4) What’s Your SIN?

Depending on your moral and religious orientation or lack thereof, you may believe that sin is an unavoidable part of life — for better or worse, or just worse, or perhaps just exclusively better, depending on where you are spiritually at any given moment. But if you are a GSA schedule-holder, every product or service by which you make your livelihood is invariably categorized by Special Item Number, or SIN; that by which you gain your means must fall into one or another SIN. It is a natural thing, not to be worried about or revisited too often.

If you sell IT services, your SIN is 132-51; cheerleader supplies or miniature golf equipment, SIN 192-02; oboes, bongos, or karaoke systems, SIN 192-41; “Shoe Boxes; Beer Cases; Pill Boxes; Piano Cases; Engine Boxes; Bombsight Boxes . . . [but not special boxes for] nuclear ordnance,” then C 8115A is your SIN.

If you cannot SIN, then surely you cannot be tempted to sell to the government in the first place. Or, at least, the selling may be more difficult.

If you are tempted to sell a lollipop paddle set to the government, your SIN will be 192-02, which is also the Original SIN we discussed above for cheerleader supplies or miniature golf equipment.

If these SINs are already wearing you down; if this piece is making you concerned for the tree-borne legume that wrote it, fear not. You may find respite in the next installment in this space, assuming we discuss the Federal Data Procurement System, another fascinating numbering system formerly maintained on a mainframe running COBOL that since 1979 has also applied to many products sold to the federal government. But no promises; if we find something more riveting, we’ll cover that instead. If writing about music is like dancing about architecture, then perhaps writing about GSA Schedule contracting is like bowling about regulations. Or miming about purchase orders. Or perhaps that doesn’t make a lot of sense. In which case, this fits right in with the big picture. Anyhow, we hope you find this column helpful and useful. Remember: stay focused!