Quick Start Guide

1Create your account

Choose Sign up free on the sign-in page (govcondash.ai/signin). The form opens with a plan chooser, and from the sign-in page it opens on the Pro card, so pick Free, the card on the left; Free is enough for this guide. Choosing Pro or Max instead sends you on to secure Stripe checkout once the account exists, with a 14-day free trial on Pro billed monthly.

The form then asks who you are. Choose GovCon Professional, for a practice that advises or represents contractors, and pick Your role from the list that appears beneath it: GovCon Consultant, Attorney / Law Firm, CPA / Accountant, Auditor, Contracts Professional or Other GovCon Professional. Give your name, a business email address and a password of at least 12 characters mixing cases, a number and a special character.

Two checkboxes sit above the button: the weekly digest (SAM.gov opportunities, proposed rules and contract activity for the contractors you support, plus regulation changes, case law and enforcement; off by default) and the required acceptance of the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Choose Create Account. There is no verification step to wait for: the account is live at once and the onboarding page opens.

2Set up your practice and clients

The onboarding page opens on your Practice Profile. Firm Information takes your firm's name, which is shown on your profile and passed to the AI as the advising firm. A firm usually holds no federal awards of its own, and its UEI is never used as a stand-in for a client's.

Beneath it, Client you advise searches the contractor by name, UEI or DUNS. It is optional, but it is what turns on matched opportunities, market intelligence, audit readiness and the personalized agents, so name your main client here if you can, then choose Complete Setup.

Build the roster

Add the rest of your clients on the Setup page (the Account button at the foot of the sidebar), in the Client you advise card. Your first client becomes the active one; every client added after it joins the roster without changing which one is active, and Make active switches. A roster holds up to 25 clients, and removing the active client hands the role to another on the roster.

3Find your way around

The top bar greets you by name and, on every tab, carries the company strip of the active client directly beneath, so each page says whose data it shows: the client's name, UEI, location and fiscal year end from its registration, its primary NAICS and PSC codes, a chip stating its SAM.gov registration, an NDC or Traditional chip, and the chapters of Title 48 that apply to it. To its right sit the Usage meter (AI runs used in the current window against your plan's quota, one pool across every agent and workflow), the LLM badge, the Tour button and the zoom control. The Acting for picker at the top of the sidebar names the active client and lists the roster; choosing another client makes it active everywhere at once.

The Dashboard page opens with Shortcuts written about the client: Win work (the client's opportunities, teaming partners, its buyers and Other Transaction consortia), Stay compliant (the client's audit readiness, flow-down clauses, the pre-award accounting survey and the client's incurred cost proposal) and Research and draft (regulations, case law, workflows for client work, and Manage clients). The Client Roster follows across the full width: each client's active awards, its largest buyer and the compliance clocks inside the next ninety days, such as a contract ending, an incurred cost proposal falling due or a SAM.gov registration about to lapse. Click a client to make it the active one.

Below the roster sit the FAR Overhaul class deviations beside Case Law, ranked against the active client's agencies, NAICS codes and contract types; the client's Book of Business beside its Audit Readiness; and the Opportunities card, the client's five highest-scoring SAM.gov matches and the DoW SBIR/STTR topics its size record allows.

The sidebar holds five groups, Overview, Portfolio, Compliance, Research and Case Law, and lists the sub-tabs of the tab you are on beneath it. The seven case law tabs share Browse, Insights and a Guide that explains what the corpus holds and how its rates are computed.

Four habits that pay off on day one

• Ctrl+K (Cmd+K on a Mac) opens the command palette: jump to any tab, start any workflow, or search ASBCA decisions and FAR clauses as you type.
• The Tour button in the header walks you through the page or section you are on.
• The zoom control at the right of the header. The dashboard opens at 85 percent and offers 70, 85 and 100; the figures in this guide were photographed at 100.
• The address after the # sign records exactly where you are, so #audit-readiness/overview can be bookmarked or pasted to a colleague. It opens on whichever client is active for the reader.

4Ask your first research question

Open Regulations & Policy in the Research group. Its FAR & DFARS sub-tab leads with the eCFR Research Agent, the one AI feature included with every plan, Free included. The agent reads the active client's profile and is told that you advise the client, so it analyzes the client's situation on your behalf, frames its guidance as practitioner analysis and never treats your firm as the party to the client's awards.

Type a question into the composer, or open the Prompt library and pick a starter; they are written in a contractor's voice and work as written, because the agent reads them against the active client. Press Enter to send. A sources rail lists exactly what it retrieved, precise enough to quote in client work; check each citation before relying on it. Export the report to Word or Excel, or on Pro and Max save it to your Workspace.

Getting a better answer

• Ask a specific question. What must a cost of money claim under CAS 414 show? gets a better report than cost of money.
• Add the Board's view. The options button beside the composer offers Include relevant ASBCA cases, worth turning on for a dispute-shaped question such as an REA versus a claim.
• Make the right client active first. The report is about the active client, so switch before you ask, not after.

Your first week: working the roster

Start each day on the Client Roster

The roster's ninety-day clocks are a triage list: a contract ending, an incurred cost proposal due, a SAM.gov registration about to lapse. Make the client that needs attention active, and every tab follows it.

Read a client's matched opportunities

Opportunities opens on Insights for the active client: a KPI band, a map of places of performance and the filters. Browse lists the cards, each with a match score, a deadline countdown and reason chips that say why it matched the client, with View on SAM.gov and Draft Requirements Package to hand a notice to a workflow.

Check a client's audit posture

Audit Readiness opens on Overview with the client's classification, its flexibly priced contracts and the DCAA audit programs that apply to them. Incurred Cost Proposal states the client's next due date, its SAM.gov fiscal year end plus six months, and says Not available rather than guessing when the registration carries no year end.

Follow the case law

Seven corpora sit under Case Law, each with a Browse table, a verbatim reader, an Insights dashboard and a Guide, and Law Firms is a directory of the counsel those decisions name. Every decision in five of the forums has a public page that opens without an account, so a case can be sent to a client as a link.

Run a workflow (Pro and Max)

Workflows is a gallery of twenty-one grounded workflows in five categories, from a GAO Protest Draft and the case briefs to a Cost Allowability Memo and the Opportunity Requirements Package, each run for the active client. Each cites only the sources it retrieved and saves its document to your Workspace, which exports to Word and Excel and files to OneDrive.

Plans, limits and help

Every tab opens on the Free plan: the eCFR Research Agent runs once a week, eCFR search and the FAR Clause Library are fully open, and most other tabs are a preview, view-only or browse-only, marked Pro in the sidebar. Pro and Max unlock every AI surface with a monthly quota of runs that is one pool shared across all agents and workflows, so the figure you are shown is the figure that gates you. A run counts for thirty days (seven on Free) and then drops out on its own; nothing resets on a date. The Usage meter in the page header shows where you stand, and the same count sits beside the plan cards on the Setup page's Billing tab, where you change plan; paying yearly takes 20 percent off twelve monthly charges. Update your company, change your password or delete your account from the Account tab there.

Each forum's Guide sub-tab explains its corpus on one page, and every AI document carries its own sources rail.

Keyboard and address cheat sheet