Credits, Returns and Discounts on a GSA TDR Report

David Gul · Last updated October 22, 2026

ExcelGurus is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting for the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA). This guide describes GSA’s published instructions as of MAS TDR User Guide v2.0 (September 2026), as read on October 22, 2026; GSA updates them, so check its current pages before you report. It is not legal or tax advice.

GSA’s MAS TDR User Guide v2.0 reports a return as its own row: copy what you reported for the sale, then enter RTN as the unit, the quantity returned as a negative number, the unit price as a positive amount, and a negative total. This guide uses the same row for a credit on a services sale, such as hours credited back; the User Guide does not name credits, and GSA’s other pages do not all say the same, as set out below. A volume or prompt payment discount on a whole order is a VD or PPD row: the number of discounts as a negative quantity, the discount amount as a positive price, and a negative total. A discount already in the rate you invoiced needs no row at all. EG TDR Reporter, an Excel workbook for Windows, prepares and checks these rows from your invoice export.

Returns and credits: the User Guide’s return row

User Guide Appendix 3 presents the return row as the way to avoid paying the IFF on what the customer returned. Copy the data elements you reported for the sale (contract number, order number, description, SIN and the rest) and change four of them:

Everything else repeats the sale: the same order number, the same description (the labor category title, or the SCLS string), and the same SIN, non-federal entity, federal customer, UCID and cloud service type. GSA’s Help with TDR page gives the same rule for returns. The User Guide speaks only of returns; applied to a credit of hours, the quantity is the hours credited and the price the hourly rate.

The User Guide does not say in which month a return row is reported. If a credit reaches back to a month already reported and you are unsure, SRP’s FAQ sends questions about what to report to your contracting officer, administrative contracting officer or Industrial Operations Analyst.

Volume and prompt payment discounts

User Guide Table 5.7 applies when you report a volume or prompt payment discount on an entire order instead of giving the discount line by line. The discount row carries:

• Unit: VD for a volume discount, PPD for a prompt payment discount.
• Quantity: the number of discounts applied to the order, as a negative number.
• Price Paid per Unit: the dollar amount of the discount, positive.
• Total: the quantity times the price, a negative number. GSA’s example: -10 times $50.00 is -$500.00.
• SIN: as on the line you are discounting. The UCID stays blank; on a cloud SIN the row still names its cloud service type.

A discount that is already in the rate you invoiced is not a separate row. The price paid per unit is the net price charged to the customer, inclusive of all discounts, so the lower rate is simply what you report.

Where GSA’s pages say something else

This guide follows User Guide v2.0, and SRP’s upload instructions give discounts the same signs. Two other GSA pages read differently:

1. Help with TDR, on credits. The Help page says to follow the instructions in the FAS SRP Excel template for returns and credits. The template’s own instructions sheet sends you to SRP’s MAS File Upload Instructions, which is also where the Help page’s link opens, and that page’s section on returns is headed “PRODUCTS ONLY” and lists product fields. That page does not mention credits.
2. SRP’s FAQ on credit memos. Business FAQ 11 says the system will not accept negative values, and that sales to be removed from a report are taken out by adjusting the month in which the sale was reported.

So GSA’s own words give two routes: a return row in the User Guide’s form, or an adjustment of the original month. An adjustment goes through Adjust Data, File Upload, with a justification, and the file you upload there replaces everything already reported for that month, so it must hold every row of the month, not only the corrected ones. The Help page also names Adjust Data for data reported in the wrong period.

Returns, discounts and the IFF

SRP calculates the IFF due when you submit a month’s report. Appendix 3 gives avoiding the IFF on returned items as the reason to report a return, and a discount row lowers the month’s reported total in the same way.

In EG TDR Reporter

• Credits are found in your export: a row whose transaction type is a credit memo, refund receipt, refund or credit, or, when the export has no type column, a row with a negative amount. Each is written in the Appendix 3 form, RTN with a negative quantity, a positive price and a negative total, and the rest of the row as the sale’s.
• Discount lines are answered once in the Match names step, “Discount: volume (VD)” or “Discount: prompt payment (PPD)”, and written as VD or PPD rows with the same signs.
• Review checks the signs and the units. Only returns and discounts carry negative hours and amounts, and a sale never uses RTN, VD or PPD; either finding holds back the file.
• Two Warnings. A return whose order has no sale in the month shows “Return without a sale this month”. Its own advice is that nothing more is needed in the workbook when the sale was reported in an earlier month; SRP’s FAQ would instead adjust that earlier month, as set out above. A month whose returns bring its total to zero or less is flagged too.
• The IFF estimate on the file’s message and in the Archive is 0.75% of the month’s net total, returns and discounts included; SRP’s figure is the one you pay.

Sources

GSA’s own pages, as read on October 22, 2026. They change; the current versions are the ones that count.

• GSA, Multiple Award Schedule TDR User Guide, Version 2.0 (PDF) (www.gsa.gov), updated September 2026: Table 4.1, Table 5.7 and Appendix 3
• GSA, Help with Transactional Data Reporting (www.gsa.gov), last updated Oct 8, 2026: the Credits, Returns and wrong-period rows
• SRP user guide, MAS File Upload Instructions (srp.fas.gsa.gov), returns (products only), discount line items, Price Paid per Unit
• SRP FAQs (srp.fas.gsa.gov), Business FAQ 11; System FAQ 7
• SRP user guide, Adjust Data by File Upload (srp.fas.gsa.gov)
• FAS Sales Reporting Portal (SRP), where the Excel template is linked (srp.fas.gsa.gov), template version 4.2, its Reporting Instructions sheet
• SRP user guide, MAS Tables (units of measure, non-federal entity and federal customer codes) (srp.fas.gsa.gov)

More in this series: How to Prepare Your Monthly GSA Sales Reporting (TDR) Upload File · Correcting a GSA TDR Report: Adjust Data Replaces the Whole Month · The GSA Industrial Funding Fee (IFF): Rate, How It Is Figured, When and How to Pay · All GSA Sales Reporting guides