Tender Management

Overview

Tenders are invitations to bid that you receive from clients, procurement teams, or organisations looking to contract out work. The Tenders section in CallOut WMS helps you track these opportunities from the moment you receive them through to outcome, so nothing falls through the cracks.

Creating a Tender

To record a new tender, click Tenders in the sidebar and then click New Tender. Fill in the following details:

• Title — a short name for the tender, e.g. "School heating system upgrade" or "Council building maintenance contract".
• Reference — the tender reference number issued by the client, if applicable.
• Issuing organisation — the name of the organisation that issued the tender.
• Contact Name — the contact person for queries about the tender.
• Contact Email — the email address for tender-related correspondence.
• Contact Phone — a phone number for the tender contact.
• Customer — optionally link the tender to an existing customer record. This link carries through to any quote or job generated from the tender.
• Description — a summary of the scope of work or requirements.
• Internal notes — a separate notes field for your team's own observations or bid strategy that is not part of the tender description.
• Received date — the date you received the tender invitation.
• Deadline — the submission deadline. This is critical for planning your response.
• Estimated value — your estimate of the contract value, useful for prioritising which tenders to pursue.
• Assigned to — the team member responsible for preparing and submitting the response.

Click Save to create the tender record.

Tender Workflow

Tenders follow a structured workflow that reflects the typical stages of responding to an invitation to bid:

• Received — you have received the tender and it is logged in the system.
• Reviewing — you are assessing the tender to decide whether to bid.
• Preparing Response — you have decided to bid and are working on your submission.
• Submitted — your response has been sent to the issuing organisation. When marking a tender as submitted, you can record the submitted value — the actual price you quoted in your bid.

Update the status as you progress through each stage to keep your team informed and your pipeline accurate.

The workflow is enforced linearly — only valid next states are shown as action buttons. From Received you can move to Reviewing or No Bid; from Reviewing to Preparing Response or No Bid; from Preparing Response to Submitted or Withdrawn; and Won or Lost can only be recorded from Submitted.

Tender Outcomes

After submission, record the outcome of each tender:

• Won — your bid was successful and you have been awarded the contract.
• Lost — another bidder was selected. You can record a reason to help improve future submissions.
• Withdrawn — you decided to withdraw your bid before the decision was made. You can record a reason for your records.
• No Bid — after reviewing, you decided not to submit a response. Recording a reason helps you track why opportunities were passed over.

Deadline Tracking

Meeting tender deadlines is essential. CallOut WMS helps you stay on top of them:

• Upcoming deadline alerts — tenders with approaching deadlines are highlighted so you can prioritise your response work.
• Overdue indicators — if a deadline passes without the tender being submitted, it is clearly flagged as overdue so you can take action immediately.

Check the Tenders page regularly to see which submissions need your attention next.

Converting a Won Tender

When you win a tender, you can turn it into actionable work:

• Convert to Quote — from a Won tender (or any time), use Convert to Quote to create a quote linked to the tender. The new quote starts with no line items — add them, then convert the quote to an invoice when ready.
• Convert to a job — create a job directly so you can schedule and carry out the work. If the tender is linked to a customer, that link is carried through to the job.

This keeps the flow from opportunity to delivery seamless, without having to re-enter information.

Filtering and Searching Tenders

The Tenders page shows all of your tenders in a list. You can:

• Search by title, reference, or issuing organisation.
• Filter by status to focus on tenders at a particular stage. The Status dropdown covers all eight states: Received, Reviewing, Preparing, Submitted, Won, Lost, Withdrawn, and No Bid — so the same filter is used both for in-progress stages and for final outcomes.

Deleting a Tender

If a tender was recorded in error, you can delete it from the tender detail page by clicking Delete and confirming the action. The Delete button only appears while the tender is in the Received, Reviewing, Preparing, or Submitted stages, and requires the tenders.edit permission. Once a tender is marked Won, Lost, Withdrawn, or No Bid, it can no longer be deleted — the historical record is preserved. Deleted tenders cannot be recovered.