QuickTenders Resource
How to apply for a tender with QuickTenders
What QuickTenders fills in for you, what only you can decide, which forms come back needing your signature, and what to have ready before you start.
~6 min read · Updated 16 September 2026
Applying for a government tender through QuickTenders is a preparation workflow, not a submission service. QuickTenders reads the tender, opens a workspace for it, fills what it can from your company records, asks you for what it cannot, assembles one Submission Pack, and tells you what is still open before you download it. Lodging the bid with the buyer is yours to do.
What to have ready before you start
The pack is only as complete as your records. Before you open a workspace, make sure these are current under Biz Enablement:
- A current Tax Compliance Status (TCS) PIN. An expired PIN is listed as a blocking issue in Final Review, and buyers reject bids without a valid one.
- Your directors, and the person who signs your bids. Bid forms ask for directors (and, on some forms, their identity numbers) and for the authorised signatory's name and capacity. Both are entered by you in your Company Profile — QuickTenders never takes them from a CV or any other document.
- Your B-BBEE certificate or sworn affidavit. The preference-points form (SBD 6.1 or the buyer's equivalent) is completed only from a certificate on file.
- Your CIPC registration certificate and CSD report, so the registration number and supplier number are on record.
- Your company logo, if you want it on the cover, dividers and generated pages of the pack.
- CVs for key personnel and at least three project references, if the tender asks about people or experience — it usually does.
Step 1 — Find the tender and check the fit
Open the tender from your matches, from Browse tenders, or by uploading the tender document under My tenders if you found it elsewhere. The tender page shows what QuickTenders read from the buyer's document: the closing date and submission method, compulsory requirements, the forms required, and the evaluation criteria with their points.
Click Apply. QuickTenders runs a Tender Fit assessment — a verdict with a score out of 100 and the reasons — against your Company Profile. A poor-fit verdict is a warning, not a wall: you decide whether to continue, and the decision is kept with the workspace.
On the Free plan, or beyond your plan's monthly allowance, applying uses a free credit if you have one, or a single pay-as-you-go charge. The price is shown before you confirm.
Step 2 — Answer the Bid Questions
A Tender Workspace opens. The first thing it asks is a short set of Bid Questions — the things about this specific bid that your documents cannot answer:
- Are you bidding as a joint venture or consortium?
- Do you intend to subcontract more than 25% of the contract value?
- Do you, any director or any employee have a relationship with the buyer or anyone evaluating the bid?
- Will you attend the compulsory briefing, if there is one?
- Can you deliver the full scope within the stated period and quantities?
- Is your line-item pricing ready?
- Do you want to submit an alternative offer alongside your main bid?
Each answer is unanswered, provisional or confirmed. A provisional answer is a placeholder QuickTenders suggested; it stays listed in Final Review until you confirm it. A required question left unanswered holds back the sections that depend on it.
Step 3 — Record your Pricing Decision
Your price is your decision. Record the basis (lump sum, rate, commission percentage, or a priced schedule) and the figure under Pricing. Where QuickTenders holds comparable awarded contracts it shows them as market context, labelled as such — it never proposes a price. The pricing narrative in your bid is written only once your decision is recorded.
Step 4 — Build the written sections
Build My Submission drafts the written sections — cover letter, company profile, key personnel, experience and references, methodology, technical proposal, project plan, health and safety, quality plan, local content and pricing narrative — from your Company Profile, the documents you uploaded and this tender's requirements.
Two rules govern what it writes:
| QuickTenders will | QuickTenders will not |
|---|---|
| Write only what your documents support, and say so where they do not | Invent a fact, a figure or a certificate to fill a gap |
| Structure the technical proposal one subsection per evaluation criterion, in the buyer's order | State a contract period or quantity the tender itself does not state |
| Keep a bounded figure bounded ("not more than R10 000 000" stays exactly that) | Turn a turnover ceiling into an exact turnover |
| Print your declared signatory in the declared capacity | Attach a job title to a person from a previous employer's CV |
Read each section. Edit anything you would say differently — an edited section is yours and is never rewritten. Accept the sections you are happy with; accepted sections stop appearing as "generated text not yet accepted" in Final Review.
Step 5 — The forms
The pack carries the buyer's official forms. Where the tender uses the national SBD series and QuickTenders holds a template, the fields it can legitimately source — your legal name, registration number, CSD number, address, contacts, the tender reference and closing date — are pre-filled. Where the tender prescribes its own series (the Western Cape's WCBD forms, for example) the buyer's pages are carried exactly as the tender supplies them.
Three things are always yours: declarations, signatures and commercial figures. A form in the pack is not a completed form. Final Review reports five separate facts per form — physically included, populated, awaiting your action, completed, signed — and never calls a blank form complete. You can also upload your own completed, signed copy of any form; it replaces the pack's pages.
Step 6 — Final Review
Before you download, Final Review runs every check and groups the result:
- What QuickTenders completed — sections written, forms prefilled, documents selected.
- What it recommends — the fit verdict, the comparable-value context, any conflicts it found in the tender's own wording.
- What only you can decide — pricing, bid answers, the fit decision.
- What you must provide — forms to complete by hand, signatures, missing documents, dates.
- What is blocking — an expired TCS PIN, missing signing authority, a closed tender.
The pack state is one of three words. Submission Ready: nothing open. Review Required: items are open; you may download after acknowledging the list, and the acknowledgement — with the exact list, the time and the pack's fingerprint — is recorded. Blocked: the tender has closed, so no pack is built.
A blocking issue is one that would get the bid rejected or makes it unsubmittable. A warning is worth knowing and does not stop you.
Step 7 — Download, sign and submit
Download the Submission Pack: cover and contents, your written response, the forms, and your supporting documents with an index and page numbers. Print or open it, sign every form that needs a signature, complete anything Final Review listed as yours, and lodge the bid by the method the tender allows — bid box, email or portal — before the closing time.
QuickTenders never sends a bid to a buyer. Once you have lodged it, confirm I've submitted this in the workspace and keep the buyer's receipt with it. See How to submit after QuickTenders.
Related
- How to read a tender before you apply
- How to complete Bid Questions
- How to review your submission
- Platform Terms — Tender Fit, Bid Questions, Final Review, Submission Pack
- Tender Dictionary — SBD, CSD, B-BBEE, tax compliance status
Frequently asked questions
- Does QuickTenders submit the tender for me?
- No. QuickTenders prepares the Submission Pack — your written response, the buyer's forms and your supporting documents in one PDF. You sign the forms and lodge the pack yourself by the method the tender allows, then confirm in the workspace that you have submitted it.
- What does "Review Required" mean when I download?
- Final Review found items that are still open — a form to sign, a bid question to confirm, a pricing decision to record, or a document that has expired. You can still download the pack after acknowledging the list; the acknowledgement is recorded, and the pack itself carries no such note.
- Can I apply if QuickTenders says the tender is a poor fit?
- Yes. Tender Fit is a warning about the tender's requirements, not a block. You choose whether to continue, and your decision is recorded with the workspace.