Comparing bids and awarding

Quotes come back against the tender and line up on its Compare tab. The work is making sure they are actually comparable before you decide anything.

Reading the Compare tab

Compare puts your items down the side and each subcontractor across the top. Each cell is their price for that item — their quantity times their rate — so you can see who is cheapest item by item, not just in total.

You see	It means
A green cell	The cheapest price for that item, when two or more subcontractors priced it
Not priced	They left the item out of their quote
$0.00, in pink	They put the line in but priced it at nothing
for 30 under a price	They priced a different quantity from yours

Under the sheet:

• Total for these items — what each quote comes to for the items on this tender
• Against the budget — the difference from your estimate
• Gaps — how many items they did not price, or priced at zero
• Whole quote — shown when it differs, because they also priced things that are not on your tender

A total is only marked as the lowest when the subcontractor priced every item. A total with gaps is not a total.

Only each subcontractor’s latest quote is compared. If they sent more than one, the earlier ones are on the Subcontractors tab under 2 quotes.

The cheapest is not always the cheapest

Before comparing totals, check each bid covers the same work.

Check	Why
Every item priced?	A gap makes a bid look cheap
Exclusions?	Read their document, not just the total
Quantities as sent?	A bidder who re-measured may have found something
Conditions?	Payment terms, retention, insurance, minimum call-outs
Prelims and access?	Scaffold, hoisting, cleaning — who is allowing for it

The lowest bid is often the one that excluded the most. That is not dishonesty, usually — it is a subcontractor pricing exactly what they read.

Worked example

Three bids for the Hendricks roofing package:

Bidder	Total	Notes
A	$17,240	All items priced. Excludes scaffold.
B	$18,600	All items priced. Includes scaffold.
C	$16,900	Sarking not priced. Excludes scaffold and edge protection.

C looks cheapest and is not. Add sarking at around $1,400 and C is $18,300 — and still excludes edge protection.

Scaffold is $1,900 if you supply it. So the real comparison is:

Bidder	Comparable total
A	$19,140
B	$18,600
C	$20,200+

B, which looked the most expensive, is the cheapest — and is the only bid where nobody has to work out who is bringing the scaffold.

Normalise the scope before comparing totals

Ten minutes with the three bids and a pad is worth more than any other ten minutes in the estimating process. The difference above is $1,600 on one trade, and it points the opposite way to the headline numbers.

Bringing the winning price into the bill

Once you have chosen, press Select this quote under that subcontractor’s column on Compare. For every item they priced, their quantity and product go into your estimate, replacing what was there.

Anyone else selected on those items is cleared at the same time, so the estimate and the tender always agree on who won each item. The winner’s column shows Selected, and the tender’s progress line moves to Awarded.

There is no undo yet

Selecting a quote overwrites the estimate’s quantities and products for those items. Check the sheet — gaps, zero prices, different quantities — before you press it.

The items pick up the quoted rates and carry a Related bid link back to the source.

That link is what answers “who quoted this and when?” six months later, without anyone opening a mailbox. It also means the purchase order you eventually raise carries the rate that was actually quoted.

While you are there, set the supplier on the items to the winning bidder. It takes a moment now and saves assigning them by hand at ordering. See Suppliers and products.

Telling the others

Tell the unsuccessful bidders, briefly and promptly.

It costs a short email and it is the reason they price your next job. A subcontractor who prices three of your packages and never hears back on any of them stops answering.

You do not have to give them the numbers. “Thanks for pricing this — we have gone with another contractor this time, but I will have the next one out to you” is enough.

Keeping the record

The tender keeps who was invited, what they were sent, when, and what came back.

That is what you want when a subcontractor says the scope was different from what they priced — the package they were sent is attached to the job, not reconstructed from memory.

If no bid is acceptable

You can re-tender. Before you do, work out why: too little time, the wrong bidders, an unclear package, or a genuinely expensive piece of work.

Re-tendering the same package to the same people with the same information gets the same answer.