If you want to do business with the federal government, completing your System for Award Management (SAM) registration is the first step. But in addition to this application a notarized letter must be sent to the Federal Service Desk (FSD). Here’s a few quick facts about the SAM notarized letter.
1. The SAM Notarized Letter Is A New Requirement
The notarized letter requirement has only been around for about a year or so. The General Services Administration (GSA), which is responsible for the SAM database, noticed possible security issues with the database.
These issues only affected a few contractors, but the GSA decided to increase security and require anyone completing SAM registrations (or renewals) to submit a notarized letter identifying the Entity Administrator for their SAM registration. This Entity Administrator is the person who is authorized to make changes to your SAM account.
2. You No Longer Must Have Letter Approval Before SAM Approval
When this whole letter requirement came about, anyone renewing or registering with SAM had to have their letter received and processed by the FSD before they could gain SAM approval.
This was a logistic nightmare because the FSD was inundated with thousands of these notarized letters and could not process them quickly enough. Many people with existing registrations that were simply renewing ended up with inactive SAM accounts. If your SAM account is inactive, you cannot do business with the government, so you can imagine the hassle for companies that were in the bidding process or in the middle of an actual contracting job.
In the end, the FSD decided that your SAM registration or renewal could become active without prior letter approval. You do still have to send in this letter, but you can gain SAM registration approval before the FSD reviews the letter. It is crucial that you send it in, however, as it must be received by FSD within 60 days of your SAM registration.
3. There Are Letter Templates
You might be wondering how to write this SAM notarized letter, but fortunately there are some handy templates available at FSD.gov. Once you reach the homepage, look up at the top of the page where you’ll find a tab that says, “Top Help Topics.” This is divided into several sections, so go under the SAM section and select New Registration – Notarized Letter Requirement (Domestic).
Under this section, you will see a question about the notarized letter followed by the answer. In this answer, there is a link to Template 1 and Template 2. Then simply copy this letter verbatim, get it notarized and send it off. That’s all you have to do.
4. Renewals Now Can Skip The Letter
When the letter first was required, everyone had to submit a letter, either for initial registration or renewal. However, now that more than a year has passed, most people renewing their SAM registration already have submitted the SAM notarized letter. If you are renewing and already have sent in a letter, you need not send it in again. So, you can save yourself at least one step in the renewal process.
5. We Can Handle Your Registration
While we can’t complete your SAM notarized letter, we can take SAM registration off your hands. As a third-party registration service, we handle hundreds of SAM registration every year for companies of all sizes.
While the government loves to tell you that SAM registration is free, what they don’t tell you is that it can take more than 10 hours to complete the application. Many people become so frustrated with the SAM application that they simply give up and walk away from the idea of government contracting.
That’s a huge shame, because the government spends billions of dollars on government contracts each year, and it’s not just money going to huge corporations. The government sets aside a portion of its contracting budget specifically for small businesses. If you find SAM registration to be frustrating or you’ve just heard some horror stories, skip the hassles and let Federal Contractor Registry help.
Hiring us is similar to hiring an accountant to do your taxes. Filing taxes is free, but tax codes are complicated, so it often makes sense to bypass the frustration and hire a tax expert. We are SAM experts and quickly will complete your SAM registration so that you can concentrate on running your business.
To get started, simply click on the New Registration tab on our homepage. We’ll handle all the heavy lifting and you can concentrate on sending in that SAM notarized letter and searching for contracting opportunities.