Your export has no UCID
An invoice export knows what it was built to know: contract number, order number, part, quantity, unit price, total. It does not know your Unique Catalog Identifier, and it has never heard of Cloud Service Type. Refresh 31 requires both. That gap is not a mistake in your accounting system — it is a gap between two systems that were never asked to talk.
The five fields the grace period is about
These columns appear on the v4.2 MAS tab without an asterisk. The template's own stars are its statement of what is mandatory, and these are not starred. The obligation comes from GSA's Refresh 31 guidance instead, which is exactly why there is a grace period attached to them.
| Column | Where it has to come from | When it is owed |
|---|---|---|
UCID |
Your GSA Advantage catalog, not your invoice. | Where applicable. GSA's trial-period wording points at items not listed for click-and-buy. |
Cloud Service Type |
The service model of the offering — how you sell it, not how you bill it. | Cloud SINs only: SIN matches or begins with 518210C. |
Federal Customer |
The ordering agency, usually on the order rather than the invoice line. | Where the line has one. |
Ship Date |
Your fulfilment or shipping records. | Products. A services line has nothing to ship. |
Zip Code Shipped To |
The delivery address, not the billing address. | Products, same as above. |
What happens on 01 January 2027
Through 31 December 2026 GSA does not take enforcement action for good-faith errors when entering required data fields. A blank UCID in a report filed in September 2026 is a good-faith gap. The same blank in a report filed in February 2027 is a compliance record.
Nothing about the file changes on that date. The template is the same, the deadline is the same, the portal is the same. What changes is that a Contracting Officer now has something to act on.
What this tool does about it
The validator raises every one of these fields when it is empty, and it changes what it calls the result on the date GSA changes what it does about it:
| Filing on | Empty UCID reads as |
|---|---|
| today, 19 August 2026 | graced until 31 Dec 2026 |
| 01 January 2027 onward | enforced since 01 Jan 2027 |
Cloud Service Type is the exception: it is only raised on a line whose SIN begins with
518210C. On any other SIN the field is not owed, and a validator that demanded
it anyway would be teaching you to ignore it.
Because these are usually the same value for every line, or missing from the export entirely, they are raised once per column with a count — not once per row. One fixed value in the mapping fills all of them, and a paid account keeps that mapping, so you set it once rather than every month.
Three fields that are not on the upload template
Refresh 31's list of new required elements also names Order Type, Order Discount and Worksite. The v4.2 Excel upload template has no column for any of them — it has 18 MAS columns, and those three are not among them. Where they are collected is the portal, not this file.
If GSA adds columns for them, the template file itself changes. This tool pins the official workbook by checksum and stops producing output rather than guessing at a version it has not verified, so a new template shows up as a halt, not as a wrong file.
What to do before the year ends
- Open one of your monthly exports and look for these five columns. Most people find none of them.
- Decide for each one where the value would come from — catalog, order, shipping, or a constant.
- Set it up once now, while a blank is still a warning rather than a finding.
- If your SINs include
518210C, settle Cloud Service Type first; it is the one with a condition GSA states precisely.
Check your own file. Upload your invoice export or a template you have filled in. You get every error and the finished official file, free and without an account.
Open the free validator Then $79/month if you want it to remember everything.Read from GSA's published Refresh 31 material and MAS-TDR guidance, checked 2026-08-17. Applicability differs per contract and per SIN — confirm against your own modification and your Contracting Officer.