Aces II (A dvanced C oncepts in E lectronic S tructure Theory) is an ab initio computational chemistry package for performing high-level quantum chemical ab initio calculations. Its major strength is the accurate calculation of atomic and molecular energies as well as properties using many-body techniques such as many-body perturbation theory (MBPT) and, in particular coupled cluster techniques to treat electron correlation. The development of ACES II began in early 1990 in the group of Professor Rodney J. Bartlett at the Quantum Theory Project (QTP) of the University of Florida in Gainesville. There, the need for more efficient codes had been realized and the idea of writing an entirely new program package emerged. During 1990 and 1991 John F. Stanton, Jürgen Gauß, and John D. Watts, all of them at that time postdoctoral researchers in the Bartlett group, supported by a few students, wrote the backbone of what is now known as the ACES II program package. The only parts which were not new coding efforts were the integral packages (the MOLECULE package of J. Almlöf, the VPROP package of P.R. Taylor, and the integral derivative package ABACUS of T. Helgaker, P. Jorgensen J. Olsen, and H.J. Aa. Jensen). The latter was modified extensively for adaptation with Aces II, while the others remained very much in their original forms.