SAM.gov is the federal government's vendor registry. No registration, no UEI. No UEI, no certification, no bidding, and no federal grants either. It is free and it is the first thing to do.
What you need before you start
- Your legal business name and physical address, exactly as they appear on your state registration and your tax records. A mismatch is the single most common cause of rejection.
- Your EIN, and the name on the IRS record for it.
- Your bank routing and account number, for electronic payment.
- The NAICS codes your business operates under.
The login trap
SAM.gov does not manage its own passwords. Signing in goes through Login.gov, so a password or code failure is a Login.gov problem and has to be fixed there, not on SAM.gov. This confuses almost everyone the first time.
- Login.gov locks your account for ten minutes after too many password attempts or too many code requests. Retrying is what keeps it locked. Stop and wait.
- Set up more than one authentication method the day you create the account. If you lose your only method, Login.gov will not unlock it for you and will not sign in on your behalf. Your option at that point is deleting the account and starting over.
- Save your backup codes somewhere you will actually find them.
How long it takes
GSA says to allow at least ten business days for a registration to go active, and longer if they come back asking for documentation. Answer any request the day it arrives.
Keeping it alive
You must renew every 365 days. An expired SAM registration silently invalidates your certification eligibility and drops you out of the searches contracting officers use. Put the renewal date in your calendar the day you are approved.