Charlotte spends public money on everything from sidewalk repair to IT consulting, and the path to winning that work runs through three separate systems, not one. There is the supplier registration that gets you in the city's vendor database, the Charlotte Business INClusion (CBI) certification that flags you as a small, minority, or women-owned firm, and the bid portal where solicitations actually post. Miss any one of them and you can be a registered vendor who never sees a bid, or a certified firm who never gets found. Here is how the three fit together.
Step 1: Register as a supplierStart at the city's Supplier Registration page (formerly called vendor registration) under Doing Business at charlottenc.gov. Registering puts your company, your contact information, and the commodity or service codes you sell into the city's supplier database. City departments and prime contractors pull from that database when they're sourcing work, so an incomplete or stale profile is the most common reason a qualified firm never gets a call.
Registration is free and it is not the same thing as getting certified. Think of it as the baseline: you need it before anything else is useful. Keep your commodity codes accurate, because that is how buyers filter the list when they're looking for someone who does exactly what you do.
Step 2: Get certified through Charlotte Business INClusion (CBI)CBI is Charlotte's local diversity and small-business program, and it's run by the city's Contracting and Procurement department. Its stated purpose is to grow participation of Minority, Women, and Small Business Enterprises (MWSBE) in city contracting that uses non-federal funds. The program covers nearly all of that spend: supplies, materials, equipment, construction projects, service contracts, and equipment rental or lease agreements.
How you get into CBI depends on which designation you're after, and this trips people up:
- Small Business Enterprise (SBE): The city certifies SBE firms directly. You complete the SBE application through the city's certification system. The published processing window is 30 business days, so apply well before a bid you care about.
- Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) and Women Business Enterprise (WBE): The city does not certify these from scratch. Instead, CBI registers MBE and WBE firms that have already been certified through North Carolina's Historically Underutilized Business (HUB) office. So the sequence for an MBE/WBE firm is: get certified by NC HUB first, then register that status with CBI.
Applications and renewals run through Charlotte's diversity compliance system at charlotte.diversitycompliance.com (the B2GNow platform many local governments use). You set up a vendor profile there, then choose to apply for or renew certification.
Certification is what earns you the visibility. Certified MWSBEs get listed on the city's vendor list that departments and prime contractors search, receive notices of upcoming opportunities, and get access to CBI's networking events and technical assistance. If you're weighing whether a local cert is worth the paperwork, our certification directory lays out what each designation actually unlocks.
A note on the NC HUB step
Because Charlotte leans on the state for MBE/WBE status, your North Carolina HUB certification is doing real work here. If you don't have it yet, sort that out before you touch the CBI registration, and check what's available statewide on our state programs page so you're not duplicating effort across overlapping certifications.
Step 3: Find and respond to bids on the procurement portalCharlotte posts its solicitations on an electronic procurement portal hosted on Bonfire (charlottenc.bonfirehub.com). To view opportunities and submit responses, you create a separate login on that portal. This is genuinely a third account, distinct from your supplier registration and your CBI/B2GNow profile, so set all three up rather than assuming one carries over to the next.
The portal is where the city posts the actual RFPs, IFBs, and RFQs, accepts your submissions, and communicates with vendors during a live solicitation. Note that the city has described this portal as a newer system, so confirm you're on the current portal before you build your whole bid workflow around it. Read each solicitation closely for its MWSBE subcontractor utilization goals, which the city sets on many contracts. On goal-bearing contracts, primes have to document good-faith efforts to include certified MWSBEs, which is exactly why your CBI listing matters to the companies bidding above you.
What "good faith" and subcontractor goals mean for youCharlotte's CBI program assigns MWSBE participation goals to individual contracts and requires prime bidders to either meet the goal or document a good-faith effort to reach it. For a small or diverse firm, that's leverage. Primes chasing a city contract have a direct incentive to find and use certified subcontractors, and the city's vendor list is the first place they look. Being registered, being certified, and being findable turns you from a cold outreach into a name that shows up in their search.
Who to callThe fastest way to unstick a certification question is the CBI certification specialist at (704) 336-4137. Use them to confirm which designation you qualify for, what NC HUB documentation you need, and where your application sits in the 30-day queue. Procurement staff would rather answer the question up front than reject an incomplete application.
Quick recap- Register as a supplier in the city's database (free, baseline).
- Get certified through CBI: SBE directly with the city, or MBE/WBE by first certifying with NC HUB and then registering with CBI via charlotte.diversitycompliance.com.
- Create a Bonfire portal account and watch for solicitations and their MWSBE goals.
Charlotte is one city, and the same registration-then-certification-then-bid pattern repeats across most of the cities and states a growing firm sells to. Our local and state contracting guides cover that pattern jurisdiction by jurisdiction.
If you're certifying in more than one place and you're tired of re-entering the same business and ownership details into every portal, CertifyAll captures your information and documents once and helps you apply across federal, state, and local programs. Worth a look once you've got Charlotte handled and you're eyeing the next jurisdiction.
