Invited, Viewed, Submitted, Declined: Track Every Subcontractor Bid

Every subcontractor bid you send moves through four states: Invited, Viewed, Submitted, and Declined. Knowing which state each vendor is in tells your purchasing team exactly who to follow up with, who is on track, and who needs to be replaced before the deadline — without a single blind check-in phone call.

Most purchasing managers discover their bid gaps at the worst possible time: the morning bids are due, when one trade has gone silent and there is no time to find an alternate. Status tracking shifts that discovery to day two of the bid window, when the gap is still solvable.

How does a bid request land in a vendor's hands?

In Cornerstone's purchasing module, sending a bid request takes one step: select the vendors for each scope, set a deadline, add a message, and send. Every invited vendor immediately appears as Invited in the bid tracking view. Their inbox receives a scope-filtered Excel template — with separate tabs for Base, Structural, and Designer work — so each trade sees only their own lines.

No vendor account is required. The link in the email opens a token-protected portal where the sub can download the template, upload their bid documents, and submit or decline in a single session. The moment they open that link, their status advances to Viewed.

What should the Viewed status change about your follow-up?

A Viewed status is more valuable than most purchasing managers realize. It tells you the vendor is aware of the request, has opened the portal, and has seen the scope — which means the right follow-up is not “did you get my email?” It is “you opened the framing request on Tuesday — do you have questions about the scope before you submit?”

That shift is small but the effect on response rates is not. Vendors respond better to evidence that their time is respected than to a generic nudge. Status visibility gives your team the information to make that shift on every follow-up call, without anyone having to ask the vendor what they remember opening.

Why does a Declined status matter as much as a Submitted one?

A vendor who declines is communicating something specific: they cannot price this scope at this time. That is useful information — far more useful than silence. A Declined status caught on day two of a ten-day bid window leaves time to invite an alternate vendor, extend the deadline if needed, and still arrive at comparison day with real coverage.

The same gap discovered when bids are due is a different problem entirely. Status tracking converts a silent gap into an explicit signal while there is still time to act on it. That is the core function of the tracking system: make the problem visible early enough for the purchasing team to solve it.

For more on why vendors go silent in the first place — and how to remove the friction that causes it — see why your subcontractors ignore your bid requests.

What happens once bids are Submitted?

A submitted bid is locked. The vendor cannot edit it after submission, which protects both parties from the informal revisions that quietly change numbers between submission and award. Review the bid immediately rather than waiting for all submissions to close — early review gives you time to ask clarifying questions about scope assumptions before the deadline passes.

When two or more bids are in Submitted status, the side-by-side comparison becomes available. Because every vendor used the same scope-filtered Excel template to quote, the line items are already aligned. There is no re-formatting step, no translation between one sub's format and another's. The comparison is the comparison. For a detailed look at how that works, see bid leveling for home builders.

How does status tracking lead to a faster, more complete comparison set?

The purchasing team that knows every vendor's state in real time works differently than one that does not. They follow up with purpose instead of making blind calls down a list. They replace Declined vendors while there is still time. They review Submitted bids immediately instead of letting them accumulate. By comparison day, the field is complete and the decision is clean.

Awards in Cornerstone are assigned per community rather than globally, so one framing crew can win Oak Creek while a different crew wins Elmwood Commons. Accepted pricing locks the moment an award is made, and that locked price flows into the Master Cost Budget and every downstream purchase order — no re-keying, no opportunity for the number to drift between the award and the check.