The GSA Schedule Acquisition Process From Start to Finish

The process of acquiring a General Services Administration (GSA) Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) contract can be an intimidating one. Given the recent Executive Order (EO) directing most federal procurement activities under GSA’s management , it’s expected that the MAS program will experience an increase in opportunities as a result. Thus, you may be interested in acquiring a GSA Schedule contract to participate in this expected growth, and, like anyone setting out on a new journey, you probably have a lot of questions.

As GSA Schedule consultants, we know the process can be lengthy and complex. Considering the recent EOs impacting federal procurement, GSA MAS offer requirements could change quickly. Before you start preparing your offer, you should conduct research on becoming a GSA Schedule contractor to make sure you understand the GSA MAS program and its most up to date requirements. This crucial step will help you ensure the MAS program is a suitable market for your business and available offerings.

In this blog, we’ll help you understand the Schedule acquisition process from the initial steps to post-award actions for your new GSA Schedule contract.

Before You Prepare a GSA MAS Offer

There are several steps you’ll need to take before you begin preparing your proposal. The first thing you need to do is ensure your company is eligible to submit an offer to GSA, which includes but is not limited to the following factors: time in business, past performance, and Trade Agreements Act (TAA) compliance.

The next step is to make sure your company is registered in the System for Award Management (SAM) or complete the registration process. You will receive a Unique Entity ID (UEI) by registering in SAM, which you will need to present in various documentation during the proposal process.

It’s also important to determine where your products or services fit under the GSA MAS structure. GSA uses Special Item Numbers (SINs) to categorize similar products and services available to purchase.

SINs are roughly analogous to North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) Codes, but there are important differences. For example, SINs are specific to GSA. Relevant NAICS Codes for your business can help you determine potential SINs to pursue but not all NAICS Codes will have a corresponding SIN. GSA has multiple tools to browse SINs, including a searchable table on GSA’s website.

After ensuring that you can sell through a GSA Schedule contract and that there are opportunities for your products and services, you should review the MAS Solicitation and any applicable Large Category attachments, which are available on SAM.gov, for specific preparation instructions and requirements.

Preparing the GSA MAS Offer

Now, you can begin compiling your MAS offer, which will be rigorously reviewed by a GSA Contract Specialist (CS) and Contracting Officer (CO) team after submission. It's important to make sure everything in the offer is correct the first time; egregious errors may lead to outright rejection. Additionally, with GSA’s planned expansion, GSA Schedule proposal review times are expected to increase for now.

While you can resubmit your offer at any time, you will need to disclose the reasons for the initial rejection and then repeat GSA’s lengthy review process, delaying your eventual award by months at the very least.

Overall, the offer consists of three sections — administrative, technical, and pricing — which we are going to review one at a time.

Administrative Section

The administrative section is just how it sounds—you will provide mostly background information and certifications that GSA requires. Notable pieces of the administrative section include:

• Pathways to Success Training and Readiness Assessment: You must confirm that you have read and completed both items. This training and assessment are designed to help you understand how a GSA Schedule works, the offer process, and what is involved in becoming a GSA contractor.
• Agent Authorization Letter: Required if you are utilizing any consultant or third party to assist with the offer. The signed letter allows the consultant to be present in negotiations and submit the offer on your behalf.
• Financials: At minimum, you will need to provide an Income Statement and Balance Sheet for the previous two years. If your company is less than two years old and qualifies for the Startup Springboard Program, you can provide alternative documentation that demonstrates financial responsibility. Any negative equity or income must be explained in an additional narrative.
• Employee Benefits Handbook: You will need to submit your company’s most recent employee handbook, which should detail employees’ paid time off, insurance, and other benefits information. If your uncompensated overtime policy is not included within the handbook, then you will need to submit a separate compliant policy.
• System for Award Management (SAM) Registration: You must be registered in SAM to be awarded a GSA Schedule contract. The NAICS codes listed in your SAM account must include the NAICS Codes corresponding to the SINs you are pursuing. It’s also vital that the legal business name and business size you represent to GSA in the offer match your SAM registration’s disclosures.
• Small Business Subcontracting Plan: If your business size is represented as large or “Other than Small,” you must submit either a commercial or individual model subcontracting plan outlining your goals for subcontracting to small businesses and the supporting strategies to meet those goals. You can determine your business size using the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Size Standards Tool.
• Letter(s) of Supply: If you are providing products you do not manufacture and you are not on the Verified Products Portal (VPP), you must provide a Letter of Supply from the manufacturers of each proposed product to prove you are authorized to sell the items and have the capability to fulfill orders.

Technical Section

In the technical section, you will need to establish your company’s expertise in the scope of your offering and that you can handle the demands of a GSA Schedule. This section is a bit more extensive, and some SINs will have additional requirements, such as additional technical narratives for those falling within the Information Technology Category and the Cloud SIN, which requires you to include a narrative explaining how the software you are providing is cloud-based.

Notable pieces of the technical section include:

• Corporate Experience Narrative: This narrative provides a general overview of your company and explains your capabilities, expertise, and experience in the relevant industry. You are required to have two or more years of corporate experience unless you qualify for the Startup Springboard Program.
• Past Performance: For both product and service offerors, you must have a track record of successful performance proven in one of two ways:
  • CPARS Reports: If you have worked with the government as a prime contractor and you have at least three interim or final reports available in the Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS), you may submit these reports as evidence of good Past Performance. These reports must be for orders completed within the last three years or ongoing orders with the first year completed, were for three distinct contracts/orders, and the work performed must be similar in scope to the products/services being proposed.
  • References: If you do not have CPARS reports, you may provide GSA with three references and have them fill out GSA’s Past Performance Questionnaire (PPQ). Again, the PPQs must be from three distinct references, describing work completed within the previous three years or ongoing work with the first year completed, and are similar in scope to the solutions being proposed. A combination of CPARS reports and PPQs/references can be used if applicable.
• Relevant Project Experience: You must submit a narrative demonstrating relevant project experience for each service-based SIN you are proposing. This consists of a copy of the project’s fully executed Statement of Work (SOW), information on the project and the client, and a narrative describing the project and how the work aligns with the selected SIN. The selected projects must have been completed within the previous two years or have the first year completed for ongoing projects. If one project includes relevant work that can support more than one SIN, it may be used for all of them, but a different description must still be provided for each SIN. Product-based offerings do not require submission of relevant project experience.

Pricing Section

Now that GSA has determined you know what you’re doing and that you’re able to provide a legitimate product or service, it’s time to figure out the prices you will be offering. It’s important to note that in the pricing section, you are proposing prices to GSA and the actual prices will be set later on during the negotiations stage. For this reason, Winvale typically advises proposing higher prices in the initial offer, with the expectation that GSA will negotiate them down prior to award.

Notable pieces of the pricing proposal include:

• Commercial Pricelist or Internal Market Rate Sheet: You must provide the prices you typically charge commercially for your proposed services or products. This usually takes the form of either a commercial pricelist or an internal market rate sheet (if your prices are based on market rates rather than a defined pricelist).
• Commercial Sales Practices: To determine the discount you should offer to GSA, you must provide GSA with information on your discounting practices for different commercial customer classes over the past 12 months. This determines your Most Favored Customer (MFC), which is who GSA wants either an equal or a better discount than in your proposed GSA rates. Commercial Sales Practices information is only required to be disclosed if you are NOT opting into Transactional Data Reporting (TDR).
• Price Proposal Template: This spreadsheet is the backbone of the pricing section. You can find the most recent template GSA requires on their page for required templates. The template and information required varies depending on if you are offering products or services, but typically you will need to provide the following details in the PPT: identify each product, fixed price service, or labor category you are proposing; which SIN(s) the offerings are associated with; unit of issue; descriptions; commercial price; MFC discount and price if applicable; proposed GSA discount and price; any volume discounts being proposed; and a reference to the associated pricing support for each line item.
• Pricing Support: Different types of pricing support can be used to validate your proposed GSA rates, including invoices, contracts, quote sheets, or published or publicly available commercial catalogs/price lists. The price for a product/service on a supporting invoice or other acceptable document cannot be lower than the item’s proposed GSA rate. Additionally, the CS/CO is allowed to ask for additional pricing support during the clarifications stage, so it’s better to include as much pricing support as possible for your offer initially, even if you are participating in TDR and pricing support is not technically required.

MAS Offer Review

After all three sections of the offer are completed and finalized, the documents are submitted through GSA’s eOffer system for review. After offer submission, you will receive a welcome letter from GSA which provides basic information on what to expect moving forward.

Within a couple of months, you should be assigned a Contract Specialist (CS) or Contracting Officer (CO), who will review your offer and work with you toward eventual award. Depending on the SINs being pursued and the applicable office that will review the offer, the waiting time can differ greatly. For example, offers under the Information Technology Large Category will typically move quicker than those under the Professional Services Large Category.

The CS/CO will review most of the offer for completeness and correctness, but some items, like the financial statements and subcontracting plan, are reviewed by other departments within GSA. It can take time for the CO and other departments to work through the offer, depending on how many other offers they are reviewing in addition to the awarded contracts they currently work with.

Clarifications

As they are reviewing the offer, the CS/CO or another department may have questions or would like something changed within the offer, which they will request through clarifications. Clarifications can vary in scope and depth and could apply to any part of the offer. For example, a clarification could be as simple as correcting a typo, resubmitting a corrupted file, or providing a missing signature, but they can also be as complex as removing an out-of-scope SIN, justifying insufficient financials, supplying additional invoices, or providing more detailed descriptions for your products or services.

It’s important to provide your CS or CO with any requested information or corrections before the deadline they identify in their request. You may receive all clarifications at once or over the course of a few weeks as the CS/CO reviews your offer.

Negotiations

Once all clarifications are settled, the CS will schedule a time for negotiations to determine your final GSA rates and pricing terms. Negotiations could occur over a virtual meeting or through email, depending on the preference of the CO/CS. GSA Contracting Officers have an obligation to ensure “fair and reasonable pricing,” and they will base this determination on several factors, including their own market research.

Usually, the CO/CS will request an additional base discount than what is being proposed. If they believe your pricing is fair and reasonable as is, they may agree to your initially proposed terms or negotiate a slightly better discount. At times, they may request a considerably higher discount. It’s important to remember that this is a negotiation, not simply the CO/CS dictating what your pricing will be, so this process can go back and forth several times. Other items typically negotiated at this time include prompt payment and quantity/volume discounts.

Your GSA Schedule Contract Award

Once negotiations are complete, the CS/CO will provide you with a Final Proposal Revision (FPR), which lists out all the agreed-upon final terms and conditions for the contract. You should review this document in-depth to ensure everything is correct, then sign and return the document.

Once the CO reviews the FPR, you will receive a request to electronically sign your contract through the eOffer portal. The CO will countersign soon after, and then your contract will be awarded. Make sure you keep your FPR, it’s important to be able to refer to it if there is any confusion over the original award terms. As part of your award package, you will receive a Standard Form (SF) 30, which includes your new contract number.

Post GSA Schedule Contract Award

Congratulations--now that you have your GSA MAS contract, you can just sit back, relax, and the orders will come flying in, right? I’m afraid it’s not quite that simple. You will need to complete multiple immediate post-award actions, including submitting your awarded pricelist to be published on GSA Advantage! and GSA eLibrary.

You will also need to maintain your contract by keeping it current and compliant. It’s important to keep track of mass modifications and to submit your own modifications whenever you need to add, modify, or delete a product or service on the contract.

To start receiving sales and meet the minimum sales requirement for the contract’s base period, you should effectively market your GSA Schedule, conduct market research on potential customers and current competitors, and analyze available opportunities released through GSA eBuy.

Do You Need Help Acquiring Your GSA Schedule?

We know we just packed your brain with a lot of information, and while you hopefully have a much better understanding of the GSA Schedule acquisition process, it’s completely natural to still feel overwhelmed. Of course, you don’t need to go through the offer, post award, or any part of your contract period alone. Winvale’s expert consultants are here to help you with all your questions and to help you navigate the changing federal marketplace.