Texas spends billions a year buying goods and services, from IT and construction to office supplies and consulting, and most of that buying runs through one office: the Statewide Procurement Division of the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. If you want to sell to the state, that's your front door.
The path has two cheap, concrete first steps and one piece that changed dramatically at the end of 2025. Get the order right and you can be registered and watching live bid opportunities inside a week.
Here's how it works now.
Step 1: Get on the CMBLThe Centralized Master Bidders List (CMBL) is the state's master vendor database. State agencies and universities pull from it when they need to solicit bids, and many agencies are required to invite CMBL vendors in your commodity categories. If you're not on it, you're invisible to a large share of routine state buying.
Registration runs through the Comptroller's eSystems portal and costs $70 per year. The process is two steps:
- Create an eSystems user profile at the Comptroller's login site. You set up a user ID, email, and password and verify by email.
- Apply for the CMBL from the eSystems menu and pay the $70 annual fee by card or check.
Before you start, have these ready:
- Your EIN. Texas requires an employer identification number from the IRS for the CMBL. A Social Security number alone won't work.
- Your Texas Identification Number (TIN) if you already do business with the state, or be prepared to establish a state vendor (payee) account.
- Your NIGP class and item codes. These are the commodity codes that tell the state exactly what you sell. Pick the codes closest to your actual products and services, because that's what drives which bid notices reach you.
- The Texas highway districts or regions you can serve.
Keep the profile current. CMBL registration is annual, and an expired profile drops you off the lists agencies search. Updates you make online show up on the public CMBL search within about 30 minutes.
Step 2: Watch the ESBD for bidsThe Electronic State Business Daily (ESBD) is where Texas agencies post their solicitations: invitations to bid, requests for proposals, and requests for qualifications. It lives on the state's Texas SmartBuy site at txsmartbuy.gov/esbd, and you do not need an account to search it.
State agencies are generally required to post solicitations on the ESBD once a purchase crosses a threshold (commonly around $25,000), so it's the single best public view of what Texas is actively buying. You can filter by NIGP commodity code, agency, keyword, location, and posting date. Search the same keywords a buyer would use for your work ("janitorial," "staffing," "civil engineering") and set a routine to check it.
CMBL and ESBD work together. The ESBD shows you what's open; your CMBL listing is what gets you invited and lets you respond as a registered vendor. Do both.
The diversity-certification piece changed in late 2025For years, Texas ran the Historically Underutilized Business (HUB) program, which certified businesses at least 51% owned and controlled by women, racial or ethnic minorities, or service-disabled veterans. A HUB designation flagged your firm in state systems and fed agency utilization goals.
That program was overhauled. On October 28, 2025, the acting Comptroller suspended new and renewed HUB certifications pending a legal review. On December 2, 2025, the state replaced HUB with VetHUB (Veteran Heroes United in Business), which certifies only service-disabled veteran-owned businesses. Certifications previously granted based on race, ethnicity, or sex were revoked. By early 2026, fewer than 500 firms were listed under VetHUB, down from more than 15,000 under the old HUB framework.
What that means in practice, depending on who owns your business:
- Service-disabled veterans. You can pursue VetHUB certification. The state's stated requirements are 51% ownership, management, and control by an owner who is a service-disabled veteran with at least a 20% service-connected disability rating, a business primarily based in Texas, and compliance with SBA small-business size standards. You apply through the VetHUB certification portal, and certified firms show up in the VetHUB directory. If you were certified as an SDV (or had SDV listed as a secondary classification) on or before December 2, 2025, the state kept you in the directory; veteran firms certified only through some regional agencies were moved to inactive and have to reapply.
- Women-owned and minority-owned businesses. Texas no longer offers a state diversity certification for you. There's no women's or minority designation to apply for right now. You compete through the standard CMBL and ESBD process like any other vendor. The program remains under legal review, so the rules could shift again; confirm the current state at comptroller.texas.gov before you make plans around it.
The set-asides and goals also moved. Texas eliminated the old statewide quantitative HUB utilization goals. Agencies now set their own VetHUB goals based on their spending and the availability of certified veteran firms, and they are directed to consider requiring a subcontracting plan on contracts expected to exceed $100,000. If you've worked with federal set-asides, the idea is familiar, but Texas is deliberately moving toward what it calls race- and sex-neutral standards, so don't assume a federal-style preference carries over.
Subcontracting is the other way inYou don't have to win a prime contract to start earning state revenue. When a Texas agency requires a subcontracting plan on a larger contract, the prime has to document a good-faith effort to subcontract, including to certified VetHUB firms. Getting on the radar of primes who hold state contracts can be a faster on-ramp than chasing your own bids, especially while you build past performance. Watch the ESBD for large awards in your field, then approach the winners about subcontracting work.
A realistic timeline- Week 1. Confirm your EIN and good standing, create your eSystems profile, gather your NIGP codes, and submit your CMBL application with the $70 fee. Online registration processes quickly; allow up to 30 working days only if you mail a paper application and check.
- Week 1 onward. Start checking the ESBD and saving searches by your NIGP codes. Note which agencies buy what you sell.
- If you're a service-disabled veteran: start the VetHUB application in parallel. Gather your DD-214, your VA disability rating documentation, and proof of 51% ownership and control.
- Month 1 to 3. Respond to your first solicitations. Keep your CMBL profile and capability information sharp, because that's what a Texas buyer sees when they look you up.
If you're a service-disabled veteran, VetHUB is the state credential worth having, and it pairs naturally with federal SDVOSB certification through the VA, which opens a separate and larger set-aside lane at the federal level. Filing the same business and ownership facts across multiple agencies, the VA for SDVOSB and the Texas Comptroller for VetHUB, is exactly the kind of duplicate paperwork CertifyAll handles once so you're not re-keying the same documents into every portal.
If you're a woman- or minority-owned business, your strongest state credential right now is being a clean, registered, easy-to-find vendor: an active CMBL listing, accurate NIGP codes, and a tight capability statement. Then look beyond Texas. Many corporate buyers and other states still run active diverse-supplier programs (NMSDC for minority firms, WBENC for women-owned firms), and a national certification can open doors a Texas state designation no longer does. List your business in our supplier directory so corporate buyers searching for diverse suppliers can find you.
Texas is one state with its own rules. For how the requirements and diversity programs differ elsewhere, see our state-by-state guides, then decide which certifications are worth the filing time for the contracts you actually want.
