Setting up Intent to Bid for a Project

NOTE: This page is meant to assist Buyers with setting up Intent to Bid for their opportunities. If you are a Vendor who wants to know how to submit an Intent to Bid, please see How do I submit my Intent to Bid?

The Intent to Bid feature allows you to get a better sense of which of your vendors intend to submit proposals.

When enabled, vendors must assert their Intent to Bid before they may create a submission, or if they do not intend to bid, they can provide you with a reason as to why not.

NEW! You can now set up and view Vendor Diversity data on your Project's tables! Check out Tracking Vendor Diversity for more information.

When this feature preference is enabled all projects will have the option to have the Intent to Bid feature enabled at a per-project level. You can toggle it on or off via Actions -> Edit Project:

NOTE: When a project has the Intent to Bid check box flagged, vendors will be required to submit their Intent to Bid BEFORE they can prepare and submit a bid.

A Project will have an Intent to Bid Due Date wherein vendors must submit Yes before the due date in order to Create a Submission. This feature allows buyers to gauge interest from the vendor community early in the process and take actions as needed (directly contacting vendors if too few bidders are interested, modify Criteria, etc).

Once enabled, Bonfire will default the Intent to Bid Due date to align with the Open and Close date and times for the project:

You can change the Intent to Bid Due date by going to Actions -> Edit Schedule:

Let's take a closer look at what this looks like from the Vendor's point of view. When the Vendor logs in to prepare their submission they will see the following prompt under the Submissions section:

If the Vendor submits YES they will then be able to start their submission by clicking on the Prepare Your Submission button as shown below:

If instead, the Vendor submits NO they must provide a reason as to why they are not bidding. 

Regardless of whether the Vendor submits Yes or No, they will have the option to change their decision up until the Intent to Bid Due date.

Jumping back to your perspective (the Buyer), you will have the Intent to Bid visibility under the Submissions section of the main Project Details page.

You will notice a tab for Intent to Bid. If you expand it you can get an overview of what each Vendor has submitted for their Intent to Bid (complete with details and timestamps).

For this example below we have 2 Vendors: one that declared NO they won't be bidding (their reason is displayed as well) and one that has declared YES they will be bidding: