Bids Are Objects, Not Email Threads
Track every tender from the invitation arriving to the outcome. Deadlines sit in Key Dates, enquiries and coverage are visible, estimates import as draft programmes, and the win rate is a number rather than a feeling.
15-minute walkthrough. No credit card required.
The part of the process that happens before there is a project
Most construction software starts once you have won something. The weeks before that — the pack, the packages, the queries, the deadline — are run out of inboxes, which is why the commonest tender failure is not a bad price but a missed date or a superseded drawing.
Tender mode
Track a bid from the invitation arriving through to the outcome. A bid becomes a tracked object with a state, an owner and a deadline, rather than an attachment in somebody's inbox that only they know about.
Submission deadlines in Key Dates
The return date sits alongside the project's other critical dates rather than on a note stuck to a monitor. Deadlines are the most common way a good price is wasted, and they are entirely preventable.
Supply chain enquiries and coverage
Send package enquiries, see what has come back and what has not, and chase what is missing. Fifty enquiries sent typically produces fifteen returns unchased — the gap between those numbers is the risk of carrying an unpriced package.
Estimates become programmes
Load a spreadsheet straight out of your estimating software and get draft jobs, labour hours and a materials list without retyping any of it. Winning the job stops being the point where the data entry starts.
Priced from measured quantities
Where you are pricing from drawings, measurements taken off the drawing propose the estimate lines they drive, with the revision recorded against each one. Addenda mid-tender stop being the silent way a superseded drawing gets priced.
Outcomes, and a real win rate
Record how each bid ended. Win rate by client, by work type and by value becomes a number you can look at rather than estimate — which is the only honest input to a bid or no-bid decision.
Questions contractors usually ask
What buyers ask before signing up — answered straight.
01
What does tender mode actually change?
It gives a bid somewhere to live before it is a project. Most contractors track tenders in an inbox and a spreadsheet, which means the deadline exists in one person's memory, the drawing register is whatever was last downloaded, and nobody can say what the win rate is. Tender mode makes the bid a tracked record with a deadline, documents and an outcome, and it becomes a project if you win it rather than being retyped as one.
02
Does it help with the bid or no-bid decision?
Indirectly, and usefully. The decision itself is judgement — work type, client, contract terms, competition, capacity. What software can supply is the evidence: your actual win rate with that client, how you have historically performed on that work type, and what your bidding effort costs against the jobs it wins. Most contractors have never calculated that last figure, which is why bidding everything feels free.
03
Can we track deadlines from framework call-offs and mini-competitions too?
Yes. Any bid with a return date can be tracked, whether that is an open tender, a selective invitation, a framework call-off or a two-stage first submission. The mechanics are the same: a deadline you do not control, documents that get revised, enquiries that need chasing, and an outcome worth recording.
04
What happens to the tender documents if we lose?
They stay with the bid record, along with the outcome and any feedback. That matters more than it sounds — a client who put out a job you lost will put out another, and the rates you bid, the packages you got covered, and where you sat against the winner are the best data you will ever have going into the next one.
Tender mode is available from Professional upwards. See pricing to compare tiers.
Stop losing bids to a date nobody diarised
See how a tender is tracked from invitation to outcome, with deadlines, enquiries and win rates in one place.
15-minute walkthrough. No credit card required.