Can I Decline a GSA Schedule Order? The 24-Hour and Five-Day Rules
A purchase order arrives on Friday afternoon. The pricing is awkward, the customer is outside your normal market, and nobody is sure whether saying no is allowed. Whether a GSA Schedule contractor can decline an order depends on the buyer, the order amount, and the payment method. Contractors must accept executive-branch orders that fall within […]
Can a Contractor Teaming Arrangement Help Us Pursue GSA Schedule Orders?
The RFQ fits your agency target. It does not fit your company alone. A GSA Schedule Contractor Teaming Arrangement, or MAS CTA, allows two or more MAS contractors to combine their awarded offerings to meet one ordering activity’s requirement. A CTA can help a small or mid-size firm pursue a larger or more complex Schedule […]
What Happens to My GSA Catalog, eMod, and Temporary Price Reductions During an FCP Transition?
The customer needs a new labor category. Your sales team wants a temporary discount. Then the FCP transition notice lands. During a FAS Catalog Platform transition, non-catalog GSA modifications can continue through eMod, but new catalog-related modifications cannot be submitted until the contractor completes the FCP First Steps process and its baseline is approved. Existing […]
Has FAR 8.405 Changed? What GSA’s New FSS Ordering Rules Mean for Schedule Contractors
The citation in the RFQ looks familiar. The buying process behind it may not be. GSA’s Federal Supply Schedule ordering procedures have been established in GSAR Subpart 538.71 through a class deviation supporting the FAR Overhaul. For Schedule contractors, that means the familiar FAR 8.405 framework is no longer the only place to understand how agencies solicit, evaluate, […]
What Federal Contractors Actually Want to Know
You see the letters first. CFCM after a contracting officer’s name in an email signature, CPCM on a capture manager’s LinkedIn profile. Then the question: is this something my company should care about, or is it a club for the government side? The National Contract Management Association (NCMA) is the professional association for contract management, […]
What Must I Do in the First 30 Days After a GSA Schedule Award?
The award email is the good news. The next 30 days determine whether your contract is actually usable. The first 30 days after a GSA Schedule award should be used to register the contract in the Vendor Support Center, publish accurate electronic contract data to GSA Advantage!, eBuy, and eLibrary, establish sales-reporting access, and assign contract-management ownership. A Schedule award creates eligibility. These actions make that eligibility visible to […]
How Do I Move My GSA Schedule From SIP to the FAS Catalog Platform?
The notice does not give your team time to invent a catalog-management process. It gives you time to complete one. A FAS Catalog Platform transition moves an eligible Multiple Award Schedule contractor from legacy SIP or EDI catalog publishing to GSA’s web-based FAS Catalog Platform, also called FCP. The transition requires the contractor to verify […]
Why Does GSA Reject Pricing on Schedule Offers, and How Do You Pass the First Time?
An offeror with a strong company and clean paperwork watched their GSA offer stall for months. Not over capability. Over pricing. The contracting officer kept asking for support they had not provided, and every round added weeks. Pricing review is where the most prepared-looking offers quietly die, and in 2026 the rules underneath it changed. GSA […]
How Do You Win Federal Work When You Have No Past Performance?
It is the most circular problem in federal contracting. Agencies weigh past performance heavily, so the contract goes to the firm that already has a track record. But you cannot build a track record without winning a contract. New entrants stare at this wall and assume the federal market is closed to them. It is not. There are […]
What Should a GSA Contractor’s Capability Statement Include in 2026?
A founder sent the same glossy company overview to twelve contracting officers and heard nothing back. The document was beautiful. It was also the wrong document. Contracting officers do not read brochures. They scan capability statements, and they decide in seconds whether you are worth a conversation. A capability statement is a one-page federal sales […]