Government Contracting Blog

It seems like the price of everything has gone up over the past few years. At the gas pump, in grocery stores, and even in business expenditures, Americans have felt the squeeze. For GSA Schedule holders, these increases in costs can put a damper on your GSA Schedule pricing. Since products and services offered through the GSA Schedule have fixed ceiling prices, you may wonder what can be done to increase your GSA Schedule pricing commensurate with changes to your commercial pricing.

A government contractor always needs to plan ahead for future opportunities, arguably more so than in the commercial marketplace due to the bureaucracy involved. Given the fact that agencies often start planning future opportunities well in advance of the anticipated award date, you may feel you are keeping well informed of relevant contracting opportunities.

We live in an increasingly digitally connected age, and the federal government is no exception. If your business is in the Information Technology (IT) field, you may be leaving money on the table if you are not actively marketing your products and services to the federal government. While often thought of as out of date in terms of its technology, it’s worth noting that the federal government spends billions on new IT hardware, software, solutions, and services every year. Not only that, but it is also increasing its expenditures in an attempt to create a more connected and secure federal cyber infrastructure.

As a government contractor, you have likely become familiar with SAM.gov. There are a number of features in SAM, but arguably the most important is the entity registration feature. Since registering your entity in SAM.gov is required in order to do things like apply for contracts or receive grants from the federal government, this creates a database of thousands of companies. Not only that, but these registrations require resubmission every year in order to remain active.

In 2016, the General Services Administration (GSA) rolled out a program that allows Transactional Data Reporting (TDR) on GSA Schedule orders for contractors who opt in (and are eligible). GSA Schedule holders who opt into TDR exchange additional data when reporting on sales through GSA contracts for less burdensome regulatory compliance. This is seen as a win-win by GSA since it provides them with more data on government purchasing decisions in exchange for allowing greater discounting flexibility on GSA contracts.

As a federal contractor, you may think you are well acquainted with the System for Award Management (SAM) platform. After all, contractors must keep an active registration in SAM.gov to be eligible for contracting opportunities from federal customers. To keep an active registration, you need to regularly, at least annually, update and renew your company’s SAM registration. However, since many contractors only login to SAM.gov once a year to complete this, you may be shocked by the number of changes to SAM.gov over the past year. As such, I will be going over some of these changes so that you are prepared the next time you log in to SAM.gov.