Bid management software for commercial subcontractors
Bid boards show you the invitations that came through their own platform. Accounting shows you the jobs you already won. Between those two sits the part of the business that decides how much work you get — and for most specialty subs it lives in a spreadsheet and one person's inbox.
Every source, one list
PlanHub, BuildingConnected, Procore, GC portals, and direct email consolidated into a single pipeline you own — and can leave with.
The real client, not the relay
The GC resolved from the invitation itself rather than the sending address, so per-contractor history is actually accurate.
Follow-up that happens
Aging bids surface on their own and get grouped by contractor, with the draft already written.
Outcomes recorded as they arrive
Awards and regrets read from replies, logged against the specific GC — win rate becomes a filter instead of an annual archaeology project.
The gap between the bid board and the books
Most specialty subcontractors have solved two ends of the problem. Invitations arrive through platforms that work well enough. Awarded jobs are tracked in accounting. The middle — which invitations you bid, at what number, to which contractor, and what happened — is where the spreadsheet lives.
That middle is where the decisions are. Which GCs to prioritize. Which project sizes to stop chasing. Whether you are consistently high with one contractor or just unlucky. None of it is answerable from a bid board or a general ledger.
What breaks first as you grow
| Symptom | Underlying cause |
|---|---|
| "We missed that invitation entirely" | Invites arriving in individual inboxes with no shared queue |
| "We bid that one twice" | The same project arriving via three platforms with three different names |
| "I don't know if we're still in on it" | No follow-up trigger — submitting is the last recorded event |
| "What's our hit rate with them?" | Outcomes never captured, or captured against the platform rather than the GC |
| "All that history was in Dave's inbox" | Institutional knowledge held personally rather than organizationally |
One pipeline, from invitation to invoice
- Intake — Gmail and Outlook scanned for invitations, parsed with a confidence score, de-duplicated against open work, queued for your approval.
- Estimating — bids tracked by stage with per-contractor pricing on the same project, in a table or a kanban board.
- Proposals — branded PDFs assembled from a maintained scopes library rather than retyped from the last one.
- Follow-up — aging bids grouped by GC with drafts prepared; you read and send.
- Outcomes — replies read for awards and regrets, recorded against the right contractor.
- Projects — schedule of values, lookahead schedules, change orders, materials, and QuickBooks sync once you win.
Where the product is sharpest
IntelBid was built for commercial flooring, and the trade-specific parts — scopes library structure, system types, takeoff handling — still reflect that. If you install floors, that is an advantage; see flooring contractors. If you are another trade that bids commercial work and sends proposals, the pipeline, proposals, follow-up, and project management apply directly, and the trade-specific fields are configurable.
Do we still need PlanHub or BuildingConnected?
Usually yes, for receiving invitations — those platforms are how many general contractors solicit. IntelBid consolidates what arrives from all of them into one pipeline you control, along with invitations that came by direct email, which no single platform can show you.
How is this different from a general CRM like HubSpot or Pipedrive?
A general CRM models a deal as one opportunity with one value. Subcontractor bidding does not work that way: one project is frequently bid to several general contractors at different numbers with independent outcomes. Bid-specific tools model that natively, along with bid due dates, scopes, addenda, and proposal generation.
How long does setup take?
Connecting an inbox takes a few minutes, after which new invitations begin landing in the intake queue. Building out the scopes library and pricing is the part that takes real time, and it can be done gradually as bids come in.
What happens to our data if we cancel?
You can export the full estimating pipeline, contacts, clients, and scopes library to Excel at any time, including before cancelling.
One pipeline for every invitation
Start with a sample project loaded — walk intake, proposal, follow-up, and project management before connecting a thing.
Start your free trialMore on IntelBid
- Flooring contractor CRM and bid management softwareOne pipeline for every flooring job — commercial bid invitations from your inbox, website forms, and inbound calls answered by an AI phone agent. Proposals, follow-up, and project management included.
- Moving from residential to commercial flooring workWhat changes when you take your first invitation to bid: prequalification packets, how GC bid lists actually work, retainage and pay applications, and the systems that break on the way.
- Automated bid intake from Gmail and OutlookTurn a shared inbox full of invitations to bid into a reviewed pipeline. Automatic extraction, GC resolution, and de-duplication — with a confidence score on every record.
- Bid follow-up automation for subcontractorsSubmitted bids that go quiet surface on their own, grouped by general contractor, with the draft already written. Follow-up stops depending on someone remembering.