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Running a tender

Members (staff) create and run tenders from the Tenders area (/tender/list). This covers building a tender, collecting responses, and awarding it. See Tenders for the concepts.

Requires: the member role to run tenders; suppliers can only respond to tenders they're invited to.

Building the tender

  1. Create a new tender and fill in the details: name, product range, administrator, negotiator, category, and estimated spend.
  2. Set the dates — start, end, the completion deadline, and the negotiation window.
  3. Add the questions (from the tender question template, plus any optional extra questions).
  4. Invite suppliers and add the internal deal team.
  5. Save. Each invited supplier gets their invitation record, document folders, a generated ITT letter (PDF) in their folder, and an in-app notification.

Issuing the ITT

Use Generate documents to produce a supplier's Invitation To Tender letter (a PDF stored in their documents folder). Note this doesn't email the supplier automatically — the letter states login details are sent separately, so confirm your site's process for actually reaching suppliers.

Collecting responses

Suppliers answer the questions and upload supporting documents on the tender response screen, then mark their response complete to submit it. You can track each supplier's completion percentage on the tender.

If a supplier needs to change a submitted response, unlock it (this reverts their status to prepped and reopens it).

Comparing and awarding

  1. Compare the responses (a generated answers report), or compare the tender against an existing deal.

  2. Accept the winning supplier and reject the others.

  3. Create the deal from the accepted response. This clones a template deal, copies the tender answers into the deal's terms, and sets the supplier, negotiator, administrator, dates, product range, and category from the tender.

The result is a normal deal you can then edit (Editing deal core details).

Archiving

Archive a finished tender to keep the record without it showing as active; delete removes it entirely.

If it fails

  • A supplier says they can't see the tender — they weren't invited.
  • You can't award — the supplier's response must be accepted first.
  • The ITT didn't reach a supplier — it's generated as a PDF in their folder and not auto-emailed; notify them through your usual channel.