The question that comes before the price
Every other screen in this product answers a question about the work: what is open, what it has gone for, what to charge, who else is chasing it. None of them answers the one that comes first, which is whether you are allowed to do it. That question has a lead time attached, and a supplier who meets it at the solicitation has already lost the bid.
UEI, CAGE, then normalized name
The requirement is real, it is months long, and it is invisible on the notice
A cost-reimbursement contract requires an accounting system a government auditor has examined and called adequate. That is a pre-award survey on an SF1408 and it takes three to nine months. A defence contract carrying the safeguarding clause requires a security plan against a 110-control standard and a score posted before award. A build to print carrying an inspection clause assumes a quality system a registrar certified, which is most of a year. A facility clearance cannot be applied for at all: it has to be sponsored.
None of that is written on the notice in words. It is carried by the clause numbers in section I, which is a list of about forty references with no text against any of them. So the requirement is published, and it is unreadable, and the usual way a small supplier learns about it is six weeks into a bid.
- Thirteen requirements, each with what it obliges and what it takes to get
- Read from the clauses, so the reading can be checked against the document
- The clause number printed beside every requirement, linking to its text
- A gap that cannot close before the deadline is marked as one, rather than as something to get on with
by the time the notice appears the requirement is written and the budget exists
From the clauses, not from the kind of work
Nothing here is guessed from the agency, the code or the size of the buy. Each requirement is triggered by a clause the solicitation itself incorporates, and a clause is a legal obligation on the contractor published by name. So "this notice cites 52.216-7, therefore it needs an adequate accounting system" is a reading of the document rather than a prediction about it, and the screen prints the clause so you can go and read it.
What you hold is what you say you hold. Fill the checklist in once, with where you actually are on each item, and every notice you open afterwards is read against it. Nothing is verified, nothing is inferred from your award history, and none of it certifies anything. It is a checklist you keep, measured against a document the government published.
- Four answers per requirement: ready, a gap, a gap too long to close, or you have not said
- Silence is never treated as a pass, and never as a failure
- The longest lead time sorts to the top, because that is the only useful order
- Your checklist stays on your account and is never mixed into anything published here
The size standard, on every code in the product
Almost every decision a small supplier makes turns on one question: am I small for this code. It decides whether a set-aside is open, whether a subcontracting plan applies, and whether a certification is worth applying for. The answer is a published table, and it is law rather than guidance: 13 CFR 121.201.
It is now on every NAICS page and every notice. Tell it your average receipts and your headcount once, and the answer appears wherever a code does, with the threshold, the amendment date and a link to the regulation.
And where you have not said, it says so. A product that treated a blank as a yes would be putting somebody one click from certifying to something untrue on an offer.
- The standard for every code, receipts or employees, from the regulation itself
- Your own answer wherever a code appears, once you have given it two figures
- The amendment date and the citation, so it can be checked
- Not known is an answer, and a different one from no
a missing requirement costs the bid; an awkward one costs nothing
What this is not
It is not legal advice and it is not a compliance determination. It cannot tell you whether your accounting system would actually pass an audit, only that one is required and roughly what that takes. A clause list on a notice is also sometimes incomplete, because the full one arrives with the solicitation package. All three of those are printed on the screen rather than left to be discovered.
Where it is in the app
What you can perform, under Company in the menu. Company is the part of LastAwarded that knows whether you are ready, one of the eight parts.
Related
- FAR and DFARS clausesThe text behind every requirement here.
- Bid worksheetWhat to charge, once you know you can take it.
- Module 11: Pricing and costWhy an accounting system decides which contracts you may hold.
- Module 16: Audits and complianceWhat an auditor actually looks at.
See who was last awarded in your NAICS
Every code, every buying office, every vendor and every recompete, organized from the federal record and read nightly. Open it with a plan.