Downloading The Solicitation Files for Your GSA Schedule

Once you are sure of which GSA Schedule your contracted products will be offered under, you will need to download the appropriate files to prepare and submit.

Finding them on the GSA website can be rather frustrating.

Here is the path from their home page to the GSA Schedule Solicitations page where you will find links to each of the GSA Schedules: Home > About GSA > Acquisition Solutions > Schedules > For Vendors - Getting on Schedule > GSA Schedule Solicitations . I have provided the full path so that you can see what directory the GSA lists this information under.

You will need click on the last link: GSA Schedule Solicitations  to find your particular schedule.

To download the solicitation, you will need to click on the solicitation link and not the schedule link. This can be found in the middle column and is a series of letters, numbers and dashes such as: 7FCI-L3-03-0084-B.

The solicitation page should have the solicitation number listed just below the corresponding schedule. Here you will need to download all of the files that relate to your products. I would recommend downloading the very first file and reading it first. It is usually titled All-Read Me First for some reason.

The READ ME file will guide you in selecting the appropriate files to download for your specific offer.

If you are still unclear on which files you need to download and prepare, contact the contracting officer listed at the top of the solicitation page. The contracting officer's name, phone number and email are all listed in the box under the solicitation number at the top of the page.

There is often more than one contracting officer for a solicitation that you can contact. I would recommend emailing all of them if you cannot reach any of them by phone.

Once you have downloaded the appropriate files, I would highly advise you to do as the GSA recommends and print all of the files out and organize them in a three ring binder with dividers.

You might be inclined to skip this step because of the number of pages you will have to print, but trust me here. You will thank me for this advice later. It is much easier to keep track of your revisions by marking it on paper than it will be in digital form.

I also recommend placing a sticky note next to each of the revisions you make so that it will be easier to find later. The revisions that I'm talking about take place after you have submitted you completed solicitation to your contracting officer.

In the process of completing and receiving our GSA contract award, we were required to make around a hundred different revisions. As your contracting officer makes these requests, you have to revise each part that is required and then fax it back to the officer within a specific time frame(usually around 5 days). So, go ahead and print it all out and organize it in a binder. The more organized you are, the easier this will be.

Schedules E-Library

Before you can do anything with the GSA, you will need to first find out what schedule you will need to submit your products under. To do this, you go to the GSA website.

The website url is www.gsa.gov . On their home page you will see a list of arrows down the left hand side. The second arrow points to "GSA Contracts and Schedules." It is under this heading that you will find "Schedules e-library." Click on the link to take you to the "Schedules e-library."

On this page, you will see a graphic on the right hand side that is a screen shot of the Schedules e-library site. Don't ask me why it takes this many steps to get there from the GSA home page. You'll learn not to ask silly questions like that once you really get started on your GSA schedule.

Now, once you are on this page, you will see a search box just below the welcome message near the top of the page. This is where you will type in your product name or a description of your product. In my case, I wanted to sell polypropylene underwear.

After running the search, schedule 84 returned by the search engine. Sometimes, the search engine will return more than one schedule. If you cannot decide which schedule to choose, you can click on one of the schedules. At the top of the schedule page, you will find the contact information for the contracting officer for that particular schedule.

You can then call or email them with the description of your product and they will help you select the right schedule. When I did mine, I found that emailing my contracting officer was the most effective way to reach her. I rarely got a response or a call back over the phone. But that was just my experience with my contracting officer.

Now that you know what schedule you product will fall under, you will need to download the contract information to fill out.

Got a GSA Schedule?

So you already know that there is good money to be made selling to the U.S. Government, right?  You want to know how to get in on all of that easy cash, but you don't know where to start.  

Well, to be a part of the market selling to the government, you need to have a GSA Schedule.  You probably already get an inbox full of emails from companies wanting to charge you a years salary to set complete your schedule for you.  

If you are a small business, you can't afford to invest your hard earned profits only to pad another companies pockets. It is possible to complete all of the paperwork yourself. You just need to know where to start and what resources to turn to when you have questions.

Now, over the coarse of this blog, we'll show you where to start and who to take your questions to.  But first, I will tell you right out front that obtaining a GSA Schedule requires some patience.  There are a series of approval processes for your schedule that can take some time to complete.  But, hang in there.  

The benefits of having a GSA Schedule are definitely worth the time it takes to complete your schedule and receive your contract award.