Edit, amend, or cancel a request
Change a draft freely, amend a published request with a transparent version trail every supplier can see, and cancel or close a request the right way when plans change.
What you'll learn
- Edit a draft request with no consequences before it goes live
- Amend a published request and understand exactly what suppliers see
- Close bidding early, reopen with a new deadline, or cancel cleanly
Sourcing plans rarely survive first contact with reality. A budget shifts, a specification firms up, a quantity doubles, a deadline slips. The question is never whether a request will need changing, but how cleanly you can change it without confusing the suppliers already working on their bids. Edit the wrong thing the wrong way and you get bids that answer different questions, suppliers who feel the goalposts moved, and an audit trail nobody can follow.
VEXORS handles this with one simple rule: a request behaves completely differently depending on whether it is still a draft or already published. A draft is private and yours alone, so you can change anything with no consequences. A published request is a live commitment that suppliers are responding to, so every change is recorded as a transparent amendment that everyone can see. Understanding that line is the key to changing a request well.
Why this matters
Fairness is not a nicety in sourcing, it is what makes a competitive process defensible. If you quietly change a quantity after some suppliers have priced it, their bids are no longer comparable and the process is open to challenge. VEXORS turns every post-publish change into a dated, attributed amendment with a before-and-after view, so a manager or auditor can see exactly what changed, when, and who changed it, without taking anyone's word for it.
The draft line: before and after publishing
Everything about editing comes back to this distinction.
| Request state | What you can change | What suppliers experience |
|---|---|---|
| Draft (not yet published) | Anything: type, category, currency, scope, Bill of Quantities, Questionnaire, deadline | Nothing. A draft is private. No supplier can see it. |
| Published (live, bidding open) | Most things, but request type and currency are now fixed. Changes become a recorded amendment. | Suppliers see the updated request and an amendment trail showing what changed. Active bidders may be asked to revise. |
To edit any request, open it and choose Edit. Editing is a manage-level action, so a team member with view-only access will not see the control.
Editing a draft: change anything, freely
While a request is still a draft, the editor is just the request wizard with your work loaded back in. Move through Details, Scope, Bill of Quantities, Questionnaire, and Review, and change whatever you like. Because nobody has seen the request yet, there is no amendment record and no notification. You can even change the request type or currency at this stage, because no bid is anchored to them.
When you are done, Save as Draft to keep refining, or Publish Request (or Submit for Approval) to take it live.
Amending a published request: the version trail
Once a request is published, opening the editor looks the same, but a banner makes the stakes clear: you are editing a live request. Two things change from draft editing.
First, request type and currency are locked. Suppliers are pricing against the currency and responding to the type, so neither can move. Everything else, the title, scope, commercial terms, Bill of Quantities line items, deadline, and Questionnaire, can still be changed.
Second, every change is recorded as an amendment. When you save, VEXORS captures a new version of the request and works out exactly what changed against the previous version.
Open the editor on a live request
The amber banner appears when bids already exist and tells you how many. If no bids have been submitted yet, the banner is calmer: changes save and the request stays published. Either way, you make your edits in the wizard exactly as before. Note that request type and currency are no longer editable.
Save the amendment
When you save, the request stays published and lands back on its detail page with a new version number. A banner now notes the request was amended, and an Amendments tab appears for the first time. The bids you already received are not discarded, but if your change affects what they bid on, those bidders can be asked to revise their bids against the new version.
Read the amendment trail
Open the Amendments tab to see the full history. Each version is listed newest first, with the version number, a timestamp, who made the change, and a clear before-and-after table for every field that changed. Edited Bill of Quantities line items show as added, removed, or changed, with the old and new values side by side. If a version caused bids to need revision, that is flagged on the version too.
Amendments are visible, so amend deliberately
A published request cannot be edited silently. Every post-publish change is dated, attributed to you by name, and shown to suppliers in their own amendment view. This is a feature, not a limitation, but it means you should batch your changes and avoid a long string of small amendments that makes the request look unstable.
When you amend a published request, every invited and bidding supplier sees an "Amended request" notice and their own Amendments tab. Their view is deliberately limited: they see what changed in supplier-safe terms, the new deadline, revised line items, updated scope, but never your private notes, estimated prices, or internal scoring weights, and not the name of the person who made the change. A supplier with a submitted bid can be prompted to revise it so they are bidding on the current version.
Closing, reopening, and cancelling
Editing changes a request. These three actions change its lifecycle. Each is a confirmed action, because each affects suppliers.
Close bidding early. If you have enough bids before the deadline, you can stop accepting new ones. VEXORS confirms first and warns that suppliers who have not yet submitted will lose access to bid. Closing is reversible, but only by reopening.
Reopen with a new deadline. A closed request (or one already in evaluation) can be reopened. You set a new deadline and can add an optional reason. Reopening notifies the invited suppliers and everyone who has already submitted a bid, so use it when you genuinely want more competition, not as a quiet extension. If you reopen a request that was already being evaluated, VEXORS warns that existing AI scores will become stale relative to any new bids.
Cancel the request. If you are calling the whole thing off, cancel it. VEXORS asks you to confirm and lets you record a reason. Cancelling ends the request: it is the right move when the need has gone away, not when you simply want to change the brief. To change the brief, amend instead.
| Your situation | Use | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| I have enough bids and want to stop early | Close bidding now | No new bids accepted. Reversible via reopen. |
| I closed too early, or want more competition | Reopen with new deadline | Bidding resumes. Invited suppliers and existing bidders are notified. |
| The need has gone away entirely | Cancel request | The request ends. Record a reason for the trail. |
| The brief needs changing, but I still want the request | Edit (amend) | A new version is recorded. Suppliers see the amendment trail. |
What good looks like
The difference between a clean change and a messy one is mostly about timing and intent.
- Get the request right before you publish. A draft costs nothing to perfect, and a published request costs you a visible amendment for every fix.
- When you must amend, batch related changes into one save rather than a drip of single-field edits. One clear "Version 2" reads better to suppliers than five tiny versions.
- Treat reopen as a real signal to the market, not a back door. Notifying everyone of a new deadline is the honest behaviour, but do it on purpose.
- Choose cancel only when the need is gone. If you still want to buy, amend the brief instead so your bid history and trail stay intact.
Next steps
Related guides