Submit a Bid
From the opportunity to the confirmation: confirm or decline an invitation, read the documents, ask in Q&A, pass the qualification pre-screen, price the Bill of Quantities including one-price sections and declined sections, answer the buyer's terms, run the Quality Check, and submit.
What you'll learn
- Read an opportunity fully: documents, drawings, Q&A, and the pricing rules for each section
- Pass the Before you begin pre-screen and move through the four steps of the bid wizard
- Price measured, rate-only, PC-sum, and one-price sections correctly, and decline a section where part bids are accepted
- Answer the buyer's terms, run the Quality Check, submit, and know what your quote validity means
Winning a contract starts well before the buyer opens your bid. The buyer's evaluation, including AI Scoring, judges every response against the same structure and criteria, so a bid that is complete, clearly priced, and answers every question stands out immediately from one that is missing sections, has unreconciled prices, or rewrites the buyer's terms without saying so. The bid wizard walks you through every section the buyer expects you to fill, in the order they expect to see it.
Why this matters
A structured bid wizard enforces completeness. Every supplier prices the same line items in the same units, answers the same questions, responds to the same terms, and submits by the same deadline. When the buyer evaluates, the differences they see are genuine differences in your offer, not artefacts of different formats. The buyer's AI checks flag unpriced scope, declined sections, and own terms before award, so those choices are visible; make them deliberately.
Before you open the wizard
Confirm or decline an invitation
When a buyer invites you directly, the opportunity offers Confirm Participation and Decline. Confirming tells the buyer you intend to bid and unlocks Start Bid. Declining opens Decline this opportunity? with an optional reason list; it never affects your Trust Score, and Undo Decline reopens the opportunity while bidding is still open.
Read the request, its documents, and its pricing rules
The opportunity page has three tabs: Overview, Amendments, and Q&A. Read the Overview end to end: Scope & Requirements, the commercial terms (Payment Terms, Incoterms, Quote Validity, Late Delivery Tolerance, VAT treatment), and for a construction request the Construction bill block with Retention %, Advance payment %, bonds, and Measurement standard.
Then the documents. The Reference Documents card lists what the buyer attached: whole files, specification sections, page ranges, or drawing sheets, each downloadable. A BoQ line can carry its own attachment as a chip in the Attachments column. Price against these, not against memory.
Then the Bill of Quantities itself. Every section tells you how it wants to be priced before you start: a plain section is priced per line; a section marked "The buyer wants one price for this whole section. You'll price the lines as the breakdown behind it" takes a section price with a reconciled breakdown (below). Lines carry Rate only ("quantity measured on site") or Provisional ("the buyer may adjust it before award") badges where they apply, and a Nominated subcontractor where a party is named. Read the notice above the questionnaire too: Must-pass questions disqualify a bid on the wrong answer.
Ask in Q&A, early
If anything is unclear, ask on the Q&A tab: type into Ask a clarification question… and Send. Your identity is never shown to other bidders; only the buyer sees who asked. Your question shows Awaiting answer ("Only you and the buyer can see this until it is answered"). When the buyer publishes an answer, it appears under Published Q&A for every bidder with a New chip, and where the answer changed the request it carries a See Amendment #N link. A dismissed question comes back to you alone, with the buyer's reason.
Questions close at the Questions close (date) chip, which can be earlier than the submission deadline; after that the tab reads "The question period has closed for this request." Read every published answer and announcement before you price: they bind every bidder equally. For something that concerns only your company, Start Conversation opens a private chat with the buyer instead.
The pre-screen: Before you begin
Start Bid may open Before you begin first: the buyer's required qualification questions, the ones whose answer can disqualify a bid. Answer them and the wizard checks your answers (Checking qualifications…). If an answer fails a required qualification, the page says so and Continue to bid form stays disabled until you change it; if you cannot honestly change it, do not spend the afternoon pricing. Some qualification checks are reviewed by AI after you submit; the pre-screen covers the rule-based ones.
The bid wizard, step by step
The wizard has four steps: Request Details, BoQ, Questions, and Review & Submit. Your progress saves automatically at every step (Draft saved), so closing the browser does not lose your work; the draft is under Bids and the opportunity card reads Continue Draft. A banner at the top of every step reminds you to complete your submission before the deadline.
Request Details: confirm you can fulfil this
The first step lays the request out for you: Request Overview, Scope & Terms, Buyer-Provided Information, and, where the buyer added fields for you, Additional Information Required. Read the Quote Validity here and take it seriously: it is how long your prices must stay firm after you submit.
BoQ: enter your prices
The buyer has defined the items, descriptions, quantities, and units. Your job is the Unit Price for each line; the line Total and the Bid total update as you type. Each section shows the Buyer target delivery and asks for Your delivery date. Add note on a line records a lead time, a spec clarification, or an alternative offered. You cannot leave this step until every section you are pricing has a delivery date and every required field is filled; the wizard lists what is missing under Please fix the following before continuing. Quantities and unit prices may stay empty on lines you are not bidding — that never blocks the step.
Your prices are in your company's currency. If it differs from the request's, your company needs an exchange rate for the pair, entered by an admin under Settings then Currency. Without an effective rate you can draft but not submit; the footer tells you exactly that.
Two zero cases are treated deliberately. A unit price of 0 means the item is free, bundled, or included at no extra charge, and the footer asks you to acknowledge free lines before submitting. A quantity of 0 means you are not bidding that line; a zero quantity with a price still entered is ambiguous and blocks submission until you clear one of the two. Where the buyer named Approved manufacturers, you must pick one for the line.
Special lines and sections
Construction and services requests carry pricing structures beyond quantity times rate. The wizard handles each without workarounds:
- Rate-only lines. No quantity; the buyer measures on site. You quote a unit rate and there is no line total. These lines are excluded from your bid total, and the total says how many rate-only lines it excludes, so nobody mistakes a partial sum for the full price.
- Provisional quantities. The quantity is an estimate the buyer may adjust before award. Price the rate normally.
- PC sums. The amount is fixed by the buyer. Instead of a rate you enter Attendance % and Profit %, and the line shows Total incl. attendance & profit. Provisional sums and dayworks carry their own rules; the construction pricing reference explains every type.
- One-price sections. Where the buyer set a section to one price with a breakdown required, the section asks How will you price this section? with two answers: Lump sum or Decline this section. Choose Lump sum, price the lines beneath as your breakdown, and enter the Lump-sum amount: "the one figure that governs; your breakdown below must add up to it." The Reconciliation panel compares the Build-up total with the Section price and reads Balanced, Over by, or Short by; any difference goes in Adjustment (discount or uplift), which the panel can fill for you in one click. Add Notes (optional) for anything the buyer should know about the price. Per-line-only pricing is not accepted on such a section, and an unpriced or unreconciled one blocks submission ("This section requires a lump-sum price before you can submit").
- Declining a section. Where the buyer's Part bids rule accepts part bids, Decline this section marks the whole section Not bidding this section and leaves it out of your total. Where the buyer requires full scope, every line must be priced. Declined sections are shown to the buyer as partial scope by declaration, so decline only what you genuinely will not do.
If the buyer changes a section's rules after you responded (for example, itemized pricing becomes required), the wizard flags your now-stale lump-sum response ("The buyer now requires itemized pricing for this section") and you Remove it and price the lines. You are never silently submitted under rules that changed.
Scale If you buy out part of the scope yourself, Select lines to carve and Create Sub-Tender float those lines to your own suppliers; the Sub-Tender roll-up then shows their quotes, Carried and Awarded badges, your Margin at current prices and Margin at suggested prices, and an Apply % to all markup you can push onto your bid lines. See the construction pricing reference.
Questions: answer the buyer's evaluation questions
Not every request includes questions. When it does, the buyer is evaluating suppliers on criteria beyond price. Each question has a type (text, yes/no, single or multiple choice, number, date) and a weight; questions marked Qualification can disqualify your bid on the wrong answer, and you already met the rule-based ones in the pre-screen. Sections can also carry Extra Parameters (lead times, warranty, certifications) and the request can carry Additional Questions that apply to the whole bid. Answer everything marked required.
Review & Submit: terms, attachments, notes, Quality Check
The final step shows the Bid Summary (Ready to submit, or Not ready to submit with the items that need attention), then your bid exactly as the buyer will see it: every line, every answer, your delivery dates. Three things live only on this step:
- Terms & Conditions Response: Accept as-is, Accept with exceptions (describe them), or Propose your own terms (describe them). This is not a formality: the buyer's AI checks flag "accepted your terms with exceptions" and "submitted its own terms in place of yours" before award, so state exceptions plainly and only where you need them.
- Attachments (a Scale-plan feature) for registration, certificates, technical sheets, and any file a question asked for. Keep file names clear; buyers open them alongside your pricing.
- Additional Notes: a short message the buyer reads with your bid. One relevant point beats three paragraphs.
Quality Check in the footer reads your entire bid before you commit: blockers, warnings, suggestions, and a Clarify before you bid list of things worth asking in Q&A first. Each run uses AI credits, confirmed before it starts, and a result strip stays on the step; change the bid and it tells you the check is stale. If findings remain when you press submit, a dialog offers Review findings or Submit anyway. See the Quality Check guide.
The footer shows one submit button, and its label tells you what happens next: Submit Bid sends your bid to the buyer; Submit for Approval appears instead when your company has an internal approval workflow, and the bid stays in Pending approval until your approvers sign off. The confirmation restates your Bid total, counts lines marked free or no bid, lists sections priced as a lump sum, and records your terms response.
Bids cannot be submitted after the request deadline. If the deadline is close, submit a bid that is 90% complete rather than waiting for perfection; you can Reopen & Edit a submitted bid while bidding is open, and the buyer sees the new version.
After you submit: validity, revisions, withdrawal
Your bid page shows a lifecycle strip (Draft, Pending approval, Submitted with "Awaiting buyer evaluation", Awarded) and a Valid Until stat: "Your quoted prices are valid until (date)", counted from your submission using the buyer's quote validity. When it passes, the stat reads Expired and the buyer is told you are no longer bound by those prices; extend by reopening and resubmitting, or expect the buyer to confirm prices with you before awarding.
If the buyer amends the request after you submit, a Revision Requested banner appears with Review & Revise, and the Amendments tab shows what changed. If you must pull out, Withdraw retracts the bid and notifies the buyer; you can bid again before the deadline. A bid the platform has frozen for compliance review shows Record Frozen with the reason.
What the buyer sees after you submit
The buyer sees your bid on the Bids tab of their request with your company name, your bid total converted for comparison where currencies differ, your delivery against their target, your attachments count, and your price validity. Rate-only lines show per rate with the exclusion disclosed, and a one-price section shows your section price with its lines marked as included. Their AI Scoring runs only after they close the request, and its checks will name unpriced scope, declined sections, terms exceptions, and rates far from the field before they award.
What good looks like
- Read the documents and every published Q&A answer before pricing. They bind every bidder equally, and a competitor who read them will price differently from one who did not.
- Price every line you can supply, and decline only whole sections you genuinely will not do. Unpriced scope is levelled with an estimate on the buyer's side and flagged before award.
- Make the lump-sum breakdown honest. The buyer values variations against it later; a round section figure over a breakdown that does not reconcile is the first thing an evaluator notices.
- Answer the terms deliberately. Exceptions are legitimate; silent exceptions buried in notes are not, and the platform will not let them stay silent.
- Watch your validity. A price that expires before the buyer can award is a price you may be asked to confirm.
- Run the Quality Check before every submission. Even a bid you feel confident about often has a gap the check catches in seconds.
Next steps
- Use the Quality CheckGet AI feedback on your bid before you click Submit.
- Understand construction pricingPC sums, rate-only lines, one-price sections, part bids, and the sub-tender chain.
- Track your bidsMonitor the status of every bid after it leaves your hands.
- When you win or when you do notWhat to do the moment the buyer makes a decision.
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