Working with the General Services Administration (GSA) can be difficult. Many times, the information contractors need is already out there in the universe, released by GSA, but the trick is knowing where to find it. One of our specialties as GSA Schedule consultants is pinpointing the right resources for our clients and helping them learn how to use those tools. One of the most underutilized GSA tools is the Contract-Awarded Labor Category, or CALC, tool. The CALC tool is valuable to contractors by helping with market research, particularly for labor categories offered to GSA. Let’s dive in to understand more about the GSA CALC tool.

When you receive your GSA Schedule contract award, you are not entering into a binding document, but rather a contract that will live and breathe with your company. As we know, a lot can happen in 20 years, from technological advancements to changes in company personnel and updates to your products or services. This is where GSA Schedule modifications come in. When you make a change that affects your GSA contract, you will need to submit a modification in the eMod system. But as with any process related to your GSA Schedule, it’s not necessarily an easy or fast process. In this blog, we’ll cover best practices for GSA modifications so you are setting yourself up for success.

As a GSA Schedule contractor, you are given access to a variety of tools and platforms for advertising and selling to government buyers. Arguably, the most important of these is GSA Advantage!. Much in the way that you and I would purchase items from Amazon or shop online during Cyber Monday, Contracting Officers for government agencies access GSA Advantage! to browse the full catalog of contractors and their offerings. Even if you’ve already established consistent relationships with existing buyers, your public sector footprint could grow even larger with the aid of GSA Advantage!.

GSA Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) contracts have many compliance requirements to ensure that contractors provide products and services that align with federal procurement regulations. This fall, GSA renewed efforts to take action to remove non-compliant products from GSA contracts and GSA Advantage!. In the coming months, GSA will be removing items from a contractor’s Schedule if they are not in compliance with Trade Agreements Act (TAA) regulations, include prohibited hardware and telecommunications, as well as non-authorized refurbished items. Compliance with the terms and conditions of your Multiple Award Schedule is critical to the success of your contract, so let’s cover what you need to know about these non-compliant products.

The short answer is yes, you can participate in government bids without a GSA Schedule. However, it’s much more nuanced than that, and you can be missing out on huge opportunities within the federal marketplace. Open market sales to the federal government take much longer and can be more costly than sales through a government contracting vehicle, and other vehicles are not as flexible or available.

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.