Exactness and Fell bundles with the approximation property over inverse semigroups

Abstract We prove that the reduced cross-sectional algebra of a Fell bundle with the approximation property over an inverse semigroup is exact if and only if the unit fiber of the Fell bundle is exact. This generalizes a recent result of the first-named author for actions of second countable locally compact Hausdorff groupoids on separable $$C^*$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msup> <mml:mi>C</mml:mi> <mml:mo>∗</mml:mo> </mml:msup> </mml:math> -algebras. Along the way, we reprove some results of Kwaśniewski–Meyer on Fell bundle ideals.