What is eBuy?
GSA eBuy is an electronic system used by thousands of U.S. government and military buyers worldwide, to source millions of products and services, issue solicitations to vendors, and achieve the best pricing and value for their purchases. eBuy streamlines the purchasing process for GSA’s Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) Program, Blanket Purchase Agreements, Technology contracts, and Federal Strategic Sourcing Initiative contracts, as well as for Cooperative Purchasing and Disaster Recovery Programs for State and Local Governments. Vendors like you can use eBuy to find and bid on exclusive government contracts.
- How does GSA eBuy work?
- Searching for eBuy government contracts
- Responding to government solicitations
- Overview of the eBuy solicitation process
How does GSA eBuy work?
Accessing eBuy
eBuy is exclusively accessible to GSA contractors. To gain access to eBuy, new contractors must register with the Vendor Support Center (VSC), which allows you to submit your catalog to GSA Advantage! You will then be automatically registered in eBuy under the Special Item Numbers (SINs) awarded in your contract, i.e., 6-digit numbers assigned to each specific product or service you are allowed to sell through GSA MAS. Contractors can only view solicitations that match their SINs. You log in with the same user ID and password for eBuy and GSA Advantage!, and are now ready to search for GSA contracts to bid on.
Searching for eBuy government contracts
The next stage in federal GSA bidding is searching on eBuy. On the RFQ tab, you can find a list of all active Requests For Quotes issued by federal buyers, and filter by keyword, issue date, close date, buyer, source, and category. Each RFQ is attached to a SIN, allowing contractors to search for the most suitable opportunities for them. In the Profile tab on eBuy, you can designate an email address and phone number for each of your SINs, so when a relevant RFQ is posted on the eBuy site, you are notified automatically.
Federal agencies are obligated to contract with businesses that have a particular socio-economic status, meaning that some solicitations are available strictly to such types of businesses. These include small, women-owned, economically disadvantaged women-owned, veteran-owned, and service-disabled veteran-owned businesses.
Responding to government solicitations
When you click on an RFQ on the eBuy site, you are taken to a new page which has two sections: RFQ details and quote details. In the first section, you will find the intended duration of the contract, attachments with detailed project information and the list of documents needed to apply, any Q&As or RFQ modifications made by the buyer, along with the buyer’s name, email address and phone number. Typically, government agencies on eBuy want responses within 7-10 days of issuing the solicitation, so it’s important to have a designated Point of Contact (POC) who is responsible for checking eBuy every day.
Once you’ve carefully read through the RFQ details you may take several actions: save the RFQ to respond to it later; “watch” the RFQ for any modifications or updates; “No Quote” it and carry on searching for other opportunities; or write your quote response. You prepare your quote response further down the page; attach documents, upload line items and unit prices, discounts, delivery conditions, expiry date of your quote (minimum of 7 days from the RFQ close date), and any comments. You can modify your quote as many times as you like before the deadline, and when you’re finished, just click Review/Submit at the top of the page. Your quote is only visible to the buyer and not to other contractors.
You can track the responses to your eBuy government solicitations on the My Quotes tab. The Quote Status field will display one of the following labels:
- Pending Response – quote waiting to be evaluated by the buyer
- Awarded – quote evaluated and awarded by the buyer
- Awarded (Partial) – quote evaluated and partially awarded by the buyer
- Not Awarded – quote evaluated and not awarded to you by the buyer
- No Quote – you elected not to quote on this RFQ
- Draft – quote saved and not yet submitted
- Sources Sought – RFQ designated to seeking sources only
- Cancelled – quote cancelled by the contractor.
Overview of the eBuy solicitation process
To sum up, there are four stages to the GSA eBuy solicitation process:
- The government buyer submits their solicitation to eBuy.
- The eBuy platform automatically notifies all eligible GSA contractors.
- Sellers have until the close date to respond to the government solicitation.
- Once the solicitation closes, the buyer reviews all responses and awards the contract.
If you have any questions about eBuy or U.S. Government solicitations, get in touch with Price Reporter today. Our GSA consultants are happy to help.
What if we can quote the specific products being requested, but they’re not on our contract yet, and we don’t sell them commercially either yet, so our GSA CO is not letting us add them to contract, can we use the ebuy RFQ as market research to get the items added? (otherwise thank you for such a clear and detailed information!)