Episode notes
When pursuing a new MAS proposal, GSA requests some preliminary financial information about your company. Usually, these end of year reports satisfy GSA's internal requirements, but occasionally they don't. Instead, GSA will take you through a Financial Responsibility Assessment that will require quick turnaround and agile participants to make it through. Learn the framework of this stressful (but survivable) process inside the episode! As always if you have any questions, o...
Transcript
Read the transcript · about 380 words
Welcome to GSA 101 brought to you by Elevate GSA: where we turn GOVSPEAK into a language YOU speak. My name is Hannah Struss and I have Collin Hartsell here with me and we are going to be covering the Financial Responsibility Assessment that some of you may have to go through.
Once your proposal is submitted, you may be selected to go through a Financial Responsibility Assessment. This may be due to negative financials, being a young company, or another reason GSA deems necessary to conduct such an assessment. You will receive an email from the Financial Assessor inside GSA (this will be a different person from the CO assigned to review your proposal) asking for a handful of documents.
It is imperative to respond immediately, thoroughly answer each question, and fill out each document requested. This person holds the power to reject your offer due to non responsiveness- so be prompt! Your assessor will request you to fill out several forms internal and specific to GSA (such as GSA Form 527, a GSA Questionnaire, etc.) regarding your financials to assess responsibility. You will also need to provide a Bank Reference that will need to go straight from your Bank to your assessor- which can be tricky so make sure to reach out to your bank as soon as possible and explain the situation. They will need to do this on your behalf in an expedited fashion- and some banks are easier to deal with than others!
Your assessor may also ask for additional financial information such as reports from the current fiscal year, tax returns, etc. This will vary from assessment to assessment.
Most of the companies who enter into this process pass with flying colors and the review process continues on as normal. If you receive this email, do not panic and know it is all pretty routine. Just get a checklist in order and get to work on it as soon as possible. Communicate with your assessor so they know you are diligently working on getting them the requested items. (You got this!)
As always if you have any questions of if you’d like direct support with your contract please feel free to reach out at [email protected] .
Thanks for listening!
Links:
Transcript supplied by the publisher with the episode.
Podcast
GSA 101
Elevate GSA · Business · English
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