Compliance

Federal contracts don’t automatically transfer in a sale or merger. See when a novation agreement is required and how to plan for it before closing.

DCAA expects daily self-recorded time, real supervisor approval, and a documented correction trail. Here is what an adequate timekeeping system actually requires.

The ICE submission is due six months after fiscal year end. Here is who has to file, the required schedules, and the mistakes that cause rejection.

VETS-4212 is an annual veteran employment report required above a dollar threshold. Here is who must file, the deadline, and why it gets missed.

A provisional billing rate is your estimate of year-end indirect rates. Here is how a new contractor sets one with no actuals to forecast from.

Every small business in federal contracting eventually hits the same confusing moment: someone mentions “CUI” and you’re not sure if that applies to you, or if you’re just dealing with ordinary FCI. Getting this wrong isn’t a paperwork technicality — it determines whether you need basic safeguarding or a full NIST 800-171 implementation, and which…

Section 889 has quietly disqualified more small businesses from federal contracting than almost any other single compliance rule — not because the underlying requirement is complicated, but because contractors skip the annual SAM.gov certification, get it wrong, or don’t realize it applies to their entire company, not just their federal-facing operations. Here’s what it actually…

Nothing in CMMC or DFARS explicitly requires you to carry cyber insurance — but the way CMMC compliance actually works has created a real, specific financial exposure that most small federal contractors haven’t fully priced in. Here’s what the actual risk is, and what a policy for a federal contractor should cover. The Real Exposure…

The SBA has proposed the biggest rewrite of small business size standards in decades — and if it goes through as written, an estimated 114,541 additional firms would qualify as “small,” including 37,002 companies that already hold federal contracts. If you’ve built your business around a specific NAICS code and a specific receipts threshold, this…

Every small defense contractor eventually gets told they need a system security plan. Almost nobody gets told where that requirement actually comes from, what has to be in it, or why the document they downloaded from a template site will fail an assessment. This is the practical version, written for a shop with five people…