Entity validation or “validation” is how the federal government independently verifies the existence and uniqueness of an entity. Validation is a critical part of managing federal awards. It helps prevent improper payments, deters procurement fraud, and helps strengthen the integrity of government contracts, grants, loans, and other federal awards, representing trillions of dollars in taxpayer funds each year. Entity uniqueness is based on a combination of the legal business name, physical address, start year, state of incorporation, and (as needed for international entities) national identifier. 

Validation confirms that an entity exists and is unique. The uniqueness of an entity is based on the entity being a separate legal entity with a separate physical address. Entities may be required to provide additional documents to validate that their entity exists and is unique.

An Entity Validation Service (EVS) independently verifies the uniqueness of an entity. This is required to get a Unique Entity ID. SAM.gov verifies that there is no existing registration for the legal business name and physical address as part of this validation process. This process is required by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) part 52.204-6.