Government Contracting Blog

Maintaining your GSA Schedule is not only a key to success as a contractor, but it’s essential to keeping your contract for up to 20 years. One fear our clients come to us with is losing their GSA Schedule—while this doesn’t happen with minor infractions, a series of missteps can add up. Losing your GSA Schedule can of course significantly impact your business, but understanding the reasons behind cancellations can help you avoid this pitfall.

Exploring the world of government contracting vehicles may feel like a deep dive into an ocean of acronyms and abbreviations that you have never come across before. Don’t worry—it takes time to make sense of it all. If you are looking to sell your solutions to government customers or you are a new contractor, you should know the types of contract vehicles available to you. With this knowledge, you can take advantage of the opportunities out there and have a better understanding of how government contracts are organized.

If your company has been a part of the Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) program for a remarkable 15 years, you've already demonstrated your ability to navigate the Schedule acquisition process and secure three contract extensions, bringing your contract to the full 20-year life cycle. However, as your successful contract approaches its end, you may wonder how to continue benefiting from this multi-billion dollar contracting vehicle. That's where the streamlined acquisition process comes into play. In this blog, we will discuss the streamlined acquisition process within the GSA MAS program and how you can prepare.

Like shopping and ordering items online in just a few clicks on Amazon, GSA Advantage! is an online shopping and ordering system operated by the General Services Administration (GSA). The system provides government agencies access to a wide range of products and services available on GSA Schedule contracts, which are pre-negotiated agreements between GSA and commercial companies.

GSA Schedules offer the opportunity for contractors to provide their products and services to federal agencies at pre-negotiated rates, making it easier for the government to acquire what it needs and for commercial companies to secure reliable contracts. However, securing a GSA Schedule is not simply a matter of filling out paperwork and submitting it to GSA. Rather, vendors must ensure they are offering fair and reasonable pricing to the government. Once this pricing is determined in the award process, contractors must maintain their established rates and report their GSA sales quarterly or monthly.

As a prospective or current GSA contractor, you might have seen the term COTS. What does it mean and why is it an important piece of government contracting? If a government agency wants to buy Commercially available Off the Shelf (COTS) items quickly, efficiently, and at the best value, they often turn to the GSA Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) program. In this article, we will define COTS, cover how they fit into the MAS program, and discuss regulations on COTS from the Buy America Act (BAA).