Only GSA Schedule Contract holders are permitted to place their products and services on the GSA Advantage Website. The website offers an efficient, streamlined purchasing porthole for federal agencies to buy the products and services they need. This creates the following four benefits for federal buyers and commercial sellers and service providers.
1. Reduces cost, time, and bureaucracy in buying products and services.
2. Ensures the federal government is purchasing at a fair and reasonable price.
3. Verifies that the contractors are eligible to sell their products or services to the federal government.
4. Provides sellers will billions of dollars in federal sales opportunities.
5. Anyone can look through GSA Advantage to view and compare the different goods and services offered. Millions of commercial products and services can be purchased online through this website.
GSA Advantage Purchasing
6. Agencies wishing to purchase goods and services from the GSA Advantage website can do so very easily. They can view all the goods and services without formally logging into the site. Once they decide to make a purchase they simply need to log in and complete the transaction the same via the GSA Advantage website.
In terms of searching the site the federal buyer can search by product/service, descriptive term for the item, category, or the name of the firm that sells the product.
Once they find the product or service, they are looking for they can review the uploaded pictures, detailed product description as well as pricing and volume discounts.
GSA Advantage Order Processing for Vendors
After a purchase is initiated by a federal buyer, the GSA Advantage website produces an email order that is sent to the merchant. The contractor then receives this email which prompts them to log onto the website and accept or reject the order. All information required for order processing will be provided as part of this transaction process and payment is generally made with Government issued SmartPay credit cards. After the goods have been shipped, the contractor logs into the site again, confirms the shipment of the order, and then enters the shipping tracking number. That ends the transaction process. This process does not require any communication with the actual federal buyer.
Two federal acts provide permission in certain cases for state and local governments to be able to use GSA Advantage to make their purchases as well.
GSA AAC (Activity Address Code)
GSA GSA SmartPay® (a commercial purchase card, which can be used all across the government), or
A DoDAAC (Department of Defense Activity Address Code)
Local and state governments can purchase on GSA Advantage by using a credit card issued by local or state government.