Pricing a bid line by line from the rate card
How a bid is priced in Achekam as cost plus markup from the firm's rate card, locked as a version, and how an AI-read bill of quantities affects it.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Accountants & audit firms in South Africa
Pricing a professional-services tender is a balancing act between two ways to lose. Price too high and the bid fails on the price points of the evaluation. Price too low and the firm wins a contract it will deliver at a loss for years, with partners writing down time on every invoice. For public-sector tenders, the official text of the Preferential Procurement Policy Framework Act sets out the framework for preferential procurement by organs of state.
Most pricing mistakes come from the same sources: rates taken from an old spreadsheet, hours estimated by someone who will not do the work, a bill of quantities from the buyer retyped with a line missed, and a final figure changed by e-mail the night before closing with nobody sure which version went in.
Achekam's tender pricing addresses each of these by building the price from the firm's own rates, line by line, and keeping every version.
Cost plus markup from the firm's rate card
On the tender page, under Pricing & BOQ, a bid's price is built line by line. Each line is cost plus markup, and the cost comes from the firm's rate card.
The rate card is the same one the firm uses for its ordinary work, kept under BILLING & FINANCE > Rate Cards & Realisation. That link matters. A tender priced from the same rates the firm uses to value its time can later be compared with what the work really cost, using the realisation and recovery figures on the same screen. Time recorded by someone with no rate shows as unvalued rather than estimated, so a missing rate is visible at pricing time too.
Building line by line also forces the questions a good pricing review asks anyway. Which grades of staff will do which parts? How many site visits? How much partner time for the reporting? Each answer becomes a line that someone can challenge, and the markup on each line shows where the firm is taking its margin and where it is pricing close to cost.
Locking a priced version
When the price is ready, it is locked as a version, which fixes the lines and figures behind it.
That gives the firm what it most often lacks after a bid: certainty about what it submitted. When the buyer comes back with clarification questions, or the contract is awarded and the partner wants to compare delivery with the bid, the locked version is the reference. Agree internally that the version sent to the buyer is the one locked last, and record which it was.
A BOQ read by AI changes nothing until applied
Many tenders include a bill of quantities or pricing schedule from the buyer: a list of deliverables or activities against which the bidder enters rates and amounts. Retyping it is slow and error-prone.
In Achekam, a bill of quantities can be read in by AI. The result does not change the price on its own. It changes the price only when a person applies it.
Before applying, compare what was read with the buyer's document line by line. Check that every line is present, that units and quantities match, and that any line the buyer marked as provisional or optional is treated as the buyer intends. AI reading is a fast first draft of the schedule, not a substitute for the pricing review.
The price and the partner threshold
The price and the decision to bid are linked. A decision to bid on a tender of R5 million or more must name an active partner as approver. That threshold is fixed in code at R5 million; the Tender Settings screen shows a default of R1,000,000 that the code ignores.
For pricing, the practical point is this: the partner approving a large bid should see the locked price version and the main assumptions behind it, not just the headline figure. The decision itself is described in bid or no-bid decisions.
Bid hours from timesheets
Every bid has a cost of its own: the time spent preparing it. The Delivery Tracker lists every tender being prepared with its owner, stage and overdue milestones, and bid hours come from timesheets.
Over a year, that tells the firm what bidding really costs, and which kinds of tender are worth the effort. A firm that spends heavily on bids it rarely wins has a pricing or a targeting problem; the bid hours make it visible.
The submission pack
When the response and price are final, Achekam can e-mail the bid pack to the address the tender prescribes, once a person has confirmed that address. It records delivery and downloads. A colleague still verifies lodgement against the buyer's acknowledgement, because only the buyer's confirmation proves the bid arrived in time and complete.
A pricing review checklist
- Rates on the card current, with every person on the team carrying a rate.
- Hours estimated by the person who will lead delivery, then challenged by a partner.
- Any BOQ read by AI compared line by line with the buyer's schedule before applying.
- Price locked as a version, with the submitted version recorded.
- For tenders at or above the partner threshold, the partner shown the locked version and assumptions.
- Lodgement confirmed against the buyer's acknowledgement.
For the response text that sits alongside the price, see tender requirements and response drafts. For where the tender came from, see the tender scout and its match rules.
On your next tender, price it entirely from the rate card, lock the version you send, and when the result comes in, compare it with your realisation on similar work. That comparison is the start of a pricing policy.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
