Bid management software for commercial subcontractors
Bid boards show you the invitations that came through their platform, plus whatever someone remembered to forward. 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.
What does bid management software do for a subcontractor?
It runs the part of the business between the bid board and the books: which invitations you bid, at what number, to which contractor, and what happened. Most specialty subcontractors have solved the two ends. Invitations arrive through platforms that work well enough, and awarded jobs are tracked in accounting. The middle 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 a bid desk grows?
The same five things, and each has a structural cause that working harder doesn't fix:
| 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 |
What does IntelBid cover, from invitation to invoice?
The whole pipeline, in six stages:
- Intake — Gmail and Outlook read for invitations as they arrive, with no forwarding step, 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 or Xero invoicing once you win.
Which trades is IntelBid built for?
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.
Frequently asked questions
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, without anyone having to forward them.
Does it work with Outlook as well as Gmail?
Yes. IntelBid connects to a Gmail or Outlook mailbox, and access can be revoked at any time. Every account also starts with a sample project loaded, so you can walk the whole flow before connecting a mailbox at all.
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?
About five minutes. A guided walkthrough collects company details, proposal terms, and standard inclusions and exclusions, mostly by selecting options rather than typing, and connecting an inbox adds about two more. Nothing else has to be loaded up front: clients and contacts are created from the invitations that arrive, and the scopes library fills in as you bid.
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.
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