While heading to the SAM.gov website is the first step for government contractors, once you’ve registered with SAM there are many other government websites and related websites that you may find helpful. Here’s a look at SAM.gov as well as a few other websites contractors might need.
The SAM.Gov Website
If you’re reading this, you probably already know that SAM (which stands for System for Award Management) is a huge database that lists all current government contractors. Once your business has been listed on this website, you can start bidding on government contracts, but the process of registration is neither easy nor fast. It can take 20 hours or more to figure out all of the intricacies of SAM registration, which is why many people simply hire a third party (such as ourselves) to complete the process.
SBA.Gov
While the SAM.gov website isn’t the most user-friendly and helpful tool for contactors, SBA.gov can be an excellent resource. This is the website for the U.S. Small Business Administration. This website can help those with established businesses as well as those just starting out. This website can provide you with government contracting advice, business counseling and there are even low-interest SBA-guaranteed business loans available.
You might believe that your business doesn’t qualify as a “small” business, but it pays to check. The SBA categorizes small businesses either by the number of employees or by the amount of annual receipts, and this varies widely by industry. For instance, some businesses qualify if they have 25 or fewer employees, while some companies might have two or three times that amount and still qualify.
Census.gov
In order to check and see your business qualifies for SBA programs, you can go to https://www.sba.gov/size-standards/. You do need to provide some information, such as your annual receipts and your North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code. This is information you will need if you register with the SAM.gov website, as well, and can be attained via the U.S. Census Bureau at https://www.census.gov/eos/www/naics/.
Keep in mind, this is a 950+ page document, and determining your specific NAICS code can be quite the time-consuming process. If we complete your SAM registration, we will determine this code as part of the process, and then you can go back to SBA.gov and check, which takes only about a minute.
GSA.gov & FedBizOpps.gov
The General Services Administration is the federal agency that was developed to help support all other federal agencies. The GSA is tasked with the construction and management of government buildings, as well as supporting communications systems for federal agencies and even providing leased vehicles for various federal agencies. The GSA also runs the FedBizOpps.gov website, which is a database that lists thousands of government contracting jobs.
Some of these jobs will have a special “Set-Aside” code. This means that a portion of federal contracting jobs are supposed to be set aside for specific types of businesses. For instance, if you have a veteran-owned small business or a woman-owned small business, a certain percentage of contracting jobs are set aside for these types of companies, and if you qualify under one of these “Set-Aside” codes, it can make finding contracting jobs easier to find and attain.
USA.Gov
The USA.gov website provides a huge array of helpful information. You can learn about available grants and loans, learn about various government agencies, find information about travel and immigration and find information about government contracting. We recommend that you start at https://www.usa.gov/government-contracting-for-beginners. This includes a section on common federal contracting terms as well as general help with bidding on contracts and finding those contracts.
Of course, as we’ve said before, government contracting all begins with your SAM registration. Learning the ropes of government contracting can be tricky, and if you’d rather skip the hassle of dealing with SAM registration and the SAM.gov website, contact Federal Contractor Registry today. We’ve helped hundreds of companies, from small businesses to Fortune 500 corporations, deal with this time-consuming registration process.