General Price List (GPL)

Every funeral home has one document that a grieving family, an FTC investigator, and a buyer’s accountant all end up reading: the price list on the arrangement table. Federal rules dictate its format down to the wording of certain sentences. The owner decides the numbers. This page explains what the GPL is, what it must contain, and how it gets read when a firm changes hands. It is part of our operations hub.

When does a funeral home have to hand out its GPL?

At the start of any face-to-face discussion of prices, the overall type of funeral or disposition, or specific goods and services. The family keeps the copy.

Section 453.2(b)(4) of the FTC Funeral Rule in 16 CFR Part 453 says this applies “whether the discussion takes place in the funeral home or elsewhere,” so an arrangement at a family’s kitchen table counts. There is one narrow exception. Asking permission to embalm when the body is first removed does not by itself trigger the list, as long as the director discloses that embalming is not required by law except in certain special cases.

Phone callers are handled differently. The Rule does not require mailing a GPL to someone who calls, but staff must answer price questions with accurate information from the price lists. No federal rule currently requires posting the list on a website. The FTC asked in 2022 whether it should, an inquiry covered on our FTC Funeral Rule definition page.

What must a General Price List include?

A header with the firm’s name, address, and phone number, the caption “General Price List,” and an effective date; a price for each of 16 specified items the firm offers; and four mandatory disclosures.

The FTC’s compliance manual, Complying with the Funeral Rule, counts the items as 16. A firm lists only the ones it actually sells, in any order, and may add others such as urns or acknowledgment cards.

The four disclosures, as the FTC’s rule summary describes them, tell the family that it may choose only the items it wants, that embalming is not always required by law, that alternative containers are available for direct cremation, and that the basic services fee is the only fee it can be required to pay. Each has mandatory wording and placement. The direct cremation, immediate burial, forwarding, and receiving prices must already include the basic services fee.

How do you verify a GPL is accurate?

Compare the list against the Rule, then against what families actually paid. The second test catches more problems than the first.

The paper check is mechanical. Every item offered is priced, the effective date is current, the four disclosures appear word for word where the Rule places them, and no second non-declinable fee hides under another name. Section 453.2(b)(4)(iv) allows only one.

The practice check uses signed paperwork. The FTC’s guide says list prices “should reflect the prices that you actually charge your customers,” and warns against inflating prices to discount nearly everyone. If 80% of families get a “courtesy discount,” the discounted figure is the real price. Buyers pull the itemized form each family signed, described in our Statement of Funeral Goods and Services Selected definition, and compare it line by line with the GPL in effect that day. Our Funeral Rule compliance audit for buyers sets out the full test procedure.

How do sellers, buyers, and lenders read the GPL?

Sellers treat it as their pricing strategy, buyers as the starting point for a revenue forecast, and lenders as indirect evidence of whether historical revenue will hold.

Sellers

Three years of dated GPLs show pricing discipline. Annual increases that families accepted without a drop in calls look like pricing power. A firm that has not raised prices in five years hands the buyer obvious upside, and buyers rarely pay a seller for upside they plan to create themselves. Our guide to pricing your GPL before you sell covers competitor surveys and timing.

Buyers

Buyers turn the GPL into average revenue per call by disposition, then ask how much room the local market leaves. National medians are a weak guide here. The latest NFDA figures, from its 2023 price study as reported by Funeral Director Daily, put the median adult funeral with viewing and burial at $8,300 and a funeral with viewing and cremation at $6,280. Local prices can sit far from either number.

Lenders

Lenders and quality-of-earnings providers rarely critique the list itself. They test whether reported revenue ties to deposits and whether recent price increases explain growth that might not repeat. A big jump in revenue per call in the final year, with flat calls, invites the question of whether families will keep paying it.

Why can a GPL increase make a preneed shortfall worse?

Because guaranteed-price preneed contracts are valued at what they would cost to deliver today, and today’s cost means the current GPL. Raise the list, and the obligation grows while the funding stays put.

Rung 4 of the Preneed Reconciliation Ladder re-prices each guaranteed contract at the current GPL. That is the right test, but it means a late price increase has two effects that pull in opposite directions.

The lesson is not to avoid price increases. It is to make them early enough that a buyer can see families paying them, and to run the preneed math before the new list takes effect, not after.

What mistakes do owners make with the GPL?

The costly ones are pricing habits, not typos: packages offered in place of itemized prices, a second mandatory fee, and stale lists nobody hands out.

1. Offering only packages. The FTC guide allows packages “in addition to and not in place of” itemized prices, including on lists used for preneed sales.
2. Adding a fee families cannot decline, such as a charge for handling a casket bought elsewhere. Only the basic services fee may be mandatory.
3. Letting versions pile up. Section 453.6 requires keeping each list for at least one year after it was last given out, so every version a buyer finds is one the firm must be able to produce.
4. Quoting packages by phone. The FTC’s 2024 phone-sweep staff report found at least 33% of 278 providers gave package prices without itemized prices.
5. Assuming a web page settles compliance. The Rule tests the in-person handoff. In its October 2022 announcement, the FTC said fewer than 40 percent of provider websites it reviewed showed any prices at all. Posting is optional; the handoff is not.

Our funeral home compliance checklist puts the GPL review alongside the other records a buyer will request.