Austin SMBR certification: how to get MBE, WBE or DBE certified

Austin's Small and Minority Business Resources department — everyone calls it SMBR — helps minority-owned, women-owned and disadvantaged businesses get certified to compete for City of Austin and federally funded contracts. If you already bid city work, or you want to, this is the paperwork that gets your firm into the directory buyers and prime contractors search.

Which of the five certifications you actually want

SMBR runs five tracks, and they are not interchangeable. Picking the wrong one costs you weeks.

• MBE — Minority-Owned Business Enterprise. A small business at least 51 percent owned, managed and controlled by one or more economically disadvantaged individuals from the ethnic-minority groups the City lists: African American, Hispanic, Asian American, Native American.
• WBE — Women-Owned Business Enterprise. A small business at least 51 percent owned, managed and controlled by one or more economically disadvantaged women.
• DBE — Disadvantaged Business Enterprise. A small business that is minority-owned, women-owned, or both, and socially or economically disadvantaged. It is the one currently paused — covered below.
• ACDBE — Airport Concession DBE. Same disadvantaged-business basis, for firms that want to operate in airport concessions. Also paused.
• SBE — Small Business Enterprise, the construction-focused track. The firm's size must not exceed $16.5 million in average gross receipts over the past five years.

All five cost nothing to apply for. Read the definitions against your own ownership structure before you pick, because each one is tested against its own criteria.

What it costs and how long it takes

Nothing, and about a week. SMBR offers all of its certifications at no cost, and the City's own wording on the timeline is direct: "Once your application is complete, most reviews take just seven business days." The Certification Division describes having improved its average review timeline to seven days.

Read that conditional carefully, because it is where people lose a month. The seven days start when your application is complete. The clock does not run while you are hunting for a tax return or waiting on a signature. Assemble the whole package before you submit and certification is genuinely a one-week errand.

Do you qualify

The City tests two things about ownership, and they are checked separately: whether the business is 51 percent owned by socially and economically disadvantaged individuals, and whether those same individuals manage the business and control day-to-day operations. Ownership on paper without operational control does not qualify a firm.

On top of that, the firm must be:

• a small business as defined by the U.S. Small Business Administration's size standards — you confirm this by submitting business tax returns;
• a for-profit business;
• operating a facility located within the State of Texas for at least 90 days.

There is also a personal ceiling: the owner's personal net worth must not exceed $2,434,885. That figure appears on both the City's MBE/WBE application page and its Certification Division page, and it is why the application asks for a Personal Net Worth statement with a complete personal tax return.

The DBE and ACDBE pause

This is the part no other guide will tell you, and it changes what you should do next.

When I checked the CCS portal in August 2026, it carried a notice dated October 3, 2025, headed "Notice to All DBE/ACDBE Firms." It states that "Our Agency and all sub-recipients have paused goal setting and awards that include DBE/ACDBE goals," and says plainly: "We are not accepting new applications." The portal describes DBE and ACDBE certifications as under reevaluation against new federal standards.

Two things are worth being precise about:

• The notice is scoped. It is addressed to DBE and ACDBE firms and names no other certification type. It does not say MBE, WBE or SBE are paused, and the City's MBE/WBE certification pages still set out the standard CCS route end to end.
• There is no published reopening date. The notice has been up since October 2025 with no stated timeline.

So if you were heading for DBE, do not spend a weekend assembling a package. Call [email protected] or 512-974-7645 and ask where the reevaluation stands. If your ownership also fits MBE or WBE, that is the track the City still documents end to end. If you are already DBE or ACDBE certified, the notice says you "will be contacted by the Certification Department with instructions to complete recertification," so keep a personal narrative, a Personal Net Worth statement and your supporting documents to hand.

How to apply, step by step

1. Register as a City vendor first. Create an account and complete the online vendor registration form on Austin Finance Online (financeonline.austintexas.gov). This is the same registration you need to bid — see the City of Austin bids guide for how commodity codes and eResponse fit together.
2. Start the application in the CCS portal. Go to austintexas.mwdbe.com — the City's Certification and Compliance System — and use "Start Certification." Applying through CCS is the route the City describes as the most efficient.
3. Upload the package in one go. You need a Personal Net Worth statement with supporting documents including a complete personal tax return, a signed W-9, business documentation, and business tax returns confirming your size against SBA industry standards.
4. Expect about seven business days from the point the application is complete.

Two things make this easier. SMBR runs a free monthly virtual workshop and an Austin Small Business Pre-Certification Workshop — worth an hour before you start rather than after you get stuck; the department's main line is 512-974-7600. And the CCS portal is also where you look up an existing vendor account or reset a password, which is what most people are actually searching for when they look for an "SMBR login."

Keeping it: recertification every four years

Certification is not permanent. Owners of MBE/WBE-certified firms must apply for recertification every four years after the firm's initial certification, through an online application on the CCS portal. Put the date in your calendar the day you are certified — a lapse is an avoidable way to fall out of the directory that buyers search.

After you're certified

Certification puts you in a database that City buyers and prime contractors search, and lets you renew, manage your account and see outreach events in one place. What it does not do is bring the work to you. The firms that turn certification into revenue treat it as step one of three: get certified, get registered on every portal that posts work you can do, then actually see the solicitations in time to bid them.

Step two is the grind. The City of Austin, Travis County, Austin ISD and the State of Texas all post separately, on different systems, with different notification rules — the Austin government contracts overview maps them, and the Texas ESBD guide covers state work and the CMBL. If you are in a specific trade, the janitorial and HVAC guides list the commodity codes and licences that gate those categories.

Frequently asked questions