scores to determine the winners of the award. The submission with the highest score is considered the winner. (In the case of a tie, the contenders will be re-examined to arrive at a subjective assessment of appropriate levels of over-mapping, effective use of the Qdb, appropriate use of the Note and MfrLabel tags, use of most recent versions of ACES and PIES, effective use of the PAdb, and more.)

Submission Requirements

1. Each parent company may submit one entry per ACES application-count bracket.
2. At least one representative from the submitting company must be present during the ACPN conference program at the Auto Care Connect Conference to accept the award in the event that the company is selected as an award recipient. If there is no representative present, the company will be restricted from submitting for any awards the following year.
3. Entries must be received in full by the deadline (Entry Form, Participant Release Form, ACES and PIES Files)