Thinking of registering your company in a federal or state vendor portal to find business opportunities?

The good news is you can register your company on-line.  The bad news is you will have to do it over 50 times to cover all the Federal & US states and agencies.

And like doing your taxes, it is best to be prepared. If not, you may be subject to website timeouts, lost information and other maladies if you are not ready with the requested information.

Here is a list of registration information the great state of Indiana requires of companies wanting to bid on state contracts there. And why would you even want to do business in Indiana? Well that’s another blog post.  Indiana’s requirements is by no means a complete list of the things you need to answer, which to be frank, is rather small compared to other states.  But this will give you an idea of the basic pieces of information you should have at the ready:

1. Legal Name
(and it better be the same as what’s on your W9 form)
2. Owner’s Gender
3. Owner’s Ethnicity
4. Taxpayer ID Number (TIN)
5. Signed W9 form
6. CEO Name
7. Submitter Name
8. Valid Email Address
9. Receive orders preference (email, mail or fax)
10. Indiana Veteran Business Enterprises status
11. Minority/Women Business Enterprises status
12. Small Business Information status
13. Secretary of State Registration Information
14. NAICS Codes
15. Mailing Address information
16. United Nations Standard Product and Services Codes (UNSPSC) information

For more information and helpful hints, follow this blog or click here to contact me.