Active Bids
Execution workspace for the bids you are actively preparing to submit
Active Bids
Active Bids is Cothon's execution workspace for the pursuits you have committed to. While Opportunities helps you discover and decide what to bid on, Active Bids tracks how ready each committed bid is: mandatory compliance, the submission package, pricing, your team, and the deadline — all in one place.
Note
Active Bids is part of the Opportunities feature set. If the page is not available on your plan, upgrade or contact your administrator.
How bids get here
Active Bids does not have its own "create" button. A bid appears on the page automatically when an opportunity's status is set to Bidding:
- Find or create the opportunity in Opportunities.
- Change its status to Bidding.
- The opportunity now appears in Active Bids, and clicking it opens its war-room.
If you have no active bids yet, the page shows an empty state with a shortcut back to Opportunities.
Tip
Link an analyzed RFP to the opportunity before (or after) moving it to Bidding. The bid analysis is what populates the mandatory and rated criteria checklists in the war-room — without it, compliance tracking starts empty.
The list page
Header summary
The page header summarizes your pipeline in one line, for example:
3 in progress · next deadline in 5 days · 1 past close
- In progress — bids whose closing date has not passed
- Next deadline — days until the soonest closing date
- Past close — bids whose deadline has already passed
Bid cards
Live bids are shown as cards in a grid, sorted by closing date. Each card shows:
- Readiness ring — an overall readiness percentage (weighted 60% mandatory-criteria compliance, 40% required deliverables finalized)
- Reference number and title — plus the issuing department or organization
- Mandatory — mandatory criteria met vs. total (e.g.
4/6) - Package — required submission deliverables finalized vs. total (e.g.
3/5) - Win prob — the calculated win probability, when available
- Value — the estimated contract value, when known
- Countdown chip — days to close, colour-coded as the deadline approaches
Clicking a card opens that bid's war-room.
Past close section
Bids whose deadline has passed move into a dimmed Past close section below the live grid. They stay accessible so you can record the outcome, but they no longer read as live work.
Warning
A bid in "Past close" is a prompt to act: mark it submitted if you sent it in, or move the opportunity out of Bidding status if you withdrew, so your pipeline numbers stay honest.
What readiness measures
The readiness percentage on each card (and in the war-room) is computed from two things:
| Component | Weight | What counts |
|---|---|---|
| Mandatory criteria | 60% | Mandatory requirements assessed as Compliant |
| Submission package | 40% | Required deliverables with status Final |
If only one of the two exists (for example, no RFP has been analyzed yet), readiness is based on the component that does exist.
Typical workflow
- Commit — set the opportunity's status to Bidding.
- Load the requirements — link an analyzed RFP so mandatory and rated criteria appear.
- Build the package — seed the standard deliverables checklist and assign statuses as documents progress.
- Price it — use the pricing decision panel to benchmark against similar historical awards.
- Close the gaps — work the mandatory checklist worst-first until the submission gates pass.
- Mark submitted — once gates pass (or with a justified override), record the submission.
Next steps
- The War-Room - Every panel of the per-bid workspace
- Submission Package & Gates - Deliverables, statuses, and the gated mark-submitted flow
- Opportunities - Where bids are discovered and committed
- Bid Analysis - Extracting the requirements that drive compliance tracking
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