How & When To Renew SAM Registration

If you want to do business with the federal government (and many state governments), you need an active listing in the System for Award Management (SAM) database. If you’ve already completed this process, it is important to know when and how to renew SAM registration and we can help.

When Should You Renew SAM Registration?
Your SAM registration is active for one year from the day the government approves your initial SAM registration. So you might think all you have to do is renew a few days or a week before the expiration date. However, you should start thinking about how to renew SAM registration several months in advance.

Government agencies can only do business with entities that have an active SAM registration. If a procurement agent (the proper term for a government employee tasked with selecting contractors) sees that your SAM registration is within two or fewer months of the expiration date, they might be wary about doing business with you.

This is because if you are in the middle of a contract and your registration expires, the government is no longer authorized to conduct business with you or your company. This means they won’t be able to receive the goods or services they need and you won’t get paid either.

We highly recommend that you renew SAM registration at least two months ahead of time to ensure that your renewal is approved with plenty of time to spare before that expiration date. This is especially important during the current pandemic, as this has forced the Federal Service Desk to modify its operations. If you head to the Federal Service Desk website (FSD.gov), they also state that the registration and renewal approval process as slowed down due to an influx of new registrations.

The Federal Service Desk is the government agency in charge of managing the SAM database as well as several other government systems, including beta.SAM.gov. This site is a helpful resource for all government contractors as it is basically a search engine allowing contractors to search for available jobs by agency, by date, by NAICS codes and more.

How To Renew SAM Registration
There are two ways to renew your SAM registration. You can go into your current listing and update it yourself or you can hire a third-party registration service to complete the renewal process for you. Renewal is free if you do it yourself, but it can be complicated and time-consuming, so many people just hire a company such as Federal Contractor Registry to handle this task.

At Federal Contractor Registry, we can quickly and accurately complete your SAM renewal so that you can be approved as quickly as possible. If your renewal is not completed correctly, this can lead to delays, which can be costly if you have jobs you wish to bid on in the immediate future. Sometimes it’s simply easier to have someone else handle this task for you.

A Word About Notarized Letters
If you are new to the world of government contracting and have not yet completed SAM registration, one of the steps you need to take was completing and sending in your SAM notarized letter to the Federal Service Desk identifying your Entity Administrator, which is simply the person in charge of making any needed changes to your SAM account.

For those who simply need to renew SAM registration, you probably already have sent in a notarized letter with your initial SAM registration. If you already sent the letter, there is no need to send a new one every time you renew your registration. If for some reason, you have not submitted this letter or you are working on your first SAM registration, instructions for this letter can be found as FSD.gov under the Top Help Topics tab.

Other Changes To SAM
Earlier in this article, we referred to beta.SAM.gov, which is a database that lists government contracting jobs. This is a new database and it has replaced FedBizOpps.gov or FBO.gov, so if you were thinking about checking that website, it no longer exists. The new site looks quite a bit different, but it is relatively easy to navigate and find contacts.

We usually recommend that people look for government contractor jobs using their NAICS codes, as this provides results that are a close match to the goods and services that you provide. You also can search by agency, location, set aside, PSCs or even by type of notice.

In addition to the switch from FBO.gov, there will be changes to the DUNS number system coming down the pipe fairly soon. DUNS was managed by Dun & Bradstreet, and when you registered with Dun & Bradstreet, you received what is known as a DUNS number often just called a DUNS.

This is a required number for SAM registration, but the government has awarded a contract to another company and the DUNS numbers will be phased out and replaced with a code called a Unique Entity Identifier or UEI. This change was supposed to be complete by December 2020, but the switch (and 2020 to be frank) has not gone as smoothly as planned. Therefore, this date has been extended to a mystery date in the future. At any rate, if you have heard about this switch and were wondering what to do, the short answer is that you don’t need to do anything at present.

If you do need to renew SAM registration, and would prefer to leave this process to SAM experts, we are always here to help and we make SAM renewal as easy and fast as possible. To get started, just click on the blue Renew Registration tab on our homepage. If you can’t remember when your SAM registration expires, just click on the Status Check tab and we will be happy to check it out for you at no charge.