June 30 is the end of the fiscal year for many state and local governments, according to a Public Budgets web document from the National League of Cities.

An analysis from Onvia explains that “At the end of the fiscal year, agency contacts are working to spend any remaining budget – creating opportunities for vendors to drive new business revenue at the fiscal year end.” The report provides a fast look at how the fiscal year-end for agencies affects government contract opportunities. Go here to view Onvia’s 2016 report on this topic. 

Seattle-based Onvia provides current and future bidding opportunities as well as agency and competitive insights. The firm tracks over 600,000 new bids & RFPs that government entities issue each year.

There is a spending surge at the end of the fiscal year, says Dahshi Marshall. Recalling his days when he was a senior management analyst for the Atlanta Regional Commission, Marshall tells GPN: “I worked for a metropolitan planning organization, which dealt a lot with federal money, but from my experience it was common for our state-level planning partners (Georgia Department of Transportation, Department of Community Affairs, etc.) to experience an end-of-year rush in trying to spend remaining funds.”

Marshall says it was also common for county and local governments to reach out to state-level agencies and ask if there was any unused funding available at the end of the fiscal year that could be spent on projects in their jurisdictions. Marshall is now Director, Business Insights at Penton’s EquipmentWatch.

GPN reached out to BidNet’s Keith Engle to find out about government sales opportunities for vendors before June 30. Latham, N.Y.-based BidNet gathers federal, state and local government RFP’s from across the United States, and delivers new contract opportunities to its clients each day. Engle is BidNet’s sales and client support manager. Below are Engle’s views:

GPN: Does state and local government spending accelerate as the end of the fiscal year approaches on June 30?

Keith Engle: Generally, we see that government spending accelerates at the very end and the very beginning of a fiscal period. While many governments have their fiscal year ending in June, we also see a majority of state and local agencies’ fiscal years running April through March. Spending and requests for quotes tend to increase about two months before fiscal year-end, and agencies with funds remaining scramble to spend them. At the beginning of the fiscal period, we see more fresh funds flow to agencies. Those agencies spend the monies on projects they need to implement and large RFPs.

GPN: Do you have any advice for vendors that hope to sell to government as the end of the fiscal year approaches?

KE: New government contracts are out there for the taking every day of the year, not just at the end of fiscal years. At BidNet, we have hundreds of thousands of state and local government bids ready to win each year.

Our advice is always to know what is out there, receive relevant bid alerts for open contracts matching your business products or services, and respond according to the terms the government agency has provided. There are a lot of state and local bids out there; we find them and deliver them to the vendors, so that vendors can focus on winning the contract.

Does spending accelerate in your agency near the end of the fiscal year? Please share your views in the Discuss this Article box below!

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