Recently awarded contractors know that one of the first steps to take after contract award is to upload your product catalog to GSA Advantage!, GSA’s online shopping platform for products. But now you may be wondering what actually happens when governments customers place orders through GSA Advantage? Orders placed on GSA Advantage! are sent to contractors through the Purchase Order (PO) Portal. The PO Portal is a critical part success for GSA Schedule contractors, so in this blog we’ll go over navigating and using the PO Portal.
What is the PO Portal?
The PO Portal is a contractor’s hub for all orders placed on GSA Advantage!. When a government customer places an order on GSA Advantage!, a purchase order is created and sent to the PO Portal. The designated Order POC for the contract will be notified via email every time a new order appears in the PO Portal.
All active purchase orders are displayed in the PO Portal for contractors to view and respond to. To view a specific purchase order, contractors can select the PO number from the list of active purchase orders. This will generate a PDF with all the information relevant to the order such as the name and address of the purchaser. Importantly, this PDF also contains the delivery date for the order. These delivery dates are generated based on the terms and conditions established at the time of contract award. Paying attention to these delivery dates is key, as contractors are required to abide by their stated shipping terms.
What are the PO Portal Order Statuses?
One of the primary uses of the PO Portal is to provide status updates for orders. There are three status options: “Shipped”, “Backordered”, or “Cancelled”.
Contractors should update the status to “Shipped” once the order has been shipped. The “Backordered” status is used when the order cannot be fulfilled immediately for any reason, and the “Cancelled” status is used to cancel an order. If the customer requests cancellation of an order, you must manually change the status in the PO Portal to cancelled to finalize the cancellation.
If individual items in one order are shipped separately, you can update the order status for each item instead of the entire order. Providing timely updates on the status of each order is important, as this is a component of the GSA Advantage! scorecard you will receive.
What is a GSA Advantage! Scorecard?
All contractors who sell products through GSA Schedules will receive a monthly scorecard which contains a summary of their performance for the previous month. The scorecard has three categories: shipment status, cancellation score, and on-time score. Each category has a score that must be met or your contract will potentially be subject to cancellation. The shipment status score measures whether contractors are providing timely status updates on the shipping status of orders. The minimum score for this category is 95%, meaning you need to provide timely shipping status updates on at least 95% of orders.
The cancellation score measures the number of orders cancelled, and must be 15% or less. In other words, you cannot cancel more than 15% of your orders in a given month. The on-time score rates how well you abide by your stated shipping terms. The minimum score for this category is 75%, meaning you must ship 75% of orders according to your shipping terms. Putting items on backorder affects this score as well, as backordered items are shipped outside of standard shipping terms.
What Happens if I Don’t Meet the GSA Advantage! Metrics?
If you don’t meet the required scores for one category of the scorecard, your contract will be subject to potential suspension. Your contract won’t be suspended immediately—the first time you fail to meet a metric, you’ll be asked to submit a corrective action plan. GSA will send you a template that asks you to explain why you didn’t meet the metric, and what steps you plan to take to ensure you do meet the metric next time.
For example, if you had a low on-time score because you had an unusually high volume of sales, you might describe how you plan to make investments such as a larger warehouse or bigger staff to meet increased demand. If you fail to submit a corrective action plan, or if you submit a corrective action plan but continue to fail to meet metrics, your contract may be suspended.
How Do I Maintain a Positive GSA Advantage! Scorecard?
The number one way to meet the required metrics on the GSA Advantage! Scorecard is simply to be proactive. Process orders as soon as you receive notice that they have arrived in the PO Portal, so you know what you need to ship and when. It’s a good idea to have multiple points of contact listed in the PO Portal, so that you never miss an order. Update order statuses as soon as possible—this has the twofold benefit of letting the customer know their order status, and making sure your shipping status score meets the required metric.
In addition to taking actions within the PO Portal, it’s also important to keep your overall contract up-to-date. You can submit Deletion modifications to remove obsolete or discontinued items, and Terms and Conditions modifications to change your contractual shipping times. You can also submit Pricing modifications in keeping with the terms of your contract to keep your prices current. Keeping all of these items up-to-date will help avoid unnecessary cancellations or backorders and help you meet your scoring metrics.
Want to Know More About the PO Portal?
The PO Portal is a crucial tool for contractors selling products through GSA Advantage!, but it can be confusing to navigate at first. If you still have questions, check out our webinar on the topic for a deeper dive into the PO Portal, or reach out to us—one of our consultants would be happy to help.
