GSA Multiple Award Schedule for Cleaning Companies

The GSA Multiple Award Schedule is not a contract you win in the way you win an RFP. It is a pre-negotiated pricing agreement that lets any federal agency order your cleaning services without running its own competition, provided your rates and terms already cleared GSA's review. For janitorial and custodial work, that review happens under SIN 561720 (Janitorial Services) within Large Category 71 III, Facilities. Once you hold the Schedule, a contracting officer at a federal building anywhere in the country can place an order against your contract in days rather than months, which is the entire commercial case for going through the application effort.

What the eOffer application actually requires

Register your entity and confirm your SAM.gov UEI is active before you open the eOffer package, since GSA validates entity registration status automatically and a lapsed SAM record will stall a submission that is otherwise ready. Applications run through GSA's eOffer/eMod system, and a janitorial company applying for the first time needs, at minimum: two years of financial statements demonstrating a stable, if modest, revenue history; a commercial price list or rate schedule that becomes the basis for your negotiated Schedule pricing; and documented past performance, ideally three or more contracts of comparable scope, whether commercial, state, or municipal. GSA contracting specialists negotiate your proposed rates down to a "most favored customer" basis, meaning they will ask what your best commercial client pays and expect the government rate to track close to it. Companies that pad their commercial price list right before applying tend to get caught in this negotiation, since GSA reviews actual invoices, not just the rate card.

Plan on three to six months from submission to award for a first-time MAS applicant, longer if your financials or past performance documentation come back incomplete on first review. That timeline matters for cash-flow planning. Do not count on Schedule revenue inside this fiscal year if you are only now assembling your eOffer package.

The Industrial Funding Fee and what it actually costs you

Every dollar sold under your Schedule contract carries an Industrial Funding Fee (IFF) of 0.75 percent, which GSA uses to fund the Schedule program's administrative operations. You collect the IFF from the ordering agency as part of your invoiced price and remit it to GSA quarterly. It is not deducted from your payment, but it does mean your quoted rate has to build in that 0.75 percent from the start, the same way the Florida MFMP fee or a franchise royalty gets baked into a bid rather than absorbed after the fact.

The $25,000-in-24-months minimum sales requirement is the number that catches new Schedule holders off guard most often. GSA does not require you to generate massive volume immediately, but a contract with zero or near-zero activity two years in is a candidate for cancellation during your Contractor Assistance Visit. That visit, conducted by your assigned Industrial Operations Analyst (IOA), is a post-award compliance review covering your pricing practices, invoicing accuracy, and whether you are tracking IFF remittance correctly; GSA's own guidance for new contractors walks through what the IOA checks in its Steps to Success reference material.

Labor standards on Schedule task orders

Task orders issued against your MAS contract for custodial labor remain subject to the Service Contract Labor Standards (SCLS, the modern name for what most operators still call the Service Contract Act). GSA publishes SCLS wage determinations applicable to MAS contracts and updates them on a schedule tied to Department of Labor wage surveys. Current guidance sits on GSA's SCLS wage determinations page. On top of the underlying wage determination, Executive Order 14026 sets a minimum wage floor for covered federal contracts of $15.00 per hour as a 2022 baseline, indexed upward each year, that applies to contracts entered into or renewed on or after January 30, 2022. If you are pricing a task order and the wage determination rate for the labor category comes in below the current EO 14026 floor, the higher figure controls. Get this wrong in your proposal pricing and you are either underbid on paper or absorbing the gap out of margin once the order is running.

Where facilities and cleaning SINs sit in the current Schedule structure

GSA consolidated its legacy Schedules into a single Multiple Award Schedule several years ago, and janitorial services now falls under the Facilities category alongside related SINs for landscaping, pest control, and integrated facilities management. If your company offers cleaning plus one or two adjacent services, say, floor refinishing plus general custodial, it is worth applying under multiple SINs in the same package rather than filing separate applications later, since GSA evaluates your full capability set once during the initial review.

Deciding if MAS is the right vehicle for your company

MAS makes the most sense for a company that already has multiple facilities accounts and wants a standing vehicle federal buyers can order against without a fresh competition each time. Think of it as building a federal storefront rather than chasing one-off RFPs. It makes less sense as a first federal contract vehicle for a company with no past performance to document, because the eOffer package will stall on exactly that gap. A more realistic sequence for a company with strong commercial and state government history but no federal record: build two or three documented state or municipal facility contracts first, then apply for MAS once you have past performance narratives that will actually survive GSA's review rather than getting bounced back for insufficient documentation.

What happens after award: the Contractor Assistance Visit

Roughly a year into holding the Schedule, expect your assigned Industrial Operations Analyst to schedule a Contractor Assistance Visit, either in person or virtually. The IOA is checking three things in practice: that your invoiced prices to federal customers actually match your negotiated Schedule rates, that you are tracking and remitting the Industrial Funding Fee correctly on every task order, and that your commercial sales practices have not drifted away from the price/discount relationship you disclosed at award. If your best commercial customer has since negotiated a lower rate than what the government pays, that is a Price Reduction Clause issue the IOA will flag, and it is far easier to self-report a rate change proactively than to have it surface during a CAV. Keep a simple internal log every time you issue a discount to a large commercial account. It is the single easiest way to stay ahead of this requirement without hiring a compliance consultant.

Pricing a Schedule rate you can actually live with

Because your MAS rate becomes your ceiling price across every federal task order for the life of the contract (subject to periodic modifications), price conservatively rather than aggressively at the eOffer stage. A rate that looks competitive on the initial proposal but does not leave room for wage determination increases, fuel and supply cost inflation, or the 0.75 percent IFF will force you into a formal contract modification request within the first year or two just to stay solvent on federal task orders. On a 24-hour, multi-shift federal building account, build in a labor escalation clause tied to the applicable wage determination's update cycle rather than a flat annual percentage, since SCLS rates do not move on a predictable calendar, and a flat escalation clause can leave you short in a year the wage determination jumps mid-cycle.

A Schedule contract is one federal path among several, and it is worth reading it alongside our broader guide to GSA RFPs under NAICS 561720 before deciding which vehicle to pursue first. Companies whose principal office sits in a qualifying area should also weigh HUBZone certification and, for veteran-owned firms, SDVOSB verification alongside a Schedule application, since both can improve your competitive position on task orders issued against MAS contracts.