What an exclusion is
SAM.gov publishes the government-wide list of parties that are debarred, suspended, proposed for debarment or otherwise excluded from federal procurement and nonprocurement programs. Each record names the excluding agency, the type of exclusion, the dates it is active and, when the agency recorded them, the company's UEI and CAGE code.
An exclusion can be added on any day. A supplier that was clean when you onboarded it can be excluded months later, which is why primes re-check rather than search once. FAR 52.209-6 limits subcontracting with excluded parties: see what FAR 52.209-6 requires.
Linked records and name matches are different things
When an exclusion record carries the supplier's UEI or CAGE code, it is that registration's exclusion. When it only resembles the supplier's name, it may be a different company with a similar name. Treat those differently:
- Linked by UEI or CAGE: a fact about that registration. Act on it.
- Similar name only: a possible match. A person should compare the address, agency and dates and decide, and that decision should be recorded.
Watch states the first as a finding against the supplier and shows the second as "possible exclusion match, confirm", never as a finding until someone at your company confirms it.
How often to check
SAM.gov publishes its exclusions extract daily. Checking each supplier when you onboard it, again before each award, and on a regular schedule in between covers most programs; your contract or your own policy may set a stricter rule.
Watch loads the exclusions daily. When an entry is added, changed or removed, it re-checks the suppliers it could touch within about 15 minutes, whatever their schedule. Each supplier is also re-checked daily by default, every 6 hours when you mark it critical and weekly when you mark it low.
What a reviewer expects to see
- Which registration you checked (UEI or CAGE), and how you knew it was the right company
- When each check ran, and the data date of the list it ran against
- What came back, including possible matches, and who decided them and why
- What you did when something was found
How Watch does it
You confirm each supplier's SAM.gov registration once (an exact UEI or CAGE on your list confirms by itself; a name never does). From then on every check keeps what the list said, with its data date, and every finding and decision goes into a hash-chained audit log. The export, or a per-supplier evidence package, is the record you hand over.
Watch reads business entities only: records about individuals are never loaded. If your concern is a named person, check SAM.gov directly.