Procurement
Procurement is how a package of work goes out to market and comes back as a contract. One package holds the scope, the schedule of values, the drawings, the firms you invited, every price they returned, the comparison you made and the recommendation you signed off, so the answer to "why did we pick them" is on the record rather than in somebody's sent items.
Procurement belongs to the host organisation on a project. A subcontractor invited to price a package does not see this area at all; they see the same package from the other side, in Tenders.
The register
Procurement opens on three views of the same packages.
Register is the ordinary register screen, one row per package, filterable and groupable.
Timeline lays every package against its tender milestones, so you can see which one is about to run out of road.
Coverage is a matrix: packages down the side, tenderer one, two, three and so on across the top, each cell holding a firm and their latest price. It answers the question you ask at 4pm on a Friday, which is not "how is package 12 going" but "which packages have we only got one price on".
The stage is derived, not typed
A package's stage is worked out from what has actually happened to it, not from a field somebody remembers to update. Approving the tender package, approving the recommendation and the last signature landing on the contract each move it on their own.
There are thirteen stages across four phases. Package: Draft, Package in review, Package returned, Ready to issue. Tender: Out to tender, Tender closed. Recommendation: Recommendation in review, Recommendation returned, Awarded. Contract: Out for signature, Signing declined, Executed.
Packages skip stages all the time, and that is fine. A package awarded without a formal recommendation, or a contract sent without a tender package approval, still lands on the right stage, because the ladder reads the newest thing that happened rather than walking the chain forwards.
The one thing Teralo cannot work out is a human deciding to stop. That is Closed, and it is covered further down.
Building a package
Create a package with a number, a title, a category and the budget code it will be committed against. The budget breakdown carries the numbers a builder actually argues about: the trade budget, adjustments, provisional sums, what is still unlet and the target you are trying to buy it for.
Then fill the Tender Package tab, which is what the market receives.
Schedule is the schedule of values you want priced, built in the same editor used everywhere else in Teralo: sections and items, quantities, units, rates and budget codes.
Issuing an addendum
An addendum is a numbered, dated change issued after the package has gone out, and it is the mechanism for every change: an answer that affects the price, a drawing revision, a moved deadline. Issue it as an addendum rather than as a message to one firm, so every tenderer is pricing the same job.
The rest of the tender package
Scope is the written scope of works. Linked Documents pulls drawings and specifications straight out of the project's Documents register rather than copying them, so a package issued today points at the revision that was current today. Uploaded Files is for anything that is not already in the register. Addenda are the numbered, dated changes you issue after the package has gone out.
Schedule revisions and re-pricing
Unlike a contract's schedule, a package's schedule is versioned: you work on a draft and then publish it. That exists because prices are attached to it. Publishing a revision that materially changes a line somebody has already priced lets you request a re-price on that line, which flags it for every firm who priced it rather than silently re-presenting their old number under new wording.
Teralo also records what each price was quoted against. If a line said 100 metres when a firm priced it and now says 120, the comparison shows you that, so a stale price is never read as a current one.
Getting it approved before it goes out
A package can be sent for internal approval before anyone outside sees it. Submit it for approval and pick which approval graph to run from the templates your organisation has made available; approving it stamps the Tender ready milestone.
This is a governance step rather than a lock. Teralo does not physically stop you inviting firms to an unapproved package, deliberately, because the tender that has to go out this afternoon is a real thing. What it does is record the difference.
Inviting tenderers
The Tenderers tab is where you invite, and it is also where you compare. Invite in one of two ways.
From the directory, where the firm already has a Teralo organisation. They get the package in their own Tenders list.
By email, where they do not. Teralo sends a link that opens a portal with the package on it, and they can read it, ask questions and lodge a bid without ever creating an account. The link lasts thirty days and can be resent. If they create an account later, the bid they already lodged becomes theirs.
Each invitation moves through invited, accepted, declined and submitted, and you can see at a glance which firm has not opened the envelope.
Levelling: comparing what comes back
The Tenderers tab doubles as the levelling grid: your schedule down the side, one column per firm, their prices in the cells. Sections subtotal, the bottom line totals, and a bid lodged as a lump sum can be converted into the grid so it can be read beside the others.
A bid that arrived as a PDF does not have to be typed in. Choose AI fill from quote, pick the firm and pick their document, and Teralo reads the quote and fills that firm's column. Check it, because it is a reading of somebody else's spreadsheet rather than a data feed, but it turns an afternoon into a few minutes.
Your own edits to a firm's column are kept separately from what they submitted. Levelling adjustments you make are never shown back to the tenderer, and their original submission stays intact underneath and can be returned to.
Lines take notes and attachments, firms take notes, and the whole submission history is there, because levelling is an argument you have to be able to reconstruct.
The sealed tender box
A package can be run sealed, in which case you cannot see the prices, the submitted documents or the levelling grid until the deadline has passed and somebody opens the box. Opening it is a deliberate act, recorded against a name, and it is refused before the deadline.
The list of who has responded stays visible either way, so a sealed box never stops you chasing a firm that has gone quiet.
Late bids
By default a bid lodged after the deadline goes in and is stamped with how late it was, and you decide what to do about it. Set the package to block late submissions instead and the deadline becomes hard: the only way past it is to grant a named firm a specific late allowance, which is recorded with your name on it.
Both settings default from the project and can be overridden on a package.
The recommendation, and the award
The Recommendation tab is the internal case for giving the work to one firm. It names the recommended tenderer, carries your comments, and holds the commercial terms you are recommending: payment terms, whether unfixed materials are paid for, the form of security, the defects liability period and liquidated damages.
Submit it for approval, and approving it does three things at once. It stamps the Tender recommendation milestone. It writes the forecast final cost and locks it. And it awards the package, because in real life the internal recommendation to management is the authority to contract, and a separate award button is a thing somebody forgets to press.
Approving a recommendation does not tell the tenderers anything. No winner email, no regret letters. That is on purpose: an internal approval to your own management should not reach third-party companies before you have decided to tell them. Telling the unsuccessful firms is a message you send, and the Communication thread on the package is the right place.
Milestones
Six milestones track a package: Tender ready, Tender issued, Tender recommendation, Contract executed, Start works and Practical completion.
You anchor Start works, and Teralo works the four upstream planned dates backwards from it using the gaps between them, so the question "when does this have to go out" has an answer rather than a guess. Practical completion is a second manual anchor. The gaps default from the project and can be overridden per package.
The actual dates fill themselves in as the events happen: tender issued when the invitations go, recommendation when it is approved, contract executed when the last signature lands. You can override any of them by hand, and a manual date always wins over an automatic one.
Stopping a package
A package that is abandoned mid-tender looks exactly like one still running, so there is a Close action for it, with a reason. Closing destroys nothing and clears nothing: the stage ladder still shows where the package had got to when it stopped, and reopening it puts everything back.
An executed package cannot be closed. You cannot un-sign a contract, and terminating work that is under contract is a variation in Contracts rather than a procurement act.
Getting it under contract
Once the recommendation is approved, the Contract Execution tab opens: that is the e-sign envelope, and it has its own article at Contract execution and e-sign. When the last party signs, a Copy to Contract Register button carries the package across into Contracts with the counterparty, the awarded amount, the commercial terms and the executed PDF already filled in.
SettingsHost only
Procurement is configured at both levels. See Organisation level and project level.
Organisation, then Tools, then Procurement holds the standard: the categories you file packages under, the required attachment types a recommendation must carry, and the workflow templates for the two approvals. Templates written here are available to every project.
Project, then Tools, then Procurement activates those templates, names the approvers, and sets the project's defaults: the standard tender instructions, the milestone gaps, and whether packages default to allowing late bids and to an open or sealed tender box.
PermissionsHost only
Four permissions cover procurement: viewing packages, creating them, editing them, and deleting them. Editing is the one that carries weight, because it is the permission behind inviting firms, opening a sealed tender box and granting a late allowance.
Note that these sit on top of the host-organisation rule rather than replacing it. Granting a guest organisation a procurement permission does not let them see the module; the host-only check runs first. See How permissions work.
WorkflowsHost only
Procurement has two approvals, the tender package and the recommendation, and they are bound differently from the rest of Teralo.
There is no stored binding on a package. The approval graph is chosen when you submit, from the templates your project has activated, so two packages on the same job can run different approvals without either of them being wrong. The templates themselves are built in the workflow builder and activated per project like any other.
Rejecting either approval sends it back to the author with a task to revise, rather than ending it. See Approving and rejecting.
There is no admin override on either. A reviewer must be an assigned participant on the active step, whatever else they hold.