Build your Bill of Quantities
Structure every item suppliers will price, section by section, line by line, so bids come back comparable from the start.
What you'll learn
- Understand why structured line items produce better, more comparable bids
- Add sections and line items with the right fields filled in
- Use Importance levels and Extra Parameters to sharpen your evaluation
- Know which fields suppliers see and which are private to you
When you email a list of needs to five suppliers, each one interprets the list differently. One quotes by the metre, another by the roll. One includes delivery, another does not. Before you can compare anything, you are rebuilding a spreadsheet from scratch.
The Bill of Quantities fixes that. Every supplier who bids on your request prices exactly the same items in the same units, in the order you defined. The comparison is already done before a single bid arrives.
Why this matters
A precise Bill of Quantities is not bureaucracy. It is the contract brief in its earliest form. Suppliers price what you actually need, not what they guessed you meant. You get bids that reflect real scope, in comparable units, against a defined quantity -- which makes both the evaluation and any eventual contract faster to negotiate.
When to invest in a detailed Bill of Quantities
| Your situation | What to do |
|---|---|
| I know exactly what I need, item by item | Build a detailed Bill of Quantities with specific quantities, units, and importance levels. This produces the most directly comparable bids. |
| I have a project goal but the scope may vary by supplier | Define sections with approximate quantities and use the Scope step for requirements narrative. Suppliers can adjust within your structure. |
| I am still exploring the market | An RFI with a rough Bill of Quantities is fine. You can refine the structure when you convert it to an RFP or RFQ. |
Before you start
- Have a clear list of items or services you need. Grouping them by phase, location, or category makes the Bill of Quantities easier to read.
- Know your preferred units of measure (pieces, hours, metres, kilograms, etc.) for each item type.
- If you want suppliers to answer structured commercial questions alongside prices, read Add a Questionnaire as well.
- Scale plan only: Extra Parameters and CSV import are gated -- the Bill of Quantities step will show an upgrade prompt if your plan does not include them.
Building your Bill of Quantities, step by step
Open the Bill of Quantities step in the wizard
After completing the Scope step, you land on the Bill of Quantities step. The wizard has already created one section. You can rename it, add more, and populate each with line items.
Every Bill of Quantities has at least one section. Sections group related items and each carries its own estimated delivery date -- useful when different parts of your order arrive at different times.
Set up each section
Each section needs two things:
- Section title: name it by what the group contains. "Electrical components", "Phase 1 civil works", or "Offshore installation services" are all clearer than "Section 1".
- Estimated delivery date: the date you expect delivery for items in this section. This becomes the baseline suppliers are measured against when they propose their own delivery dates.
Use Add Section to create multiple sections. You can reorder them at any time before publishing.
One section works fine for simple requests. Multiple sections shine when you need to track delivery by phase or when you want to weight different parts of the scope differently in scoring.
Add line items
Each line item inside a section has five fields:
- Item name (required): what you need, written clearly enough that a supplier can price it without asking a follow-up question. Avoid abbreviations or internal codes the supplier will not recognise.
- Importance: how critical this item is to the overall evaluation. Options are Standard (Medium), Low, Medium, High, and Critical. AI Scoring uses these weightings to calculate the commercial score -- a Critical item has more scoring impact than a Low one.
- Quantity (required): the number of units you need.
- Unit (required): the unit of measure. Select a category first (Weight, Length/Distance, Volume/Capacity, Time, and more) then pick the specific unit. This locks the unit suppliers bid in, keeping responses directly comparable.
- Estimated unit price (optional): your internal budget figure for this item. Suppliers never see this. It feeds the running budget total at the bottom of the step, for your own reference.
Use Details / specs below the item name to add technical specifications, standards, or tolerances for that item alone. Suppliers read this when they open the request.
Vague item names produce vague bids. "Pumps" gets you a range of guesses. "Centrifugal pump, 50 l/min, 316 stainless steel, ATEX Zone 2 rated" gets you prices for the thing you actually need.
Add Extra Parameters to a section (Scale plan)
Scale Extra Parameters let you collect structured data at the line-item group level -- delivery lead times, warranty durations, compliance certifications, preferred incoterms, or anything else that affects your decision.
Each Extra Parameter has:
- A label (the question or data field) and an answer type: Text, Number, Yes/No, Date, Single Select, or Multiple Select.
- A scoring mode: Rule (the system checks the answer against a defined criterion) or AI (the system interprets open-ended text answers intelligently).
- A required toggle: whether supplying an answer is mandatory before a bid can be submitted.
Use Quick add to insert common parameters in one click (lead time, warranty, payment method, etc.), or Add Custom to define your own.
If every supplier's delivery lead time matters to your decision, make it a required Extra Parameter rather than burying it in the Scope description. You get a structured, comparable answer from every bid rather than a buried sentence in a free-text note.
Review the budget total and move on
As you add estimated unit prices, a running budget total appears at the bottom of the step. It sums your estimates across all sections, so you can see at a glance whether your Bill of Quantities aligns with your budget before you publish.
When you are satisfied, select Next to move to the Questionnaire step (or skip straight to Review if you do not need one).
What suppliers see
Suppliers see the full structure of your Bill of Quantities: section titles, item names, quantities, units, specifications, and any Extra Parameters. They do not see your estimated prices or your internal budget total. For each line item they price, they enter their unit price and the system calculates the line total. For Extra Parameters, they fill in structured answers according to the answer type you defined.
How it connects to the rest of the journey
The Bill of Quantities you define here determines the shape of every bid you receive. When bids arrive, the Bids tab shows each supplier's total and line-by-line prices against your quantities. AI Scoring uses Importance levels to weight the commercial score. The Compare view lines up suppliers side by side against your structure. A precise Bill of Quantities makes all three of those steps faster and more reliable.
What good looks like
- Each item name is specific enough that a supplier in an unfamiliar city could price it without calling you.
- Quantities are exact where you know them, and clearly marked as estimates where they are not.
- Items that must be delivered on time and to specification are marked High or Critical so scoring reflects what matters to you.
- Sections group items by delivery phase or by category -- not just for tidiness, but so delivery dates can be tracked separately per group.
- Extra Parameters capture the three or four structured data points that will genuinely affect your decision, not every possible question.
Next steps
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