eSourcing OS · How it works

Walkthroughs

Ten walkthroughs through eSourcing OS, written out step by step: six for suppliers, from registering to reading an outcome letter, and four for buyers, from the checks that stop a non-compliant publication through to confirming the contract after standstill.

These are written rather than filmed, on purpose. Video will in time sit beside the walkthrough it covers. The words stay when the videos arrive, because a supplier three hours from a deadline wants a step to scan, not a player to wait through.

1. 01

   Complete the supplier form

   Name, email, company name, phone, address, whether you are an SME, and your Companies House number if you have it to hand. There is no card and no plan to choose. Supplier accounts are free.

2. 02

   Your existing record is claimed, not duplicated

   If a buyer has already added your company, registration claims that record rather than creating a second one. The match runs on company number first, then email, then company name.

3. 03

   Verify the email address

   Registration ends on a "check your email" screen and you are not yet signed in. The link is valid for 24 hours. If it lapses, request a new one rather than registering again.

4. 04

   Sign in on the supplier address

   Supplier sessions exist only on the supplier portal. If you arrive at a buyer address you are redirected to the right one, so use whichever link the platform settles on and bookmark that.

5. 05

   Turn on two-factor authentication

   Either an authenticator app or a code by email, from the security section of your account. Worth doing before a deadline rather than during one.

1. 01

   Open the link with no account

   The landing page works without a session and shows the buyer, the reference, the title, the deadline and a masked version of the invited email address. It never shows documents or values before you are in.

2. 02

   Register or sign in

   If you are new, register and verify. The invitation is not lost while you do it.

3. 03

   Return to the same link and press Accept

   This is the step that grants access. Opening the link and stopping there does nothing.

4. 04

   Access lands on your organisation, not on you

   Accepting binds the invitation to your supplier organisation, so colleagues can work on the bid too. An invitation already bound to a different organisation is refused rather than re-pointed, so ask the buyer to invite the correct address.

1. 01

   Search by title or reference

   Search matches the title or the reference. If a colleague forwards you a reference, paste it straight in. Each row flags whether you are invited and whether you have already expressed interest.

2. 02

   Open the tender

   You get the description, value, deadline, the weightings across commercial, technical and social value, the document list and the questions you will have to answer.

3. 03

   Express interest

   On an open tender this is the join step and it is required before you can start a bid. It is refused on restricted tenders and after the deadline. It notifies the buyer and is written to their audit trail.

4. 04

   Download the pack

   Each document opens through a signed link. Every download is recorded against the buyer, showing which supplier took which document and when, as equal-treatment evidence.

1. 01

   Open a thread

   Subject, body and up to ten attachments. Threads sit on the tender itself, so everything is in one place rather than in an inbox.

2. 02

   Watch the read-only notice, not the calendar

   The channel stays open past the enquiry deadline and past the close of the tender, shutting only when the procurement is concluded. The page tells you whether you can post and why not, rather than offering a box that will refuse you.

3. 03

   Read the published answers

   You see your own threads plus any thread the buyer chose to publish to everyone. On a published thread the original asker is anonymised to "a supplier" and their attachments are hidden.

4. 04

   Come back after the deadline

   Reading is never gated on the tender status, so you keep the answers your bid was written against.

1. 01

   Start the bid

   This creates a draft, and only works once you have joined: invited on a restricted tender, or interest expressed on an open one. It is refused after the deadline. Pressing it twice returns the existing draft rather than creating a second bid.

2. 02

   Work across the four tabs

   Questions, Social Value, Commercial and Documents. Answers save as you go and the price saves separately. A live word counter mirrors the rule the server will apply.

3. 03

   Upload supporting documents

   Files go straight to storage, capped at 25 MB each and filtered by type. You can re-download your own uploads at any point while the bid is a draft.

4. 04

   Submit, and read the whole list if it fails

   Submission checks the deadline, every technical question, every social-value question, a commercial price, and every word limit. Failures come back all at once, on purpose, so you are not sent away repeatedly with hours left.

5. 05

   Amend or withdraw before the deadline

   A submitted bid can be reopened to draft for changes, or withdrawn outright. Editing and uploading are blocked while a bid sits as submitted, so amend first, change, then submit again.

6. 06

   Know when the door shuts

   Withdrawal and amendment are both refused once the deadline passes, and once the tender leaves the published state. There is no late route.

1. 01

   Expect it in two places

   The letter reaches every user at your company as an in-app notification, and separately as an email with the letter attached. It links back to your dashboard.

2. 02

   Read your own scores

   The letter states whether you were awarded, unsuccessful or disqualified, and carries your commercial score, technical score and final score.

3. 03

   If you won, look at the contract

   Once the buyer confirms the contract you can see it, its computed status of active, expiring within 90 days or expired, and its KPIs.

1. 01

   Create the draft

   A reference from your own series, default weightings, access mode, procurement regime of above threshold, below threshold or unregulated, and you as owner. Documents are uploaded by document type.

2. 02

   Invite suppliers if it is restricted

   Invite by email from the directory or free text. Each invitation carries its own token so the emailed link resolves with no session. Re-inviting an address resends on the same record, preserving who invited whom and when, and clears any earlier revocation.

3. 03

   Expect three refusals

   Publish stops you if the description is not longer than the title, if a contract start or end date is missing or the end precedes the start, or if an above-threshold first-stage tender is set to anything other than open access. Each refusal cites the rule and says what to do.

4. 04

   On that third one, change the shape not the setting

   There is no restricted procedure under the Act and invitation-only lists are not permitted above threshold. The route is a multi-stage procurement: stage one open, later stages restricted to those you take forward.

5. 05

   Understand what Publish did

   For a regulated tender it does not go live. The tender stays a draft while its notice is built and held, and the publication date is set because that is the notice date. Below-threshold and unregulated tenders, which generate no tender notice, are advertised immediately.

1. 01

   Open Notices

   Drafts and held notices sit together, each with preview and release. This is the queue, and a named person works it.

2. 02

   Read the validation at full weight

   Notices are validated against the schema and against the rule set at production severity, so you see the live bar even while releasing to the test environment. Fix it once rather than twice.

3. 03

   Confirm the release

   Release needs an explicit confirmation. It refuses if the payload was built for a different environment and needs rebuilding, if it has already been delivered to that environment, or if a later notice would go out before the linked tender notice deadline.

4. 04

   Check the status if it times out

   A timeout is recorded as an unknown outcome rather than a clean failure, because the two are not the same thing. Check the submission status before doing anything again.

1. 01

   Assign the panel

   The tender owner or an admin assigns evaluators. Only assigned evaluators, admins or an owner of the organisation can score, and ownership transfers properly rather than sticking to whoever created the record.

2. 02

   Work the four annexes

   Annex A supplier information as pass or fail, Annex B price, Annex C the per-question technical and social-value scores from each evaluator capped at that question maximum, Annex D compliance as pass or fail. A fail on A or D disqualifies the bid with a stated reason.

3. 03

   Change a score and see it recorded as a change

   Every score write reads the previous value first and records it alongside a revision flag. Weighted totals recompute after each write.

4. 04

   Use the AI suggestion as a second opinion

   The analysis endpoint can propose a score with reasoning. It is stored beside the human score as a suggestion and never in place of it.

5. 05

   Move to moderation

   An assigned evaluator can only move the panel into moderation. They cannot reopen it, complete it, or move it back. Moderation notes stay on the panel, and owners are notified both when it goes to moderation and when it completes.

1. 01

   Generate and send the summaries

   One letter per bidder, ranked on final score with disqualified bids out of the ranking, each carrying that bidder own scores. Sending delivers an in-app notification to every user at the supplier plus an email with the letter attached.

2. 02

   At a non-final stage, shortlist instead

   Shortlisted suppliers are invited into the next stage tender and emailed. The rest receive a letter telling them they are not progressing. Awarding from a non-final stage is refused outright.

3. 03

   Award

   Refused unless it is the final stage; unless the winner evaluation is complete, with every outstanding item named at once rather than one at a time; unless a direct award has its transparency notice and the eight days behind it; and unless assessment summaries have gone out above threshold.

4. 04

   Watch the standstill clock

   Above threshold, award sets an eight working day standstill that excludes weekends and UK bank holidays. Below threshold and unregulated get no standstill.

5. 05

   Complete and release the award notice

   Award drops a prefilled draft into Notices, carrying the winner registered identity so the published notice names them under their own register. It is finished and released through the same review gate as any other notice.

6. 06

   Confirm the contract

   Refused while the standstill runs, with the date and the days remaining, and refused if a contract already exists. On success it creates the contract with a reference, the winning price falling back to the estimate, a two-year default term and three starter KPIs, then inherits the tender owners. Edit those defaults to match what you actually signed.

The boundary

What these walkthroughs do not cover, and why

There is no walkthrough here for anything you cannot do today. That is a shorter list to publish than a longer one, and it is the only version worth reading before a demo.

Questions

About these walkthroughs

Something here not matching what you see?

Tell us which walkthrough and which step. These are written from the product as it stands, and they get corrected rather than defended.