What is Fair and Reasonable Price Determination?


As a freelancer, you will need to learn a lot related to law, tax, contracts. In this text, we will discuss fair and reasonable prices in government contracts. If you live in the US, you know about Federal Acquisition Regulations System or FAR. All definitions are created based on this US government body.

Fair and Reasonable Price Determination

Fair and Reasonable Price represents fair market value or total allowable cost. A Fair and Reasonable price is a price that a prudent buyer would pay considering market conditions, requirements alternatives, and non-price factors.

Methods to determine Fair and Reasonable Price are:

  • Adequate Price Competition (APC)
  • Cost Analysis
  • Cost Realism Analysis
  • Price Analysis
  • Price Set by Law (Utilities)

The determination of price reasonableness is based on cost analysis; the summary shall address each major cost element. When the determination of price reasonableness is based on price analysis, the summary shall include the source and type of data used to support the determination.

 

A reasonable and sensible cost is the value point for a decent or administration suitable for the two players associated with the exchange. This sum depends on the settled upon conditions, guaranteed quality, and practicality of agreement execution. In government getting, a reasonable and sensible cost is dependent upon both legal and administrative restrictions.

Fair and reasonable price determination example:

Contractors’ Fair and Reasonable Price determination are based on adequate data such as sales history data. The contractor needs to explain “how” an individual element of cost is determined (e.g., engineering estimates, historical data, parametric estimates, vendor quotes, forward pricing rates, etc.).

The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) requires contracting officials, before marking most agreements, to build up whether the cost is “reasonable and sensible.” Under certain conditions, a primary attestation by a contracting official is too’s fundamental. For instance, that could occur in a disentangled obtaining when just one offer is gotten, yet the contracting official has individual information about the thing being bought.

Under different conditions, if the contracting official expresses that “satisfactory value rivalry” exists and does a standard value examination, at that point, no more, as well. Good value rivalry exists when, at any rate, two organizations contend autonomously. Should just one organization react to sales, a rivalry is considered to exist in regular citizen obtainments if the contracting official accepts that the single organization’s statement or proposition depended on the desire for rivalry. In the Department of Defense, a solitary reaction requires a value examination.

A value investigation is practically what it seems like: examining the offered cost to chronicled costs paid for the equivalent or similar things. Matters become impressively more perplexing if the public authority requests guaranteed “cost-or-evaluating information,” which it can do freely for sales esteemed at $700,000 or more.

Try not to let the “or” in cost-or-evaluating information fool you – if the public authority demands it; it requires “all realities that … influence value dealings altogether.” Essentially, it’s the entirety of the data organizations use to set up value, which means immediate and backhanded expenses and benefits.

What considers an expense, as indicated by the public authority, goes through two tests – first, it must be “sensible,” and, second, it must be “passable.” The guidelines controlling the two ideas show up in FAR Part 31, devoted to cost standards and techniques. These administration cost standards are generally unfamiliar to the private area, and seeking after an open door requiring confirmed expense or value information could require costly particular government bookkeeping programming and administrations.

Guaranteed cost-or-valuing information additionally conveys with it lawful outcomes. Temporary workers must pronounce that the info is “precise, finished, and current.” Suppose an administration inspector discovers post-grant mistakes in the information. In that case, regardless of how inadvertent they might be, the finding in all likelihood will prompt value decreases, interest installments, and potential fines. The public authority has the privilege to review cost-or-valuing information for a very long time after the date of the conclusive installment.

There’s a great deal of disarray about what establishes flawed estimating; it doesn’t happen because real costs end up being not exactly the ensured sums. Cost-or-valuing information isn’t a gauge of agreement cost, yet instead, the simple premise contractual workers use to make an indicator and contracting officials use to grant an agreement. On the off chance that a temporary worker knows ahead of time it could get less expensive supplies than for the cost sum it confirmed, that is faulty valuing. On the off chance that a temporary worker oversees, post-grant, to bring down costs because of a superior arrangement with providers, that is business. The guidelines unmistakably express that affirmation “doesn’t comprise a portrayal concerning the exactness of the contractual worker’s judgment on the gauge of future expenses or projections.”

Fortunately, the FAR deters contracting officials from mentioning guaranteed cost-or-estimating information, in any event, venturing to such an extreme as to generally restrict its utilization for value sensibility conclusions in the securing of business things. Note, the FAR debilitates the solicitation of this information; however, it doesn’t forestall it. An authoritative adjustment to business thing acquisitions could trigger an expense or-evaluating information dump necessity regardless of whether the first agreement cost wasn’t determined to the premise of ensured information.

As complicated as it appears to give cost-or-evaluating information, the genuine hurt happens when contracting officials request “information other than confirmed expense or-valuing information” to make a reasonable value assurance. They’re inclined to asking that – and afterward, on, requesting accreditation before contract grant.

Daniel Smith

Daniel Smith

Daniel Smith is an experienced economist and financial analyst from Utah. He has been in finance for nearly two decades, having worked as a senior analyst for Wells Fargo Bank for 19 years. After leaving Wells Fargo Bank in 2014, Daniel began a career as a finance consultant, advising companies and individuals on economic policy, labor relations, and financial management. At Promtfinance.com, Daniel writes about personal finance topics, value estimation, budgeting strategies, retirement planning, and portfolio diversification. Read more on Daniel Smith's biography page. Contact Daniel: daniel@promtfinance.com

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