Manual Bidding
Manual Bids give you full control over every line item of a bid. You pick the personnel, equipment, and vendors yourself, set the hours and days, and review the calculated totals before sending. Unlike AI Bid Chat, nothing is suggested for you — but the form cross-references your company’s resources so that rates, roles, and equipment types are filled in automatically once you select them.
Only Owner and Manager roles can create bids.
Pre-load your resources first
Section titled “Pre-load your resources first”You can still type names manually, but the bid won’t pull live rates and you’ll need to enter everything by hand.
Creating a manual bid
Section titled “Creating a manual bid”-
In the web app, go to Bids → New Manual Bid in the sidebar (or click Manual Bid from a converted quote request).
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Customer — pick an existing customer or toggle to add a new one inline. The new-customer form requires name, email, phone, and address.
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Project basics — fill in the project name, site location, suggested start date, and estimated timeline (e.g. “2 days”, “3 weeks”). The timeline is used as a default when adding resources.
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Personnel allocation — click Add Personnel, pick from the dropdown of your active team members. The row auto-populates with their name, role, and a default day count derived from your timeline. Set the daily rate and hours per day.
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Equipment allocation — same pattern. Pick equipment from the dropdown; name, type, and default hours are filled in. Adjust days and rates as needed.
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Vendor allocation — add any subcontractors or material suppliers with their estimated cost.
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Materials & overhead — enter a flat material cost (manual number) and an overhead percentage. Overhead defaults to your company setting (typically 15%).
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Crew assignment (optional) — assign the bid to one or more crews so they show up on the crew’s dashboard when the bid is approved.
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Review calculations — totals update live as you type. Check the subtotal, overhead, and grand total before submitting.
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Submit — three options in the footer:
- Save Bid: create the bid and land on the detail page for review.
- Save & Share: create the bid and immediately generate a customer link for e-signature.
- Save & Collaborate: create the bid and open the customer portal view so you can chat with the customer about it.
What gets auto-calculated
Section titled “What gets auto-calculated”The calculations panel recomputes every time you change a number:
- Labor cost = sum of (personnel rate × hours × days) across the allocation table.
- Equipment cost = same pattern for equipment rows.
- Vendor cost = sum of estimated costs per vendor row.
- Material cost = the flat number you enter.
- Subtotal = labor + equipment + vendor + material.
- Overhead = subtotal × overhead percentage.
- Total = subtotal + overhead.
If you want to adjust just one line without re-entering everything, edit the allocation row in place and the totals follow.
Pre-filling from a quote request
Section titled “Pre-filling from a quote request”If you came here via a quote request conversion (the “Manual Bid” button on
a /quote-requests detail dialog), the following are pre-filled:
- Customer: the record created from the quote submitter.
- Project name:
Quote from <submitter name>. - Location: the address from the quote.
- Project requirements: the submitter’s description, services requested, timeline, and budget range joined together.
You can still edit anything before saving.
After submitting
Section titled “After submitting”You land on the bid detail page at /bids/<id> where you can:
- Revise allocations with versioning (each edit creates a new version).
- Send the bid to the customer via email.
- Generate a PDF.
- Mark the bid as accepted / rejected / in-progress.
- Convert the bid to an active project once accepted.