Sit in an arrangement room long enough and you stop assuming people read the GPL. They don''t. They scan it. They look for three numbers, decide whether your home is in their range, and put the document down.
If those three numbers are wrong — wrong format, wrong wording, wrong position on the page — they''ve already moved on by the time you''re explaining the rest. Get them right and the rest of the document does its job.
Here are the three lines. In order.
Line 1: The Basic Services Fee
This is the first dollar amount they see, and it sets the entire price ceiling in their head. If your BSF is at the top of the regional band, the whole rest of the GPL reads expensive — even if your casket and cremation pricing is below median.
Two things matter:
- Where the number sits on the page. Most families do not read past the first $2,000 figure they see. If your GPL buries the BSF on page two below a wall of disclosure boilerplate, you''re competing against the impression they formed from your casket line. Move the BSF to the top of the first content page, above any package pricing.
- The label. "Basic Services Fee" is the FTC''s required language. Some homes try to soften it — "Professional Services," "Funeral Director''s Care" — and end up confusing families who came in having seen "Basic Services Fee" on three competitor GPLs. Don''t fight the standard label. Use it. Make the number compete; let the label match every other home in the county.
Line 2: Direct Cremation
This one matters because it''s the price floor — the lowest legitimate number you offer — and most families know within $300 what the going rate is in their market. They''re testing your price against that number to decide whether you''re predatory, fair, or generous.
Three failures I see constantly:
- The price is artificially low because the home doesn''t want to be undercut on Google. Then in the arrangement room you discover the "direct cremation" price doesn''t include the cremation container, doesn''t include transportation past 10 miles, doesn''t include the death certificate. Families notice. They tell their pastor. Your reputation pays for the $200 you saved on the GPL.
- The price is buried under five footnotes. A family reading the GPL alone — which is most of them — can''t tell what they''d actually pay. Make the price the price. If there''s a container fee, fold it in or list it as one obvious add-on, not three footnotes deep.
- The price is at the back of the GPL. Direct cremation should appear on the same page as your other package pricing, in the same format. If a family has to flip three pages to find it, they assume you''re hiding it.
Line 3: Casket — lowest available
This is the one most owners get wrong because they''re embarrassed by it. Federal law requires you to offer a price list of caskets and to include the lowest available in the GPL or the separate Casket Price List. Most homes either:
- Print a number for a $695 cloth-covered casket they''d never actually want a family to choose, or
- Print a $1,895 number and quietly skip the lower-end option
Both are mistakes. The number should be the price of a casket you''d genuinely sell — one that''s in stock, that the family can actually pick, that you''re comfortable with. If your lowest available casket is $895 and it''s a decent metal, print $895. Let your $2,400 hardwood compete on its own merits a line down. Families respect a home that doesn''t hide the floor.
The owners who get this right end up selling more mid-tier caskets, not fewer. Because once a family sees that you''re not playing games at the bottom, they trust the rest of the price list. The mid-tier becomes the obvious choice, not the "upsell."
The fourth thing — almost everyone forgets
If you have the first three lines right, the document does most of its job. But there''s a fourth thing families read, and it''s not a price: it''s the plain-English description under "Services of Funeral Director and Staff." If yours reads like it was written by a lawyer in 1996, families tune out. If it reads like a real person explained what your team actually does — coordinating with the church, filing the death certificate, handling the calls from out-of-town relatives — they put the document down trusting your home.
Three sentences. Plain words. No legalese. That''s the standard.
What we check in the free grade
When you upload your GPL to the free grader, those three lines are the first ones we look at. We pull your BSF, your Direct Cremation price, and your lowest available casket, compare each to regional median, and flag any of the three that''s positioned poorly on the page or buried in footnotes.
If all three are clean, you''re ahead of 70% of independent homes I see. If one is off, the report tells you exactly what to change. If two or three are off — and most homes have at least one — that''s your first revision pass.
It''s the three lines families actually read. Get them right.
— Nathan