eSourcing OS help centre

eSourcing OS is a source-to-contract procurement platform from eSourcing Data. Contracting authorities use it to run a procurement end to end: market engagement, the tender itself, clarifications, evaluation, award and the Find a Tender notices each stage produces. Suppliers use the supplier portal side of the same platform to receive invitations, ask questions, submit bids and receive their outcome letter.

With your email address and password. Suppliers and buyers sign in on separate portal addresses, and if you arrive at the wrong one you are redirected to the right one automatically, so an old bookmark still works. Two-factor authentication is optional and available to both suppliers and buyers, using either an authenticator app or a code sent by email.

Almost always because the email address has not been verified yet. Verification is mandatory before the first sign-in, registration deliberately ends on a "check your email" screen rather than signing you in, and until you click the link in that email your sign-in will not succeed. The link expires after 24 hours.

Check your spam and quarantine folders first, then request a new verification email rather than registering a second time. A second registration attempt on the same company or email will try to claim the same record and will not produce a working account any faster. If nothing arrives after a resend, contact us and we will look at the address on file.

If you can still sign in, change it from your account page, which is also where two-factor authentication is enrolled. If you are locked out entirely, contact info@esourcingdata.com from the address on your account and we will help you regain access. Tell us if you are working to a submission deadline and say which tender, because that changes how quickly it is handled.

No. Authentication is email and password, with optional two-factor authentication by authenticator app or emailed code. There is no single sign-on, no SAML or OIDC federation and no automated user provisioning. If your organisation requires federated identity, raise it with us before you plan a rollout rather than after.

No. Supplier registration is free, there is no card step, no plan to choose and no billing anywhere in the supplier portal. Registering, receiving invitations, asking clarification questions, downloading a tender pack and submitting a bid all cost nothing.

Open it. The invitation page works with no session at all and shows the buyer name, the reference, the title, the deadline and a masked version of the invited email address, so you can confirm it is genuine before signing in. Once you are signed in as a supplier, press Accept. The link is deliberately re-enterable, so if email verification interrupts your first attempt you can simply open it again.

Accepting an invitation binds it to your supplier organisation rather than to you personally, so colleagues on the same organisation get access as well. If a colleague still cannot see it, they are most likely registered under a separate supplier record. Access can also be granted by your company email domain, in which case the first person to use it binds the invitation and the buyer can see that it was claimed.

Because the supplier portal lists only tenders hosted on this platform, across the buyers who use it. It is not a UK-wide opportunity feed. eSourcing OS publishes notices to Find a Tender, it does not pull opportunities back from it, so nothing advertised elsewhere appears in the list. Search there matches the title or the reference of tenders already visible to you.

On an open tender, yes. Expressing interest is the join step and a bid cannot be started without it. It notifies the buyer, it is recorded on their audit trail, and it can be withdrawn again unless you have already started a bid. On a restricted tender there is no express-interest step: your invitation is what admits you.

Yes, up to the deadline and while the tender is still open. Amending reopens the submission to draft so you can edit and submit again, and withdrawing marks it withdrawn. The tender owners are notified either way. Once the deadline passes, neither is possible.

Yes. The clarification channel stays open past the enquiry deadline and past the close of the tender, and shuts only when the procurement is concluded. The screen tells you whether you can still post and why if you cannot, rather than presenting a message box that will be refused. Reading is never blocked, so you keep the answers your bid was written against.

The buyer evaluates, and when they issue the outcome every user at your supplier receives a notification in the platform along with an email carrying the letter. The letter states whether the bid was successful, unsuccessful or disqualified, and includes your own commercial score, technical score and final score. Above-threshold procurements then run a standstill period of eight working days before the contract can be confirmed.

A share code is how a supplier consents to share its Central Digital Platform record. You can store your share code, your PPON and your SSQ code on your supplier profile today and buyers will have those references on file. Automatic pulling of your details from the Central Digital Platform is not switched on yet, so nothing on your profile is verified against CDP at present. Saving the code now means it is ready when the pull arrives.

No. eSourcing OS is a web application used in a browser on any device. There is no native app for iOS or Android and no offline drafting, so plan a submission around a connection you trust rather than around a train journey.

The platform supports a supplier authorising an approved partner to file on its behalf, and the mechanism is built and secured. There is no screen for it in the supplier portal today: it is an interface-free capability, so it cannot be set up from your account page. If you want to use it, contact us rather than looking for a connection button.

Email info@esourcingdata.com, or use the contact form on esourcingdata.com. If your question is about the content of a specific tender, the requirement, the specification, the deadline or the evaluation, ask the buyer through the clarification thread on that tender instead. We run the platform, but we are not the buyer, and clarification answers have to reach every bidder on the same terms.