Tenders and bids — the complete guide

A tender is a parcel of work put to the market for pricing. The owner cuts it from their SOQ, so every bidder prices the same lines — which is what makes the quotes that come back genuinely comparable, rather than five lump sums that cannot be held against each other.

This page is both sides: putting work out, and pricing it.

For the person putting work out

Where a tender comes from

A tender is cut from a tender pocket in your SOQ. Its jobs and lines become the scope, so bidders price your Plumbing pocket rather than guessing at "plumbing".

Pockets still marked Draft are never copied into a tender. Activate what you want priced.

Who can see it

Two choices decide the audience, and between them they cover every case:

An invitation lasts 30 days and arrives both by email and in the app. Someone holding a valid invite or share link can bid even on a private tender they were not listed on individually — that is what the link is for.

What a bidder can and cannot see

This is worth knowing before you worry about it:

Bidders never see your rates or your budget. They see the scope — the line descriptions, the units, your estimated quantities and hours — with your estimated rate, your estimated amount and the tender's budget stripped out. Only people who can see the project's money (you, your managers, investors) see those.

While it is open

• You can add or remove scope while no live bid exists, and bidders who are already in are told when the scope changes.
• The submission deadline is enforced: once it passes, no more bids.
• There is no question-and-answer thread on a tender. If a bidder needs something clarified, they contact you through Messages.

Bids that arrive by email

Not every quote comes through the platform. Add a bid you received takes the PDF, .eml, photo or pasted text a contractor sent you (up to 20 MB), an AI reads it into a draft, and you check every figure against the original before it is kept. It then sits alongside the other bids to compare and award.

The original file stays in the project's documents, and you can have the bidder emailed to say their quote was recorded. .msg files are not supported — save the email as a PDF.

Awarding

Award is yours alone, and it happens in one movement:

1. The tender closes and the bid is marked won; the others are told.
2. A payment contract is created automatically between the two of you.
3. Its milestones come from the agreed payment schedule — the winning bid's, or the tender's, or a standard split if neither says.
4. Retention, if the tender set one, becomes the contract's last milestone, Retention (release), paid like any other stage when it is released.

From there the job lives on the Active Work screen (the contractor sees it as Awarded Work), and money is handled on the project's Money page — see How payments work.

You can also award a bid from someone with no QSME account. The contract carries their name and email, and they claim it when they sign up.

For the person pricing the work

Finding work

Opportunities is the one feed: every public tender, filtered by your trades and your area. Tenders you have been invited to appear there too. Your own bids live under My Bids.

What it costs to bid

Reading a tender

You see the scope: the line descriptions, units, and the owner's estimated quantities and hours. You do not see their rates, their line amounts or their budget — those are theirs.

Treat the quantities as the owner's estimate, not a measurement you can rely on. They came from the owner's own schedule and may be out. Price what you would actually do.

Two ways to price

Itemising is what lets the client compare you line by line, and it is what an SOQ-based tender is set up for. Your figures are entirely your own: you never have to match the owner's quantities.

What else goes on a bid

• Proposed start and end dates — required.
• Supporting documents — your own attachments.
• Drawing markups — mark up the plans so the client sees exactly what you priced.
• A counter-proposal on payment terms. You can propose your own schedule (one payment, or your own milestones) instead of the client's. If you win, that becomes the contract's milestones.
• A draft is saved on your device as you go, so a closed tab does not cost you the afternoon.

There is a Review & submit step before anything is sent, and it tells you what the submission will cost.

GST

You are never asked what your price means. QSME knows whether you are GST registered and says so on the form — exclusive, inclusive, or not registered — and freezes that with the bid. It carries through to the contract and onto every invoice, so the two can never disagree.

Because "2,000" means two different amounts to a client and a GST-registered builder — $300 apart on a $2,000 job — a price is shown both ways: excluding GST, the GST, and including GST. That is display only; the figure stored is the one you typed, and QSME never changes it. Where a record was made before the basis existed it reads "GST basis not stated" rather than blank, because blank reads as "no GST" and that is a claim the record cannot support.

Comparing bids, the client can sort on whichever basis they are working in, so a GST-registered bidder is never accidentally compared against an unregistered one on the wrong number.

After you submit

Your proposal goes to the owner. You can delete your own bid and submit again while the tender is still open. If you win, the work appears under Awarded Work with its contract and milestones.

Words you will see

More on the words: the glossary.

If something looks wrong

Still stuck? hello@qsme.co.nz, or +64 27 338 8500.