Refunds

In addition to saving money by paying no direct fees for using GSA SmartPay solutions, customer agencies and organizations have the opportunity to earn refunds. Refunds earned can and have been used by customer agencies to directly fund and support efforts critical to their mission.

An agency’s refund rate range has been established by the GSA SmartPay master contract in which the minimum refunds are a single rate that considers both volume of spend and speed of pay historically found under the GSA SmartPay Program. Minimums may vary by CLIN and business line.  An agency and the GSA SmartPay contractor bank can negotiate additional refund incentives and document it in the task order.  Agencies can maximize refunds earned by migrating spend from convenience checks, personal payment (e.g., cash or personal credit card), and traditional contract payment to GSA SmartPay payment solutions.

There are two types of refunds agencies can receive:

  • Net Refunds: Payments from the Contractor to the agency/organization based on the dollar or “spend” volume during each reporting period.
  • Corrective Refunds: Payments from the Contractor to the agency/organization to correct improper or erroneous refund payments, or an invoice adjustment.

 

Generally, refunds are remitted quarterly and align with the Federal Government’s Fiscal Year quarters. There are three steps to calculating a customer agency’s Net Refunds.

  1. Determine Net Charge Volume by adding purchases, cash advances, convenience checks, and fees then subtracting adjustments and credits.
  2. Determine Refund Eligible Net Charge Volume by subtracting convenience check spend and gross credit losses from the Net Charge Volume.
  3. Calculate Net Refunds by adding gross refund to Refund Eligible Net Charge Volume and subtracting the GSA Contract Access fee.

Example refund calculations can be found in section B.3.3 of the SmartPay 3 Master Contract.

Please visit our Glossary page for Master Contract definitions of terms found in steps 1-3.