Tender menus and settings: what works today
Which tender menu entries and settings in Achekam do not do what their labels say, the fixed partner-approval rule, and the screens a bid team can rely on.
By Achekam · · 5 min read · For Accountants & audit firms in South Africa
A bid team learns software by clicking through it. If a menu entry says Procurement Plans, people expect buyers' procurement plans behind it. If a settings tab has a field for the partner-approval threshold, the bid manager types in the firm's policy and assumes the system now enforces it.
In Achekam's tender area a few of those assumptions do not hold. Some menu entries open something other than their label promises, some settings are stored but never read, and one rule that matters for governance is fixed in the code whatever the settings screen shows.
None of this prevents a disciplined tender process. It changes where the team should look, and what the firm should write into its own bid manual instead of trusting a label.
Procurement Plans, Sources Registry and Awaiting Documents
Three entries under TENDERS & BIDS are named for views that do not exist yet:
| Menu entry | What the name suggests | What it shows today |
|---|---|---|
| Procurement Plans | Buyers' published procurement plans | Always empty |
| Sources Registry | The feeds the scout reads | The full tender list |
| Awaiting Documents | Tenders still missing paperwork | The same tenders as Submission Due |
Once people know this, the cost is small. An empty Procurement Plans page says nothing about what government departments intend to buy; Achekam simply has no such view. A Sources Registry full of tenders is not a broken feed. And a tender listed under Awaiting Documents tells you only that it sits in the submission-due group, not that anything is missing from it.
Put a line about each in the onboarding notes for anyone joining the bid team.
Settings that nothing reads
Tender Settings has several tabs, and several of them save values that nothing else in Achekam reads. You can type a value, save it, leave, come back and find it still there. That proves the value was stored. It does not prove that any screen, rule or report uses it.
The working assumption should be simple: a tender setting is a note to yourself until you have seen its effect somewhere else. The firm's real bid policy, covering who approves, which sectors and provinces it pursues and what margin it accepts, belongs in a written document the partners own and review, not in a tab.
The fixed partner-approval threshold
This gap matters most, because it touches who may commit the firm to a bid.
Achekam requires every bid/no-bid decision to carry a reason. A decision to bid on a tender of R5 million or more must also name an active partner as approver. That rule exists and is enforced.
The amount, though, is fixed in the code at R5 million. The settings screen shows a partner-approval threshold field with a default of R1,000,000, and the code ignores it. Whether the field shows that default or a figure your firm has typed, the system applies R5 million.
If your policy says a partner approves bids from a lower amount, Achekam will not enforce it for you. Two practical ways to close the gap:
- Write the lower amount into the bid manual, and have the bid manager name a partner as approver on every decision above it anyway. Nothing stops a team from recording a partner on a smaller bid.
- Once a month, list bid decisions below R5 million and check each against the policy. Follow up any that went ahead without a partner.
A related limit: the disqualification check on the tender page is advisory. It shows a problem but does not stop a decision to bid. A partner approving a bid should read that panel first; the reasoning behind a sound decision is set out in making bid/no-bid decisions.
Sources shown as not connected
The tender scout reads live adverts from the National Treasury eTenders public data feed and from any public RSS or Atom feed the firm adds. Sources such as CIDB, Transnet and Eskom appear in the list but are shown as not connected, which means nothing is being read from them.
Two consequences follow:
- A tender advertised only somewhere the scout does not read will not arrive by itself. Staff can enter it by hand, with its documents.
- When an RSS item has no closing date, Achekam gives it one 30 days after publication. That is a placeholder, not the buyer's deadline. Check the advert and correct the date before anyone plans work around it.
To confirm what the feed brought in, National Treasury's eTenders Portal is where the government publishes advertised, awarded and cancelled tenders from public sector organisations in all spheres of government.
One more label to read carefully: the "AI Match" score and the Recommended list come from fixed rules on keywords, sector, province and value, applied to the firm's search profile. No AI model is involved. If the recommendations look wrong, adjust the search profile rather than expecting the score to learn.
Where the working parts are
A good deal of the tender module does exactly what it says. The parts a bid team can lean on:
- The tender list and tender pages, fed by eTenders, the firm's own feeds and manual entries.
- Bid/no-bid decisions, each with a reason, and a named partner from R5 million.
- The Submission Pack, which e-mails the bid pack to the address the tender prescribes once a person has confirmed it, and records delivery and downloads. A colleague still verifies lodgement against the buyer's acknowledgement.
- The Delivery Tracker, listing every tender in preparation with its owner, stage and overdue milestones, and bid hours drawn from timesheets. It is described in tracking tender delivery.
A checklist for the bid manual
- Do not use Procurement Plans, Sources Registry or Awaiting Documents as views of their own.
- Treat every Tender Settings value as unenforced until you have seen it work.
- Record the firm's own partner-approval amount and apply it by hand below R5 million.
- Replace placeholder closing dates with the date in the advert.
- Read the disqualification panel before approving a bid.
- Call the match score what it is: a rules-based filter.
Before the next tender season, take the team through this list, update the bid manual, and agree who reviews the month's smaller bid decisions against the 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.
