Frequently Asked Questions

A UEI is a 12-character identifier assigned by SAM.gov that is used to identify businesses and organizations doing business with the federal government. A UEI is required to bid on and receive federal contracts, grants, and other awards.

To obtain a UEI, create an account and register your business at SAM.gov. As part of the registration process, you’ll need to provide information about your business and verify your entity by submitting documentation for review. Once your registration is complete and your entity is validated, your UEI will be assigned at no cost.

North American Industry Classification Systems (NAICS) codes are six digits and are used to categorize the type of work that your business performs.

Businesses are allowed to have multiple codes and must choose one as a primary code when registering in SAM.gov.

Most emails that the entity administrator will receive relating to SAM.gov are from consultants looking for payment to help with your SAM.gov account and are not from the government.

A good rule of thumb is that if the email address does not end in .gov, it is likely a consulting group. If you are still unsure, please contact us and we can help ensure your SAM.gov account is up to date.

An entity administrator is the individual responsible for making changes to a business’s SAM.gov registration. By default, the person who created the registration in SAM.gov is deemed the entity administrator.

You can change the entity administrator by submitting an entity administrator appointment letter to the Federal Service Desk.

The State of New York posts solicitations on the New York State Contract Reporter.

You will need to create an account to view these opportunities.

We do not charge for our services. We are funded in part through a cooperative agreement with the Department of War.

As determined in Hertz Corp. v. Friend, “…the phrase “principal place of business” refers to the place where the corporation’s high level officers direct, control, and coordinate the corporation’s activities.” Also known as the “nerve center” of the business, the headquarters is generally the address a company would list on their SAM.gov registration if doing business with the federal government. A corporation can be incorporated in a different state than where its headquarters are located but for the purposes of the Empire APEX Accelerator (EAA) counseling eligibility, we use the headquarters address, and not the incorporation address, to determine if you are eligible for counseling or referred to another APEX Accelerator.

This is important because our team of counselors cannot service all companies that simply have a NYS address or an employee who lives in our service area. Our federal funding is limited to those companies based (aka headquartered) in our local service area. Our service area includes the following 41 counties of New York State:

Albany, Allegany, Broome, Cattaraugus, Chautauqua, Chemung, Chenango, Clinton, Columbia, Cortland, Delaware, Dutchess, Essex, Franklin, Fulton, Greene, Hamilton, Herkimer, Jefferson, Lewis, Madison, Montgomery, Oneida, Orange, Oswego, Otsego, Putnam, Rensselaer, Saratoga, Schenectady, Schoharie, Schuyler, St. Lawrence, Steuben, Sullivan, Tioga, Tompkins, Ulster, Warren, Washington & Westchester

We often receive many requests for counseling from companies headquartered in other parts of the country because they believe we have greater insights into doing business with NYS agencies. This is a misunderstanding of our role as educators. All APEX Accelerators nationwide are positioned to provide one-on-one counseling on doing business with the Federal Government and work with agencies both locally and virtually to host events for their clients. A business may not use the counseling services of more than one APEX Accelerator unless it is coordinated through their local jurisdiction, should the local counselor need additional guidance/assistance from an APEX Procurement Counselor elsewhere in the country.

If your company is based outside of the EAA service area but you are seeking to do business with State/Local government in NYS, simply request assistance from your local APEX Accelerator and your assigned counselor will reach out to our program if they have any questions on doing business with State/Local entities specific to NYS.

Additional reading on “principal place of business” can be found here: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/principal_place_of_business

Working with APEX Accelerator does not guarantee a contract. This It will also depends on you and your willingness to investment of time and resources. On average, it takes 12-18 months to secure your first government contract., againHowever, some contracts may be receiveavailable contracts sooner.

APEX Accelerators help individuals and nonprofit organizations with the basic processes or database registrations that are required to do business with the federal government. However, we do not provide grant or loan assistance. The mission of Empire APEX Accelerator is to help businesses do business with government.