If you procure for a Welsh contracting authority, you have to navigate three portals: Sell2Wales (the Welsh Government tender portal), Find a Tender (the UK-wide PA23-mandated portal), and Contracts Finder (the England-only portal that some Welsh-relevant cross-border procurements still touch). Getting this wrong creates two problems - non-compliance, and missed Welsh suppliers.
What each portal is
Sell2Wales
Sell2Wales is the principal portal for Welsh public sector procurement. It is monitored by Welsh suppliers actively looking for opportunities in Wales. Under the Wales Procurement Policy Statement, Welsh contracting authorities are expected to publish opportunities here. It is the most direct route to Welsh SME visibility - and the foundational economy and Welsh SME participation principles in WPPS effectively require it.
Find a Tender
Find a Tender is the UK-wide successor to OJEU, mandated under the Procurement Act 2023 for above-threshold procurement by all UK contracting authorities - Welsh authorities included. Pipeline notices, tender notices, award notices and contract change notices for above-threshold contracts must appear here. Suppliers monitoring Find a Tender are typically larger and more cross-border in their bidding.
Contracts Finder
Contracts Finder is the England-focused portal for contracts above £12,000. It is not mandatory for Welsh authorities, but Welsh authorities running cross-border procurements (e.g. with English partner bodies, or expecting a UK-wide supplier base) may still choose to publish here.
When each one is mandatory
The simplified picture for a Welsh contracting authority:
- Above-threshold contract (PA23 thresholds): Find a Tender mandatory (legal); Sell2Wales policy-mandated under WPPS; Contracts Finder discretionary.
- Sub-threshold contract (below PA23 threshold): Find a Tender not required; Sell2Wales strongly expected for Welsh-relevant opportunities; Contracts Finder not required for Welsh authorities.
- Pipeline Notice (contracts over £2M expected in the next 12 months): Find a Tender mandatory; Sell2Wales recommended for visibility to Welsh supply base.
- Award Notice: Find a Tender within 30 days for above-threshold awards; Sell2Wales recommended; Contracts Finder discretionary.
- Contract Change Notice: Find a Tender for material modifications of above-threshold contracts.
The duplication problem
The lazy solution is manual: prepare the notice once, copy and paste into each portal, save the URLs in a spreadsheet, hope nothing was mistyped. The cost of this approach:
- Time - typically 30–60 minutes per notice, multiplied across hundreds of procurements per year.
- Inconsistency - different fields filled in slightly differently across portals, creating audit gaps.
- Missed publications - when one portal fails to confirm receipt, it gets forgotten until a supplier complains.
- No consolidated audit trail - three separate logs, no single source of truth.
How to do it properly
Use a procurement platform that publishes to all three portals automatically from a single notice creation. The notice is drafted once, fields mapped to each portal's schema, dispatched simultaneously, with confirmation receipts captured into a single audit log. The benefits:
- Notice goes live on Sell2Wales, Find a Tender and (where applicable) Contracts Finder at the same moment - no portal-priority disputes.
- Welsh suppliers monitoring Sell2Wales see the opportunity at the same instant as larger suppliers monitoring Find a Tender.
- Consolidated audit log feeds straight into Audit Wales-ready compliance reports.
- Time per notice drops from 30–60 minutes to under 5 minutes.
How eSourcingData handles publication
eSourcingData publishes notices to Sell2Wales, Find a Tender and Contracts Finder from a single workflow, with field mapping handled per portal and a unified audit log. Welsh-relevant fields (Welsh-language opportunity flag, foundational economy categories, fair work attributes) are captured automatically. Welsh public bodies can trial this on a free 90-day pilot - real procurements, all three portals covered, full PA23 + WPPS compliance.