The changes keep on coming—GSA has announced advanced notice of Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) Solicitation Refresh #13. On June 30, 2022, GSA will release Refresh #13, which includes a number of significant changes to the MAS Solicitation. As we saw in MAS Refresh #12, GSA gave notice of retiring certain Special Item Numbers (SINs), and in Refresh #13, they plan to officially eliminate these SINs. Unlike Refresh #12, Refresh #13 will be accompanied by a Mass Modification. This means once the Refresh is released, contractors will have 90 days to review and accept the modification.

Subcontracting with companies that have a GSA Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) is a great way to benefit from GSA Schedule spending without having your own prime contract. GSA Multiple Award Schedules (MAS) are long-term governmentwide, indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contracts that provide federal, state, and local government buyers commercial products and services at volume discount pricing.

GSA Schedule deliveries are an essential part of maintaining not only a good relationship with buyers but also maintaining contract compliance. When creating an offer, you establish shipping/delivery terms and abiding by these terms is an essential part of compliance. In an effort to help buyers and sellers, GSA Advantage! has been sending out an order status for contract holders. This status takes shipping/delivery statuses and times and assigns a score (in percentage). GSA has recently cracked down on GSA Advantage! order status, and if this score gets below 50%, your business could be in jeopardy of being suspended by GSA Advantage!. This is just one of the many reasons it’s essential that you know your company’s delivery terms and best practices associated with them.

If you are interested in selling to the government, but don’t want to deal with the potential headache of managing your own General Services Administration (GSA) Multiple Award (MAS) Schedule, an authorized GSA reseller could be the right choice for your company. While having your own prime GSA Schedule has its own benefits, sometimes it’s not the right fit for an organization. Managing your own GSA Schedule requires the right internal resources, personnel, and funding, and often comes with many upfront challenges including the cost and time to obtain a prime GSA Schedule. Partnering with a reseller can reduce the overall compliance risks in selling to the government, while also increasing overall speed to market in the public sector marketplace.

Requests for Proposals (RFPs) are a crucial part of government contracting, but they are not an easy task. There’s a lot that goes into an RFP response, from the early market research stages, to reading over the sections, and leading an in-depth review so your team can submit a successful RFP document. Something that’s rarely brought up though is navigating all the RFP terms. Not only do you have to read, draft, and submit an RFP response, but learn all the terminology that goes along with it.

Conducting research can be overwhelming if you’re unaware of the tools available to you in the federal market. Luckily for contractors, GSA has several procurement tools available to help you research your competitors, your industry, and find contracting opportunities. However, it’s one thing to know there are tools that exist, and another to know what each tool is and how to use it. These are free resources and are very integral to a contractor’s success, so we suggest you use them to your advantage. Here’s what you need to know.