Request and compare commercial proposals

The Proposal area keeps commercial requests and vendor submissions structured enough to compare. Vendors can provide requested pricing fields and line items; buyers can review total cost of ownership, preserve versions and track negotiation changes. Use common assumptions and a common period so a low headline price is not compared with a more complete multi-year submission.

Before you start

• Agree the currency, evaluation period, quantity assumptions, tax treatment and cost categories that every vendor should use.

• Confirm eligible vendors and portal contacts. Eliminated vendors should not receive a new request unless the project decision has changed.

Step by step

1. Prepare the proposal request

Open Project → Proposal, define the requested commercial information and review the active non-eliminated vendors. Explain any mandatory line-item or total-cost assumptions.

2. Send to vendor contacts

Select the intended vendors and recipients, set the deadline and send. The vendor completes the structured proposal in its project portal rather than emailing an untracked replacement.

3. Review submitted costs

Check completeness, currency and period before comparing totals. Inspect individual line items and assumptions behind the calculated TCO, not only the displayed headline number.

4. Preserve proposal versions

When a revised offer arrives, create or accept the supported new version and keep the earlier snapshot. Mark the correct version active; archive obsolete drafts without erasing negotiation history.

5. Track negotiations

Use the project vendor’s negotiation area for buyer and vendor positions, agreed changes and next actions. Reflect an agreed commercial change in a new proposal version so comparison uses the same evidence.

6. Compare like with like

Use the proposal comparison to review active versions across vendors. Document exclusions or normalisation choices before relying on TCO in the final decision.

What happens next

• Confirm the active proposal version and commercial assumptions before creating approval or decision outputs.

• Use signable documents for execution-ready agreements; a proposal submission is not itself a signature workflow.

Troubleshooting

A vendor is missing from the request list

Confirm the vendor is attached to the project, is not eliminated and has an eligible portal contact.

TCO values are not comparable

Align currency, period, quantities and included cost categories. Request a corrected version rather than silently editing a vendor’s commercial meaning.

A negotiated figure does not appear in comparison

Make the proposal version containing that figure active. Negotiation notes alone do not replace the structured commercial submission.

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