What is an external Bid?

An external bid is one a bid you have received from one or more of your bidders outside of the iTWOcx Tenders system. This could be an email or an attachment you have received.

As the "bid" has been sent outside of the iTWOcx system, the Tenders module will not be able to process it - which means the Tender Dashboard and the  Tender Package will not be updated with the relevant bid details. In effect, you will have information that is disconnected.

However, with iTWOcx Tenders, it is easy to capture this information so that it can be imported into your package to keep all your Package/Bidder details in one place. 

Topics

How to submit an External Bid

Open the relevant package

To submit an externally received bid follow the steps below.

1. Go to the Tenders Dashboard
2. Click on Summary on the relevant package (the package you wish to upload the bid to)
   
   
   
3. Go to the Package Progress Tab

Select Bidders

1. On the package, progress tab select the bidders you wish to submit an external bid for
2. In the Bidder Tools drop down select Submit External Bids
   

1. This will launch the External bid submission wizard 
2. The wizard will display the bidder's company and contact that you selected.
3. You are now ready to upload the External bids

Upload Documents

To upload documents;

1. Click on the Upload button against the relevant Bidder
2. This will launch the file selector
   
   
   
   
3. Click Select files
4. Select the files you wish to upload or Drag and drop them into to upload documents pop up
5. Click Done

1. You will see a count of the documents you have just added next to the Upload button
2. Click Next
   
   
   
   

Notify Bidders of Submission

After you click next you will be taken to the Notify tab of the External bid submission Wizard

On this tab, you are able to select whether you would like to Notify the Bidders about you submitting a bid on their behalf or not.

1. To Notify - Select Yes in the Notify column
2. To not Notify Select No.
3. Review all your changes
4. Click Upload Bids
5. This will upload your external bids into iTWOcx Tenders

What happens after an External Bid has been submitted?

Package Progress tab updated

1. The package Progress tab is immediately updated with the newly submitted external Bid
2. The submitted column for the relevant bidder will be updated.
3. To view the view select View bids from the Post Submission Actions  drop down.
   

External bids will indicate that the Tender Admin (or the user who uploaded them) 

Tender Dashboard updated

Package History Updated

Package history will be updated with;

1. Who submitted the external bid and on behalf of which Bidder
2. If the bidder was notified about the external bid submission

Remove Bidders from External submission Wizard

If you accidently added the wrong bidders into the Wizard or changed your mind,

1. You can select the Bidders you wish to remove
2. Click Remove

Remove attachments from External bids

If you would like to remove any attachments you added during your external bid upload process;

1. Click on the link that indicates the number of documents uploaded
2. Click on the X to remove the documents as desired.
3. Click Done.

Withdraw an External Bid

If for any reason you would like to remove an External bid you submitted from a package

1. Click on Summary on the relevant package
2. Go to the Package Progress tab
3. Click on View bid for the relevant bidder
   
   
   
4. Select the external bid from the list of bids (if there is more than 1 bid)
5. Click Withdraw External Bid
   
   
   
6. You can optionally decide to notify the bidder of the Withdrawal
7. Click Withdraw External bid
8. This will withdraw this external bid for this Bidder
   
   
   
   
   

History will be updated to reflect that the bid was withdrawn.