Bidding · Session 8
Moving Bids Through the Pipeline
about 10 minutes
GoalUnderstand the bid stages, how to advance them, and the three ways to view your pipeline.
Every bid sits in exactly one stage: Draft → Review → Approved → Sent → Pending, ending in Won or Lost (with Withdrawn and Expired for the edge cases). Moving forward is a deliberate button click on the bid — the button always matches the current stage:
- Draft → Submit for Review
- Review → Approve (requires the approve-bids permission — estimators hand off, approvers sign off)
- Approved → Mark as Sent — click when you've actually delivered the bid; Download PDF or Branded PDF to send it
- Sent / Pending → Mark Won or Mark Lost
The Bids page shows the whole pipeline three ways — Table, Kanban (a column per stage), and Calendar (bids on their due dates). Status pills filter any view.
Once a sent bid goes quiet, follow-up reminders kick in automatically — a Due badge after 10 days and Overdue after 14 (both adjustable in Settings → Preferences). The dashboard's Upcoming Follow-Ups card works those for you.
Bid Board is where BuildingConnected and PlanHub invitations will land when those integrations ship — it describes itself honestly as coming soon. Until then, invitations you receive by email start life as a New Bid.
Try it yourself
- Move a test bid Draft → Review → Approved and watch the header button change.
- Switch the Bids page between Table, Kanban, and Calendar views.
- Check your follow-up thresholds in Settings → Preferences.
Key takeaways
- Stages advance by explicit button, never automatically — the record reflects what you did.
- Approval is permission-gated; sending is a deliberate confirmation.
- Follow-up nudges fire on sent bids automatically at your thresholds.
Practice this in the live demo
A fully loaded sample company — every module open, no sign-up, nothing you can break.
Open the live demo