Find Opportunities
Browse the six tabs on the Opportunities page, filter by type and category, turn on best-match sorting, and understand what each opportunity card tells you before you bid.
What you'll learn
- Navigate the six tabs and understand what each one tracks
- Use filters and best-match sorting to surface the most relevant requests
- Read an opportunity card and decide whether to bid before opening the request
- Decline an opportunity without affecting your Trust Score
Most supplier businesses spend time chasing work through email threads, word-of-mouth referrals, and buyer relationships that took years to build. The moment a new buyer needs what you offer, you are unlikely to hear about it unless you already know them. The Opportunities page changes that. Every request that matches your categories appears here automatically, whether the buyer knows you or not.
Why this matters
A structured sourcing platform gives you visibility into demand that would otherwise reach only the buyers' existing vendor lists. Responding to open requests is one of the few ways a supplier can compete for new business without a pre-existing relationship. The sooner you find the right request, the more time you have to prepare a strong bid.
When to use each tab
The Opportunities page has six tabs, and each one answers a different question about where you stand.
| Tab | What it shows | When to check it |
|---|---|---|
| Open | Requests any qualifying supplier can bid on, including you. Sorted newest first by default. | Daily, new requests appear here as buyers publish them. |
| Invitations | Requests a buyer sent directly to your company. Private: other suppliers cannot see them. | As soon as you receive a notification, invitations have deadlines. |
| My Active Bids | Requests where you have already submitted a bid and the buyer has not yet decided. | Weekly, to monitor how many bids are in play and whether any requests have updated. |
| Won | Requests the buyer awarded to you. | After winning, to view the Award notice and message the buyer about next steps. |
| Closed | Requests that ended without you winning. | After a request closes, to run AI Bid Insights and learn from the outcome. |
| Declined | Requests you chose not to bid on. | To reconsider a decision, you can undo a decline while a request is still open. |
Before you start
A few things make the Opportunities page work better:
- Add supplier categories to your profile in Settings. Without them, best-match sorting stays disabled and the Open tab shows all requests rather than the ones most likely to fit what you sell.
- Complete your company profile with at least a name and country. An incomplete profile can reduce the requests you see on the Open tab.
- Enable notifications so you hear about new invitations quickly, private invitations can expire before you notice them.
Using the page, step by step
Search, then choose your tab
The search box sits above the tab bar and is the only control there, it finds requests by title or keyword, and results update as you type. Below it, the six tabs run across the top. Each tab badge shows a live count so you can see at a glance how many items need your attention.
Start on Open for broad sourcing, or on Invitations first when you have received a personal buyer invitation, because those carry a deadline and are higher-intent.
If you are on a team, some tabs narrow to only the bids you own, collaborate on, or are the assigned owner or account manager for. Team admins see every bid regardless.
Filter and sort below the tabs
Below the tab bar sits a row of controls:
- The Best matches first toggle reorders the Open tab so requests that closely match your supplier categories appear at the top. It is only available once you have added supplier categories to your profile; if it appears greyed out, go to Settings and add your categories first.
- The type filter narrows to RFQ, RFP, or RFI.
- The category filter limits the list to a single procurement category.
- The sort dropdown lets you order by newest, closest deadline, most competing bids, or, once matching is available, best match.
Sorting by "Deadline: soonest" on the Open tab each morning is a fast way to catch requests that close soon before you miss the window.
Read an opportunity card before clicking through
Each card shows everything you need to decide whether a request is worth opening:
- Buyer company name, who is asking. You will see their company name here, never their email address.
- Request type badge (RFQ, RFP, or RFI), what kind of response they want.
- Category, the procurement category the buyer assigned.
- Deadline, how long until bidding closes. It shows amber once 3 days or fewer remain (including "Due today"), and turns red only once the deadline has actually passed.
- Competing bids, how many other suppliers have already submitted. Zero means you would be first.
- Match badge, only shown when Best matches first is on. It is two-valued: a strong match shows 100%, a partial match shows 50%.
The budget is never shown to suppliers, buyers price everything on their side privately. Once you have submitted a bid, the card instead shows your own bid total, not the buyer's budget.
The primary button changes with your status on that request: View Details before you have a bid, Continue Bid while you have a draft in progress, and View Submission once you have submitted, been withdrawn, or the request has closed. A Withdraw action also appears on the card once you have a live submitted or draft bid, so you do not need to open the request to pull it back.
If an invitation includes a personal message from the buyer, a message indicator appears on the card. Click it to read their note.
Confirm or decline an invitation
When a buyer invites you directly, their request appears on the Invitations tab. You have two options before bidding:
- Click Confirm Participation to signal that you intend to bid. The buyer can see your confirmation, and Start Bid unlocks.
- Click Decline if the request is not a fit. You can add an optional reason. Declining an invitation never affects your Trust Score.
If you decline and then change your mind, you can undo the decline from the Declined tab as long as the request is still open.
What the opportunity detail discloses before you price
Opening a request shows you more than the summary card. The opportunity page has three tabs: Overview, Amendments, and Q&A, where you ask the buyer clarification questions anonymously and read every answer they publish to all bidders. On the Overview, a Reference Documents card lists the specification sections, drawing sheets, and files the buyer attached, and the Bill of Quantities tells you how each section wants to be priced: most sections are priced per line, and a section marked "The buyer wants one price for this whole section. You'll price the lines as the breakdown behind it" takes one section price with a reconciled breakdown. Individual lines can carry a Rate only badge (the buyer wants your unit rate; quantity measured on site) or Provisional (the buyer may adjust the quantity before award), so those lines price differently from a standard quantity-times-rate line. The request also states whether part bids are accepted, which decides whether you may decline a section. Read these before you start pricing; they change how your total is built. The full walkthrough is in Submit a bid.
What the buyer sees when you interact
When you confirm participation on an invitation, the buyer sees your company name move from "Pending" to "Confirmed" on their Invitations tab. They see how many suppliers have confirmed and submitted bids, but they cannot see your bid content until after the deadline. If you decline, they are notified with the reason you provided (if any), and they may invite a replacement supplier.
How this connects to the rest of your journey
The Opportunities page is the entry point to bidding, but how you appear on it depends on your company profile. A complete profile with accurate categories makes you visible in the right requests and raises your Trust Score. A strong Trust Score makes buyers more likely to invite you directly rather than leaving discovery to chance.
After you find a request worth pursuing, the next step is the bid wizard.
Making the most of your time here
- Check Invitations before Open every day. Buyer invitations are private and time-sensitive. Letting one expire without a response can affect how buyers perceive your responsiveness.
- A "be first to bid" signal on an Open card is a genuine advantage. Early bids tend to get more buyer attention, and a request with zero competing bids means no price anchoring has happened yet.
- Declining is not failure. It keeps the Declined tab clean and signals to the platform which categories are genuinely relevant to you.
- If Best matches first shows weak results, go fix your categories. The match percentage reflects how well your profile categories overlap with the request's category. Add more specific categories in Settings to improve it.
- Use the Closed tab actively. Every closed request you did not win is a data point. Open the bid and run AI Bid Insights to understand why.
Next steps
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