Winning a federal contract is the goal. Staying compliant after you win — subcontracting limits, recertifications, proving veteran control — is the part nobody prepares you for. Muster watches it for you, so a paperwork mistake never costs you the contract.
Federal set-asides exist to give veteran-owned firms a fair shot — and winning one is hard-earned. But the rules that come attached are unforgiving, and they're carried almost entirely by the owner.
On a services set-aside, you can't pay more than half of the government's dollars to subcontractors that aren't similarly situated. Cross that line — even by accident, even mid-contract — and you risk termination, suspension, or False Claims Act liability. Your SAM registration has to be renewed every year or you go dark. Your VetCert has to be recertified, and denials routinely come down to governing documents that don't clearly prove sole veteran control. And before you even bid, compliance costs like CMMC can quietly erase a contract's entire margin.
None of this is optional. All of it is on you. And the software built to manage it was built for billion-dollar primes.
Deltek, Unanet, and the big ERPs handle compliance — bundled inside full accounting suites that cost five figures a year and are built for large contractors. Overkill and unaffordable below a few million in revenue.
A wave of well-funded platforms help you find and win contracts. They're good at it — and they stop at the award. The day-to-day of staying compliant isn't their job.
Invaluable for the hard edge cases — and priced by the hour. Not something a small firm can keep on retainer to watch a percentage every week.
Set it up in under 30 minutes. After that, Muster watches the four things most likely to cost you a contract — and warns you before they do.
Always know exactly where you stand against the 50% limit, with live dollar headroom and alerts that fire before you cross the line — not after. Similarly-situated subs are handled correctly, automatically.
VetCert recertification, SAM renewal, and annual attestations — tracked and reminded at 90, 60, 30, and 7 days, so nothing lapses and nothing surprises you.
Keep the documentation that proves sole veteran control audit-ready and in one place — with templates for the exact gaps that trip up recertification.
Score the true compliance cost of an opportunity — including CMMC — before you commit, so you only chase the bids that actually pencil out.
Muster is being built by a veteran and software engineer who has spent a career in and around federal work. This isn't a generic compliance product retrofitted with a flag on it — it's being built from the ground up for how small veteran-owned firms actually operate.
We're in the build-and-validate phase right now, working directly with a small group of veteran business owners to make the subcontracting math bulletproof and the workflow genuinely simple. If you run an SDVOSB or VOSB and this is a problem you live with, we want you in the room.
Join the early-access list, or come in as a design partner and help shape what gets built first. No spam — just Muster.