How to Prepare Your GSA Schedule Proposal: The Pricing Section

If you’ve made it this far into our series on preparing your GSA Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) proposal, you are now ready to finish out the proposal process. We have already discussed the first two proposal sections (the Administrative and Technical sections). In this final blog post in the series, we will be reviewing the Pricing section of your GSA Schedule proposal. If you are still exploring whether an MAS contract is worth pursuing for your company, this section will give further insight into the final and most complex section of the proposal: the Pricing Section.

The Pricing Section of Your GSA Schedule Offer

This section is where you will establish the proposed prices of your products/services, justify why your pricing is fair, and explain the process behind your pricing strategy. As the last section of the proposal, the Pricing section is unique to each offer; there are different templates and requirements depending on whether you are offering products, services, or courses.

The GSA MAS Solicitation provides the key information you need to know to compose a strong pricing section. Overall, this section will involve filling out various files with your proposed pricing, discounts, escalation rates, and pricing justification to GSA.

Offered Pricing & Pricing Terms

The bulk of the heavy lifting in the Pricing section is filling out the Price Proposal Template in the form of the Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) Catalog Platform (FCP) Services Plus File (if you’re offering services) or the FCP Product File (if you’re offering products). These templates can be found on GSA’s website page and should be completed in full according to the instructions referenced on the file.

Be sure to double-check if the Special Item Number(s) (SINs) you are pursuing requires you to use a specific FCP Services or Product file. For instance, those offering Air Charter Services or Travel Agent Services will have a unique template on GSA’s website.

In addition to this main pricing file, you will also need to fill out the Pricing Terms file. As the name suggests, this file outlines the terms and conditions of your pricing, including aspects such as your Economic Price Adjustment (EPA) method, freight terms, warranty, return/restocking policy, and quantity/volume discounts.

Proposed Economic Price Adjustment (EPA) Method

On the Pricing Terms file, you must indicate your proposed Economic Price Adjustment (EPA) Method, which is the agreed upon procedures that dictate how your price adjustment will be implemented over time. These methods are based on the new EPA clause 552.238-120. Each of the methods used to be split out into several clauses, but last year GSA consolidated them into one clause for efficiency. There are four options for EPA methods:

1. Adjustments based on fixed escalation rates (e.g., a fixed annual escalation rate)
   1. Typically used by service offerors.
2. Adjustments based on a market index or other basis (e.g., U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Cost Index)
3. Adjustments based on established pricing (e.g., your commercial price list, commercial catalog, or other standard market pricing)
   1. Typically used by product offerors.
   2. Adjustments based on unforeseeable significant changes in market conditions

You must indicate the Proposed EPA type, offered pricing subject to the proposed EPA type, and any other requirements (e.g., timing, frequency, limits on increases). The proposed EPA method should be consistent with your commercial practices to ensure that your pricing is fair and reasonable for GSA. If proposing “adjustments based on established pricing,” you must submit a copy of your current, dated commercial price list, commercial catalog, or other standard market pricing.

Transactional Data Reporting (TDR) Changes

Previously, some GSA SINs had to report under Commercial Sales Practices (CSP), disclosing information such as their Most Favored Customer (MFC) pricing. Now, with GSA’s official transition to Transactional Data Reporting (TDR), this is no longer required. Therefore, you do not have to input data regarding CSP and MFC into your pricing templates in the Pricing section. In addition to this, the transition to TDR has also impacted the role of pricing support in the Pricing section.

Pricing Support

With the transition to all SINs requiring contractors to use TDR, pricing support is no longer required for MAS contractors. While not officially required by GSA according to the MAS Solicitation, GSA Contracting Officers (COs) have the authority to ask for further pricing support to justify your proposed pricing, and, from our experience, they often do. So, it can be beneficial to be prepared with pricing support readily available in case your CO requests it.

This pricing support can be in the form of recent, redacted invoices from past clients that include your hourly rates per labor category, if you offer services. The prices that are listed on these invoices should be the same or higher than the prices you are offering to GSA. If you’re offering products, pricing support could involve submitting your published or publicly available commercial catalogs/price lists.

Perhaps you don’t have invoices or commercial catalogs readily available; if so, contractors can also utilize market research conducted on buy.gsa.gov or GSA Advantage! to see where your prices fit in with other existing products and services already sold on GSA and demonstrate this data to GSA. Or, if you are submitting a Streamlined offer, your previously awarded GSA Schedule pricelist can provide pricing support.

Overall, providing pricing support can be a key component of your pricing strategy; to learn more about pricing support on GSA MAS, read our blog posts on pricing support and invoices.

Pricing Narrative

While not required under the latest GSA MAS Solicitation, including a pricing narrative can help demonstrate the process behind your pricing strategy and your proposed EPA method. It can also demonstrate that you understand the GSA pricing compliance requirements, and that you’ve taken steps to establish a fair price for GSA.

Additional Information for the Pricing Section of Your GSA Schedule Offer

There are a few more pieces of information to include with your MAS Pricing section, based on whether you are offering products or services:

Creating Competitive GSA Schedule Pricing

While preparing the Pricing section can be tedious, it’s an opportunity to demonstrate why your offerings are competitive and where they fit in within the GSA MAS space. It’s helpful to gather documents such as a commercial price list or list of labor category offerings and rates ahead of time to speed along the process. Be sure to remain updated with the GSA MAS solicitation throughout the process of composing your proposal, as changes to the Solicitation can result in new pricing templates, edits, or adjustments.

If you want to learn more about the GSA Schedule offer process and how to prepare strong pricing, feel free to check out our blog posts and our recent webinar on Transactional Data Reporting. Should you have any questions about preparing your GSA MAS proposal, our team at Winvale available to assist you.