Compare subcontractor quotes properly: it starts with the invite

Why does a fair comparison start with the invite?

You can only compare the quotes you get back, so the comparison really starts the day the invites go out. If two painters price and one of them leaves out half the job, no amount of levelling turns that into a properly tested trade.

Here's where it bites. Generic invites from a tender platform's system address tend to get buried in spam or ignored as one more mass blast. The subbie who would've priced it sharp never really saw it. Then it's Monday, quotes close Wednesday, and carpentry has one price.

So in Sendout, the invite comes from you. It's included in the seat, too.

Send it from your own inbox

With Sendout, invites come from your own email address. The AI drafts each one in your Outlook or Gmail, through Claude's or ChatGPT's own mail connector. You read it, change whatever you like and press send. Estimator+ never sends mail itself.

Before that, the AI maps the tender documents into packages by trade for you to review. That's the subcontractor matrix: the tender folder down the side, the trades across, and which files go in each trade's package. It picks subcontractors from your address book too, and you check the list before anything goes.

Each subbie gets one link. On it is the builder, the job and when quotes are due, with Add to calendar. They answer Quoting or Not quoting, read the AI's brief for their trade, and download their trade package or the full set.

If an addendum lands mid-tender, the affected trades get clear revision notes on that same link. Our post on tender addenda goes through that part properly.

Who's actually pricing it?

Sendout tracks it live: who opened the link, who downloaded, who's quoting and who passed. You can also just ask, something like "Who's pricing Riverbend, and who needs chasing?"

The AI answers along the lines of: "Carpentry and Joinery have fewer than three pricing. Framewright Carpentry downloaded the drawings but hasn't said if they're quoting." Then it drafts the reminders in your inbox for you to send.

If a subbie rings to say they're in, you can override their status. And you can revoke a link any time, say if a subbie drops out or the wrong person got one.

Make it easy for them to price

More subbies price when pricing isn't a chore. Estimator+ exports BOQs with marked-up plans, as PDF and Excel, so a subbie can see what each quantity is and where it sits on the drawing. It takes the heavy lifting out of pricing, so more of them get a price back to you.

The Excel export carries live formulas, so subcontractors can price right inside the sheet. Then, when quotes come back as PDFs or emails, the AI files them into Quotes. You check what it filed, and nobody's retyping a quote off a PDF.

Levelling them side by side

In Quotes, every subcontractor's price sits side by side, beside the estimate lines it covers. You mark lines INCL or EXCL, fill, plug a gap, flag a quote or leave a comment, the way you would on a levelling sheet. Exclusions sit on the price they belong to.

There's also a clarifications and exclusions library for the wording you use on every job, and the address book keeps each subbie's quote history.

One rule matters a lot once quantities start moving. A lump sum stays fixed to the quantity it was priced on, and a rate follows the live quantity. So you can always see which prices still match the current takeoff and which were priced on something else.

Example: levelling three painting quotes

This one's made up for the post, all figures ex GST. Say it's a two-storey childcare centre and the painting trade has three lines: internal walls at 1,840 m², doors and frames at 46 no., and external render at 620 m². Three painters price it.

On the headline, Painter B looks cheapest, $2,500 under A. But B excludes doors and frames, so B's $35,900 covers less work. You plug B's gap with C's quoted doors figure, 46 at $95, which is $4,370. That levels B at $40,270.

Now it reads A at $38,400, C at $38,530 and B at $40,270. So the cheapest-looking quote is now the dearest. You flag B's quote and comment "doors plugged from C, asked B for a doors price". B's exclusion stays sitting on B's price, so it's right there if you do end up picking them.

Then the judgement call. A and C are $130 apart, but they behave differently if the walls move. C's rates follow the live quantity. A's lump sum stays fixed to 1,840 m². If you reckon an addendum's coming that adds walls, that's worth weighing up. The pick is yours either way.

Coverage and margin in Review

Once your picks are in, Review shows coverage per trade, margin per line or trade and cost per m² on FECA, all in one place. Coverage is the one to watch in the last week. A trade with a single price, or a pick still carrying a plug, is where a tender's soft.

Take that list back to Sendout and you're chasing the right people, with the AI drafting those reminders as well.

So what's the catch?

Sendout drafts in your own inbox through Claude's or ChatGPT's mail connector, so you'll want that connected. And you still press send on every email. That's on purpose, since it's your name on the invite.

The AI files the quotes, but you check them, and the picks are yours. It won't decide whether Painter A's lump sum is a better bet than Painter C's rates. That part's estimating.

And no tool makes a subbie price a job they don't want. What we can do is send the invite from your own inbox and hand them a BOQ that's easy to price from. The rest is relationships, and that's still you.

Once the quotes are in, the exclusions still need handling, so have a read of tender exclusions and qualifications. If you haven't hooked Claude or ChatGPT up yet, connecting them to estimating software walks through it.

Want to see it on one of your own jobs? Book a demo and we'll run the takeoff on one of your tenders, at your office or on Google Meet.