Tender Submission Template: How to Structure Your Submission

A tender submission must follow the buyer's own format first. Frankly, a neat structure of your own won't earn marks if it ignores theirs. Where you have freedom, structure it as: covering letter, completed supplier information, quality responses in question order, pricing schedule, and supporting documents. Check every mandatory item against a compliance checklist and upload before the deadline.

What goes into a tender submission¶

Tender submission template¶

• 1. Title page: tender reference, buyer name, lot, your company name.
• 2. Contents: mirror the buyer's question numbering.
• 3. Executive summary (if permitted): three win themes in plain English.
• 4. Question responses: question text, then your answer under sub-headings.
• 5. Appendices: only those requested, clearly labelled with the question they support.
• 6. File naming: [Tender ref]_[Company]_[Question number].

How to prepare a tender submission¶

Pre-submission checklist¶

• Every question answered, in the right box or document.
• Word and page limits respected.
• Pricing schedule complete, arithmetic checked, no altered formulas.
• All certificates and policies in date.
• Declarations signed by an authorised person.
• Buyer's name correct throughout (no leftovers from other bids).
• Files named and formatted as instructed.
• Clarification responses and addenda read, and any changes reflected in your answers and price.
• Social value commitments are specific, measurable and costed into your price.
• Case studies and references are relevant, recent and approved by the client for use.
• Every file opened and checked after upload, not just before.

How tender submissions work under the Procurement Act 2023¶

Since 24 February 2025, new public procurements in England, Wales and Northern Ireland run under the Procurement Act 2023. For suppliers, the biggest practical change is the Central Digital Platform. You register once, keep your core supplier information there (legal entity, ownership, connected persons, financial details and exclusion declarations), and share it with each buyer instead of retyping it into a new Selection Questionnaire every time. Your tender submission template should therefore start with a step that confirms your platform record is current and that you have shared it with the right procurement.

The Act replaces the old open, restricted and competitive dialogue routes with two main procedures: the open procedure and the competitive flexible procedure. In an open procedure you submit everything in one go. In a competitive flexible procedure the buyer designs its own stages, which may include a participation stage, an initial tender, negotiation and a final tender. That means a single contract can involve several separate submissions, each with its own deadline and document list. Build a template per stage rather than one monolithic file.

Procurements that started before 24 February 2025 continue under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 until they finish, and Scotland keeps its own regime through Public Contracts Scotland. If you bid across the UK you will still see the older Standard Selection Questionnaire and the European Single Procurement Document style of form for some time, so check which rules apply in the instructions to tenderers before you copy an old submission.

The documents in a typical tender pack¶

Before you can structure a submission you need to know what the buyer has sent you. Most UK tender packs contain the same core documents, although names vary between buyers and portals.

Worked example: a submission plan for a £250,000 council contract¶

Imagine a district council tendering a three-year grounds and open-space maintenance contract worth around £250,000 in total. Local authorities work to the sub-central threshold, which is higher than the £139,688 central government figure, so the council may run its own below-threshold competition, advertised on Contracts Finder and its e-tendering portal. The pack asks for five quality questions (60% of the marks), a price schedule (30%) and a social value question (10%), with a four-week window.

• Day 1: read the pack, log the deadline and the clarification cut-off, and run a bid/no-bid check against your capacity and references.
• Day 2: build the compliance checklist from the instructions to tenderers and share it with everyone involved.
• Days 3 to 5: plan each quality answer against the evaluation criteria, list the evidence you have and the gaps you need to fill.
• Days 6 to 12: draft all five quality answers and the social value answer, then submit clarification questions before the cut-off.
• Days 13 to 16: build the price from the bottom up, check it against the specification and sense-check it against your margin.
• Days 17 to 19: independent review, where someone who did not write the answers scores them against the published criteria.
• Day 20: final edits, signed declarations and document naming.
• Day 21: upload, check every file opened correctly on the portal and save the submission receipt. That leaves a full week of contingency.

The point of the plan isn't the exact dates. It's that pricing, review and upload each get protected time. Late submissions are nearly always the result of a plan that assumed writing would take all four weeks.

How to lay out each quality response¶

Evaluators usually score each answer separately, often with different people marking different questions. Your template should make every response readable on its own. A layout that works for most method-statement style questions is:

• Question number and full question text, copied exactly, so the evaluator knows what they are marking.
• An opening sentence that answers the question directly and names the buyer's outcome, for example reduced complaints or faster response times.
• Sub-headings that mirror the sub-points in the question or the evaluation criteria, in the same order.
• For each sub-heading: what you will do, who will do it, when and how often, and how you will prove it (KPIs, reports, audits).
• One or two pieces of evidence from similar contracts, with numbers and the name of the client type if you can't name the client.
• A short close that restates the benefit to the buyer and any added value, without repeating the whole answer.

Keep formatting simple. Many portals strip formatting from text boxes, so test a paragraph before relying on bullets or tables. Where you are allowed to upload a document, use the buyer's font and size limits and put the question number in the header or footer of every page.

Submitting on UK e-tendering portals¶

You don't email a public-sector tender. You upload it through the buyer's e-tendering system, and there are many of them. Find a Tender, Contracts Finder, Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales and eTendersNI are where opportunities are advertised, but the submission itself usually happens on the buyer's chosen platform, such as Atamis, Jaggaer, Proactis, In-Tend, Delta eSourcing or the Crown Commercial Service eSourcing suite. Each has its own quirks.

• Register on the buyer's portal as soon as you decide to bid. Account approval can take a day or more.
• Opt in or express interest so that you receive clarification responses and addenda. If you aren't opted in you may miss changes to the documents.
• Check file size limits and permitted formats. Some portals reject files over a set size or refuse certain file types.
• Answer text-box questions in a word processor first, then paste them in. Portal sessions can time out and lose unsaved work.
• Look for a separate 'submit' or 'publish response' button. Uploading files isn't always the same as submitting them.
• Download or screenshot the confirmation page and keep the automatic email receipt with the tender file.

Common tender submission mistakes¶

Most rejected submissions fail on compliance rather than quality. Buyers must treat bidders equally, so they can't usually let you fix a missing document after the deadline. These are the errors we see most often in UK submissions:

• Uploading late. Portals close to the minute, and a slow upload at 11:58 for a noon deadline is still late.
• Changing the pricing schedule. Adding rows, altering formulas or leaving cells blank can make a bid non-compliant.
• Exceeding word limits. Evaluators are often told to ignore anything beyond the limit, so the key point in your last paragraph may never be read.
• Answering a different question. Reusing a library answer without adapting it to this buyer's wording is obvious to evaluators.
• Leaving another buyer's name in the text. Search every document for the previous client's name before you upload.
• Missing signatures or unsigned declarations, or declarations signed by someone without authority.
• Out-of-date insurance or accreditation certificates, particularly when renewal falls during the tender window.
• Ignoring clarification responses that changed the specification or the documents after the tender was published.

Tender submission checklist by stage¶

Using AI to prepare a tender submission¶

AI tools can now draft quality answers, summarise a specification and flag missing documents. PPN 017 encourages central government buyers to ask suppliers whether they have used AI in preparing a bid, so treat AI as a drafting assistant and be ready to disclose it. Every fact, figure and commitment in the final submission must be true and deliverable, and a person in your business should read every answer against the evaluation criteria before it goes in. Never paste confidential tender documents into a public chatbot that may use inputs for training; use a tool built for bidding that keeps your data private.

Submitting in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland¶

The Procurement Act 2023 applies in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, but each nation still has its own advertising portal. Welsh public bodies publish on Sell2Wales and Northern Ireland buyers use eTendersNI. Scotland did not adopt the Act: Scottish buyers work under the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014 and the Public Contracts (Scotland) Regulations 2015, advertise on Public Contracts Scotland and often receive submissions through its Tender module. Scottish procurements still use the Single Procurement Document, so keep a separate Scottish version of your template and supplier information pack if you bid north of the border.

Tender submission software¶

You submit through the buyer's e-tendering portal, so 'tender submission software' really means the tools that prepare what you upload. Useful features are compliance checklists, answer drafting, a library of certificates with expiry alerts, and export to the buyer's format.

Compare options in tender response software and bid compliance software.

Related guides: tender response template, bid response template, how to write a tender, tender writing examples.