As a GSA Schedule contractor, you’ll want to keep your GSA catalog up to date throughout the life of your contract. This means that periodically, you’ll need to add, delete, or change the line items in your catalog to reflect your company’s current offerings. GSA’s newly released catalog management system, the FAS Catalog Platform (FCP), is where you’ll make all of those catalog updates and more.
In this blog, we’ll go over how to make the main types of catalog updates for products and services: additions, deletions, and changes. Knowing how to correctly make these updates in the FCP will help ensure that your public GSA pricelists on GSA eLibrary and GSA Advantage! are always up to date.
What is the FAS Catalog Platform (FCP)?
If you’ve never heard of the FAS Catalog Platform (FCP), here’s a quick recap before we dive deeper. As GSA’s new catalog management platform, the FCP is the user-friendly replacement for the legacy catalog management tool, the Schedule Input Program (SIP). GSA Schedule contractors use the FCP to manage their GSA Schedule catalog and contract data, including the catalog updates that we’ll cover today. Any catalog updates made in the FCP are automatically published to GSA Advantage! and GSA eLibrary, as the systems are integrated.
A major benefit of the FCP over SIP is its integration with eMod, GSA’s online modification submission platform, resulting in a streamlined catalog modification process for contractors. It’s worth emphasizing that FCP catalog updates aren’t made in isolation—they’re part of the larger contract modification process completed in eMod, which requires the Contracting Officer’s (CO’s) approval and often additional documentation.
Now, what does it look like to use the FCP to make updates to your catalog?
Updating Your Catalog in the FCP
Catalog updates in the FCP require you to first select the right type of modification in eMod, followed by selecting the right type of catalog action in the FCP. Generally, these selections are fairly straightforward, but for more specialized types of catalog modifications, it can be tricky to land on the right option. To guide your selections, we recommend looking at GSA’s handy guide, “Mapping Catalog Actions to eMod Types,” under the Lookup & Reference section of GSA’s FCP help page.
While there are many catalog updates you can make in the FCP, we’ll cover three of the most common types: adding products or services, deleting products or services, and changing products or services. In general, these FCP actions follow a similar pattern—you’ll initiate the contract modification in eMod, upload the updated files to FCP, and submit the final modification package in eMod.
Adding Items to Your Catalog Using the FCP
Adding products or services to your catalog requires that you’ve first opened the relevant modification type in eMod (e.g., “Add Product(s)” or “Add Labor Category and/or Service Offerings”). While the modification is open, you’ll use the “Price Proposal Template” link in the “Upload Attachments” section to go to the FCP, where you’ll select the Add action for products or services.
These FCP Add actions are used to add new line items to your contract, including adding a new SIN for line items that are new to your contract. If you’re adding a new Special Item Number (SIN) to previously awarded line items, you’ll use the FCP Change action, which we’ll cover later.
Uploading a New Product or Services Plus File
After selecting the Add action in the FCP, you’ll upload a new Product File or Services Plus File. The file should contain the details of only the products and services you are adding, rather than the full catalog. Contractors adding products would also need to upload photos as a subsequent FCP action.
The uploaded Product File will then undergo a series of data integrity checks and business rule validations. Once the data passes those checks, the FCP will deliver to the contractor a Compliance and Pricing (C&P) report that shows compliance flags, market research data for their products, and other information. Similarly, an uploaded Services Plus File will generate a Remediation Error File & Warnings, with data validation and business rule errors for the contractor to address.
When the contractor has revised their Product or Services Plus File as needed according to these reports, they’ll upload the finalized copy to the FCP, along with relevant comments to any flags that were returned in the report. Contractors should then submit the Add action, which will send the file to eMod.
At this point, there may be a system lag as eMod receives and processes the file. Once the file is visible in eMod, the contractor can proceed with reviewing and submitting the eMod modification, including uploading any remaining required documentation, such as a cover letter.
After submission, the Contracting Officer (CO) will review the FCP file and approve, reject, or return it for edits. If there are any edits needed, the CO can unlock the FCP action and mod so the contractor can make those changes. Once the catalog addition is approved, the updated pricelist will publish to GSA Advantage! (for products) or GSA eLibrary (for services) in one or two business days.
Deleting Items From Your Catalog Using the FCP
Contractors wanting to delete line items from their catalog should first open the relevant type of modification in eMod (e.g., “Delete Product(s)” or “Delete Labor Category and/or Service Offerings”). You’ll then follow the same Price Proposal Template link in eMod to go to FCP, where you’ll select the Delete action for products or services.
In the FCP, you’ll submit a Product File or Services Plus File with only the line items that you would like to delete. For a Delete action, the only fields you should enter are Manufacturer Name and Manufacturer Part Number for product offerors, or Unique Catalog ID for services offerors. Once the FCP file is uploaded and sent to eMod, you’ll go back to eMod and submit the mod.
Keep in mind that deletion modifications are approved immediately and the corresponding items are removed from GSA Advantage! and GSA eLibrary immediately. Therefore, it’s important to make sure that everything on your file is actually intended for deletion, since withdrawing the modification won’t restore the items to GSA Advantage!. Contractors who mistakenly remove items will need to work with their CO to add them back.
SIN deletions are a little more complicated, since multiple SINs can be associated with a single line item for service offerings. You’d use the FCP Delete action if the SIN you’re deleting is the only one associated with those line items. If the SIN being deleted is one of multiple SINs for those line items, you’d use the Change action. These scenarios are covered in more depth on GSA’s FCP help page.
Changing Items in Your Catalog Using the FCP
Change actions in FCP involve updating any information associated with the existing products or services in your catalog, including descriptions, photos, or prices, via Economic Price Adjustments (EPAs). Like the other FCP actions, you’ll need to first open the correct type of modification in eMod. Because the FCP Change action covers several different modification types, you may want to consult GSA’s “Mapping Catalog Actions to eMod Types” resource.
As with the other two action types, you’ll follow the Price Proposal Template link in eMod to be taken to the FCP, where you’ll select the Change action in the FCP under Products or Services. You should always start any Change action by downloading the latest copy of the Product or Services Plus File within the FCP, to ensure you’re modifying the latest version. Remove any items you’re not changing, so the file contains only the items being changed.
Updating Your Product or Services Plus File
You’ll then make the desired changes to the Product or Services Plus File. Keep in mind that you cannot change the Services Plus File’s Unique Catalog IDs or the Product File’s Manufacturer Names or Manufacturer Part Numbers through a Change action—those changes are made through a Delete action and then an Add action.
After you make the appropriate changes and re-upload the updated Product or Services Plus File, FCP will do its compliance checks. For products, the Compliance & Pricing Report generated will have a Product_Changes tab to assist the reviewing CO in seeing which products changed—make sure you don’t modify that tab. If you need to make edits based on the C&P Report, only do so to the Products tab.
From here on, the process looks similar to the Add action. As a recap, submit your FCP Change action to send the final file to eMod. Make sure you upload any additional documentation required in eMod before submitting the final modification package. After submission, the CO will review the submitted FCP file and reject it, return it for edits, or approve it for publication to GSA Advantage! or GSA eLibrary.
Other Updates to Your FCP Catalog
We’ve covered above how to update your catalog in the FCP for the main types of modifications, but you may be looking for assistance with less common FCP actions, such as photo updates, updates to the Terms and Conditions file, or updates to your seller profile.
For these and other modification types, you can consult GSA’s FCP help page containing FAQs and Vendor User Guides. The FCP baseline process for new GSA contractors is also covered in those resources and in Winvale’s blog. And if you’re looking for someone to handle these FCP catalog updates for you, our consultants are here to help.
