Independent, not SAM.gov

SAM.gov IAE migration: read only mode recovery checklist

Updated 6 October 2026

This page is the contractor lane for SAM.gov IAE migration fallout. ZeroGov is independent of SAM.gov and is not a help desk. We are a small business audience that has to keep working while the Integrated Award Environment finishes its cutover, and this is the playbook for read only records, stuck MPIN resets, and the new ticket routing that started on 6 October 2026.

Why so many records went read only on 6 October 2026

The Integrated Award Environment cut over SAM.gov on the weekend of 4 to 5 October 2026, and the production switch on Monday 6 October locked a large slice of the active entity table into a read only window. The intent, as GSA posted in the IAE change log, was to give the new data plane time to reconcile legacy SAM records against the migrated award and exclusions tables before editors were let back in. The practical effect is that anyone trying to save a change to core fields gets a banner that says the entity is viewable but not editable, and the save button becomes a request submit button that queues a ticket into the IAE queues inside ServiceNow.

Read only is not the same as expired. Your registration is still active in the database. The status flag on the public search has not changed, your CAGE code is still resolvable, and your opportunities are still pulling from the migrated data. The lock is on the edit path, not on your eligibility. That distinction matters because it is the reason we are writing this page separately from our SAM.gov renewal guide and our CAGE code view, not value piece. Renewals are a different code path. Read only is the migration safety catch.

GSA's own IAE status page as of 6 October shows three blocks on edits: legal business name and address, banking, and MPIN or Entity Administrator reassignment. The first block is the one most contractors can clear from the Entity Management dashboard without a ticket. The other two need human routing and are the reason the help desk queue has blown past 50,000 open cases for the first week of October. We will walk each block, what the new screen looks like, and where the ticket has to go.

Block one: legal name, address, and POC edits

Name and address edits are the path of least resistance after the IAE cutover. The migration tool left most address records in a write pending state, which means the read only banner fires even when your data is clean. The fix is to open the entity, navigate to your address, and submit a no op change. The new IAE front end will then re run address validation through the USPS API and either accept the record or flag the line for manual review. Most contractors see the lock clear within ten minutes, and the public search refreshes inside the hour.

Points of contact behave the same way. The new data model treats POCs as relationship rows rather than flat fields, so a POC edit that would have been a save in the old system now opens a relationships panel. The relationship panel accepts an add or remove, then commits through the same no op trick if you are only trying to clear the lock. If you genuinely need to remove a former Entity Administrator or add a new one, you are in the second block and need a ticket.

One thing to watch on address edits: the IAE now treats state and country as a paired key, not free text. If your old record had a US state with a country code of USA, the new system accepts the save. If the old record had a country string of United States rather than the ISO code, the new system will silently reject the change and you will spin on the same screen. Check the values before you submit. The diagnostic line at the bottom of the edit panel will read country code required if you are caught in this trap.

Block two: MPIN, banking, and Entity Administrator reassignment

MPIN resets are the most common reason contractors open a case in October 2026. The IAE migration moved MPIN storage off the legacy SAM auth service and onto the new Login.gov backed credential broker, and the first week of the cutover has surfaced a backlog of cases where the broker is not yet federated with the old MPIN value. The new system offers a self serve MPIN reset from the Entity Management dashboard, but the reset only works if the requesting user can authenticate with the new Login.gov MFA flow. If you are still on a phone based authenticator that pre dates the IAE, the reset will reject and route you to a ServiceNow ticket.

Banking edits are the second block. GSA posted on 2 October that banking records would be locked for an extra 14 days as a fraud control, on top of the standard read only window. The reason is that the IAE now validates the routing number against the Federal Reserve's ECA list at save time, and the Federal Reserve confirmed on 1 October that the file used for that validation is the September refresh. If your bank was merged, rebranded, or had a routing change between 1 July and 30 September 2026, your record will fail the ECA check and the edit will be rejected with a specific error code. The fix is a manual review ticket with a voided cheque attached. SLA in October is 9 business days, longer than the standard queue.

Entity Administrator reassignment is the block that takes the longest. GSA's policy is that an EA change requires identity proofing of the new administrator through Login.gov, plus a notarised letter on company letterhead for any entity above the micro purchase threshold. The IAE queues these into a human review path that GSA has staffed with temporary contractors through the end of October. Expect 5 to 9 business days. If your business is in a bind because the only authorised signatory left on 1 October, our Entity Administrator left, what now page is still the right read while you wait for the queue.

What this page is not

This page is not a SAM.gov help desk. We are an independent publisher that covers US federal contracting for small businesses, and we do not have access to the back end that resolves your specific ticket. The advice here is a playbook for the patterns we are seeing in the IAE migration, not a guarantee about your case.

Do not treat this page as legal advice. Banking and administrator changes have compliance consequences that depend on your contract type, your set aside status, and any pending awards. Talk to your contracting officer for active awards, and to counsel for anything touching the MPIN or the bank record.

We will update this page as the IAE migration completes. The Federal Service Desk has a public status board at sam.gov, and the IAE programme publishes change notes at sam.gov under the IAE migration banner. We cross reference those notes in the week one and week two roundups already on this site.

The ten minute self serve fix

Most read only records clear in under ten minutes from the Entity Management dashboard. The steps are the same regardless of which block is showing on your banner. First, sign in through Login.gov with the user that holds the Entity Administrator role on the record. Second, open the entity and choose Edit Registration from the left rail. Third, find the field group flagged with the read only banner and click into it. Fourth, without changing any value, click Save. The system will run a re validation pass and either clear the lock or surface a specific error.

If the save returns you to the entity view with a green confirmation ribbon, the lock has cleared. You can verify by navigating back to the same field group and confirming the save button is live. If the save returns a yellow ribbon with a ticket reference number, the case has been routed into ServiceNow. The reference number is what you give the Federal Service Desk if you need to escalate. Do not open a second ticket on the same field. The IAE queues are de duping by field path, and a duplicate open will set your SLA back to the back of the line.

One last note on the ten minute fix: it only works on fields the IAE considers low risk. Address, POC, and certain NAICS fields are low risk. Banking, MPIN, and Entity Administrator are not. Do not waste a ticket on a low risk edit. Use the dashboard. Tickets are for the blocks the dashboard cannot clear.

When to open a ticket, and how to write one that does not bounce

Open a ticket when the dashboard rejects your save and gives you a yellow ribbon, or when you need to change a field the dashboard does not surface for edit. Tickets that are written well get routed in under 24 hours. Tickets that are vague sit in the general queue for a week. The difference is whether you name the IAE block you are in, the field path you are trying to change, and what you have already tried from the dashboard.

The Federal Service Desk has published a template for the IAE queues. The fields are ticket type, entity name, CAGE code, UEI, the field path you are editing, the error message verbatim, the timestamp of the error in your local time, and your callback number. A ticket that misses any of these gets bounced back to the contractor for clarification, and the bounce costs you three business days in October's queue.

Do not include banking details in the ticket itself. GSA's policy as of 1 October is that no bank routing or account number should be in a ServiceNow record. Attach a voided cheque or a bank letter as a PDF, and reference the attachment in the ticket body. The system strips attachments after 30 days, which is shorter than the standard SAM retention. If you need a copy of what you sent, download the ticket from the ServiceNow portal within the month.

Independent information, not legal advice. Confirm status and rules on sam.gov and the current FAR text.