Tips for electronic bidding
Electronic bidding allowed?
The extent to which the awarding marketplace is used, i.e., the steps in the awarding process that are mapped electronically, can vary in individual awarding bodies. While some awarding bodies only provide award documents electronically on the system, other awarding bodies already accept exclusively electronic bids. You should therefore check the announcement or the award documents to determine whether electronic bids are permitted and, if so, what level of signature is required (text form, qualified signature, advanced signature).
In cases of doubt, you should ask the contracting authority.
Receipt of a bid
Electronic bids must also be received in full (warning) before the bid deadline. Therefore, what is important is not the time at which the transmission of the bid was started, but when the bid was received in full, i.e. the “upload” on the server was completed.
To ensure timely receipt of electronic requests to participate and offers, you should take into account the capacity of your Internet connection and the size of the offer.
Other documents in the offer
When sending your own documents, such as brochures, you should pay attention to the file size of the documents. This also applies to scanned documents. If necessary, the size of the file can be reduced considerably by reducing the resolution of graphics or scanned documents.
Use of the cosinex bidding tool
For the transmission of electronic offers in the context of formal award procedures, which are processed on the award marketplace, the use of the so-called bidder tool is provided.
The transmission of a bid, e.g. by e-mail, is not sufficient and usually leads to the exclusion of the bid transmitted in this way in the award procedure.
When submitting a bid electronically for the first time
If you wish to submit a bid electronically for the first time in this or another procurement marketplace, we recommend that you:
1. start the bidding tool for the first time under the menu item “Bids” or “Requests to participate” in the respective project a few days before the planned submission of the bid.
Clicking on the “Download installation file” button automatically starts the installation process. Depending on the settings of your company network, you may need the support of your system administrator during the initial installation.
2. submit the offer no later than the day before the offer deadline
Legal notice
Please note that the above tips are non-binding advice from the cosinex service and support team.
The requirements may differ depending on the installation and on the awarding procedure. Therefore, no liability can be assumed.
