How to Price
a Contract

Before You Start

• You need at least one contract vehicle imported (GSA schedule, OASIS+, MATOC, etc.)—this happens in the Vehicles tab.
• Have your indirect rates ready (fringe, overhead, G&A percentages)—these come from your DCAA-submitted provisional rates or your company's rate structure.
• Know the labor categories (LCATs) you'll need and approximate salaries.
• Know the contract type (T&M, FFP, CPFF, etc.) and vehicle type you're bidding on.

Step 1—Navigate to Pricing

From the main navigation, select Pricing. The module has six tabs:

The pricing work itself does not happen on these tabs. Opening a proposal from the Proposals tab launches a full-screen workspace built as a five-stage workflow, each stage showing its own summary as you go:

Step 2—Create a New Proposal

On the Proposals tab, click New Proposal. Fill out the required fields:

Indirect Rate Configuration

These five fields control your cost build-up and can be overridden per proposal:

Escalation & Pricing Defaults

Step 3—Understand Vehicle Types

Your vehicle type determines how revenue is calculated. This is the single most important structural decision in pricing.

CEILING Vehicles (GSA MAS, CIO-SP3)

Bill rate auto-fills from the LCAT schedule. You set a discount % off the ceiling. Revenue = Proposed Rate × Hours.

Your lever: The discount percentage. Lower discount = higher price = higher margin, but potentially less competitive.

BUILDUP Vehicles (OASIS+)

Your rate is computed from the cost build-up: salary + fringe + overhead + G&A. You enter a salary; the system computes the fully loaded rate automatically.

Your lever: Salary levels and indirect rate assumptions. The bill rate is a formula output, not an input.

COSTPLUS Vehicles (PRISM MATOC, Seaport-NxG)

Revenue = loaded cost × (1 + fee rate). The discount field is ignored—pricing is formula-driven.

Your lever: The fee rate (profit %) and your provisional indirect rates.

GSA Back-to-Back, Custom, and Open Market

Back-to-Back (e.g., FBI ITSSS-2): Rates come from a parent GSA schedule with your discount applied—behaves like a CEILING vehicle. Custom (CPFF solicitations): The government prescribes the format; you enter rates manually per the RFP structure. Open Market: Free-form pricing; you set ceiling rates manually for each position.

Step 4—Add Positions

Switch to the Positions tab and click Add Position.

1. Search for the LCAT by code or title; filter by SIN, education level, or years of experience if needed.
2. Select the LCAT—the system auto-fills the bill rate ceiling from the schedule.
3. Configure the position fields:

As you enter the salary, the system shows the implied cost rate and wrap multiplier:

$62.50/hr (wrap: 2.35x)—$130,000/yr

Check the boxes for which contract periods this position applies to. The system creates a separate record for each period, automatically applying salary and price escalation to option years.

Understanding the Cost Build-Up

Direct Labor Cost     = Hourly Rate x Annual Hours x FTEs
+ Fringe              = Direct Labor x Fringe Rate (SCA or Non-SCA)
+ Overhead            = (Direct Labor + Fringe) x Overhead Rate
+ G&A                 = (Direct Labor + Fringe + Overhead) x G&A Rate
= Total Loaded Cost

Revenue               = Bill Rate x (1 - Discount) x Hours x FTEs
Gross Profit          = Revenue - Direct Labor
Net Profit            = Revenue - Total Loaded Cost

Step 5—Review Position Views

Step 6—Option Years

Option years are not a separate step. When you add a position it cascades to every option year you selected — the button itself says so — applying salary escalation and pulling the exact schedule rate for each option year. You can then override any individual option-year position without disturbing the others.

Step 7—Run Market Benchmarks

Move to stage 3 · Validate and click Run Market Benchmark. This queries the GSA CALC+ database for published rates matching your LCATs, and the stage summary then tells you how many positions came back competitive, how many priced above market, and how many had no published comparator. Stage 4 · Compare turns that into competitive positioning against named competitors.

The Competitive Positioning Table

Color-coded rate comparisons:

• Green—Your rate is below the CALC+ median (competitive)
• Yellow—Between the 50th and 75th percentile (acceptable)
• Orange—Between the 75th and 90th percentile (price risk)
• Red—Above the 90th percentile (significant price risk)

Step 8—Analyze Economics

Move to stage 2 · Price and open Margin Analysis to evaluate whether the proposal is financially viable.

Margin Map

A ranked table showing each position's contribution to total gross profit, accompanied by a bar chart. Positions with high revenue but low GP% are dragging down your blended margin. Positions with high GP% but low revenue contribute little to total profit—both matter.

Period Summaries

Revenue and cost breakdown by contract period—BASE, OY1, OY2, and totals. The margin trend chart shows how margin evolves across the contract life.

What-If Margin Targeting

Set your Target Blended GP Margin % with the slider and review three optimization paths:

Step 9—Check Status and Submit

Use the Status dropdown (CEO only) to move the proposal through: Draft → In Review → Submitted → Won / Lost.

When transitioning from Draft to In Review, the system shows pre-submission awareness metrics: count of positions above CALC+ median, blended GP margin, and discount headroom before breakeven.

Step 10—Export

Click Export to Excel in the workspace header — it is available from any stage. The workbook includes Summary, Positions (all periods), Period Summaries, Margins, and Benchmarks—formatted and branded, ready for board review or internal distribution.

Key Pricing Concepts

Wrap Rate

Wrap Rate = Total Loaded Cost / Direct Labor Cost

A 2.5x wrap means a $50/hr employee costs $125/hr fully loaded. In GovCon, wraps typically range from 2.0x (lean overhead) to 3.5x (heavy G&A structure). Your wrap rate is your cost floor—it determines whether a given ceiling rate can produce margin.

Discount vs. Margin

These are different things. Discount is the percentage off the ceiling rate (what the government sees). Margin is the percentage of revenue that's profit (what you see). A 10% discount does not mean 10% margin—the actual margin depends on your loaded cost relative to the ceiling.

SCA vs. Non-SCA

Service Contract Act (SCA) positions have government-mandated minimum wages and benefits. SCA fringe rates are typically higher than non-SCA because of the Health & Welfare (H&W) requirement. The system applies the correct fringe rate automatically based on position classification.

Common Questions