No, we both got half answers until Butter forced their hands. Personally I don’t think they wanted to give that information out.
TODAY they mean the same thing, because offices in outer islands can send the documents a WHOLE lot faster, perhaps generate them on that island because the system is all digitally linked. Back in 61, the documents had to be physically transported to Honolulu before being Accepted by the state. That could take days, granted, Hawaii is tiny, but if you have only one mail plane every couple days... yea it could take some time. So they made allowances, and created a system by which they could TRACK the documents. A deputy registrar dates the form, sends it to Honolulu and the Reg. General (Or on mine “Accepted By State”) then gives it a file number.
The system change has been in place ling enough that all the current employees have been using them more or less interchangeably, they think they are all the same, and today they are. Information moves a LOT faster now.
However in 1961, the day a registrar outside Honolulu accepted a form and dated it, and it got TO Honolulu to be given a file number could easily have been different days. The BC’s given to members of the military are a good example. They were dated on one day by a registrar at the base, then sent on to Honolulu and dated again when Filed and given a number. The two dates were NOT necessarily the same in the 1960’s.