Seen early
A solicitation is on this ledger when FedFinder stored an earlier notice carrying the same solicitation number, or a pre-RFP post that names that number, on a day before SAM.gov posted the solicitation itself; the lead time is the number of days between those two dates.
Regenerated once a day from FedFinder's own database. Nobody edits this page by hand.
A plain disclosure, up front: FedFinder, Inc. is an independent commercial vendor, not SAM.gov, not the General Services Administration, and not affiliated with the U.S. government in any way. Every row below is built from public SAM.gov notices and FedFinder's own ingestion timestamps. The ledger shows only what the rule below can prove from that data; it is not a sample, a projection, or a claim about any solicitation that is not listed.
The numbers, for the window shown
Counted over solicitations SAM.gov posted in the trailing window. Lead time is measured from the day FedFinder ingested the earlier record, not from that record's own posting date.
| Department | Office | Title | Earlier signal | Seen | Posted | Days early | Notice |
|---|
Loading the ledger from /api/public/seen-early.json.
How this is counted
- Leads are measured from the day FedFinder first held the earlier record, never from SAM's own date. If SAM.gov published a Sources Sought in March and FedFinder ingested it in May, the lead counts from May.
- Bulk archive loads count from their load day, so older leads are understated. FedFinder loaded its SAM.gov archive in one pass on 10 August 2026, and every notice that arrived in that load is stamped with that day. For most notices older than that, 10 August 2026 is the floor, and the true lead is longer than the ledger shows.
- Only two kinds of earlier record count: a SAM.gov notice sharing the same solicitation number, or a pre-RFP post that names the number. Solicitation numbers can be reused, so any lead over 540 days is excluded rather than risk matching an unrelated procurement.
- SAM.gov posts in Eastern time and FedFinder stamps in UTC. That can push an ingestion timestamp to the next calendar day, which understates a lead by a day. It can never overstate one.
- The denominator is shown. "Solicitations posted in the window" counts every Solicitation or Combined Synopsis/Solicitation with a usable solicitation number that SAM.gov first posted inside the window, and the share seen early is the ledger count divided by that number. Both come from the same query, at the same moment.
How a solicitation gets on this ledger
- It has to be a solicitation. Only SAM.gov notices of type Solicitation or Combined Synopsis/Solicitation count, with a solicitation number and no award number. Award notices, justifications, and delivery orders never qualify.
- The posted date is the first posting. When SAM.gov reposts a solicitation under a new notice id, the earliest posting is the date used, so an amendment can never inflate a lead time.
- FedFinder must have stored an earlier record about the same work. Either a Sources Sought, Presolicitation, or Special Notice carrying the same solicitation number, or a pre-RFP post that names that solicitation number or notice id in the post text. Solicitation numbers can be reused across fiscal years, so an earlier record more than 540 days before the posting is treated as a different procurement and excluded.
- "Seen" means ingested. The lead time counts from the day FedFinder's own database first held the earlier record, never from the day that record was published. If the earlier record was stored the same day the solicitation posted, or later, it does not count.
- One row per solicitation, earliest signal wins. The counts and percentiles cover every qualifying solicitation in the window; the table shows the most recent ones.
What this ledger does not claim
- It does not match forecasts to solicitations by title similarity. A forecast appears only when the solicitation number was named in the post text.
- It does not include the solicitations FedFinder did not see early. Zero rows in the window is reported as zero rows.
- A solicitation stays on the ledger after its bid window closes, marked "closed"; the ledger is a record, not a list of open bids.
See the next one before it posts
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