The federal government is known for the mountains of red tape it can take to do business with. Fortunately for GSA Schedule contractors, several barriers have been removed over the years. However, there are still many compliance risks you need to be aware of.

With over 11 million commercial products and services sold to government buyers, it’s clear the GSA Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) program is a great business opportunity for companies. What’s not so obvious though, is the other ways to sell through a GSA Schedule without acquiring your own contract. One of the ways to do this is partnering with an authorized GSA reseller.

Prior to the Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) Consolidation, contractors looking to sell to the federal government would prepare offers under one of the 24 individual GSA Schedules organized by industry. In order to simplify and modernize the federal procurement process, the General Services Administration (GSA) recently made changes to how it organizes the Schedules through which federal agencies buy goods and services from contractors. Instead of 24 individual Schedules, there is now a single Multiple Award Schedule that houses 12 Large Categories.

Commercial enterprises that are interested in selling to the federal government have numerous different avenues available to reach this goal. However, many potential government contractors choose to sell their products and services through the GSA Multiple Award Schedules (MAS) Program.

SIP—it’s only three letters, but it can be a dense and frustrating program for GSA Schedule contractors. SIP, which stands for Schedule Input Program, is a software program created by the General Services Administration (GSA) for contractors to upload their contract information to GSA eLibrary and GSA Advantage! platforms. GSA contractors have to upload their catalogs and price lists to reflect the MAS Consolidation by March 31, 2021, so it's important you know how to use SIP.

[This article was last updated on November 10, 2020] Just as GSA contractors thought the updates were slowing down in frequency, the General Services Administration (GSA) Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) issued the Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) Solicitation 47QSMD20R0001 - Refresh # 5 on November 9, 2020.