Importing Data
Bulk import your bid history from CSV or Excel with mapping, preview, and undo
Importing Data
The Import Bid History flow lets you load your organization's past bids in bulk — including contracts that were never publicly posted. It lives behind the Import button in the Bid History tab.
File Requirements
- Formats: CSV or Excel (.csv / .xlsx)
- Size: up to 2,000 rows per file
- A Download template link gives you a correctly structured starting file.
Importable Columns
| Column | Content |
|---|---|
| title | Bid title (required per row) |
| reference_number | Solicitation/reference number |
| description | Opportunity description |
| category | e.g., IT Services |
| department | Client department |
| agency | Procuring agency |
| our_bid_amount | What you bid |
| final_contract_value | Awarded/final value |
| currency | CAD, USD, EUR |
| outcome | won, lost, pending, no_bid, withdrawn |
| submission_date | Date submitted |
| award_date | Date awarded |
| closing_date | Solicitation closing date |
| notes | Free-form notes |
| lessons_learned_text | Lessons learned |
| competitors | Competitor names on the bid |
The Import Flow
1. Upload and mapping
Drop your file (or click to browse). Cothon reads the headers and auto-maps columns to the fields above; the mapping panel shows any unmapped headers, which are simply ignored.
2. Preview
Before anything is saved, you get a row-by-row preview with a summary: total rows, rows ready, rows with warnings, duplicates, and rows with errors (for example, a missing title). Duplicates are detected both against records already in your bid history and within the file itself.
- Rows with errors are skipped.
- Duplicates are skipped by default — tick "Also import rows flagged as duplicates" to include them.
3. Commit
Click Import to commit. You get a confirmation with how many bid records were created and how many competitor entries came with them. Records are then indexed in the background for similar-bid matching and analytics.
4. Undo
The confirmation screen offers Undo import, which removes every record created by that batch.
Warning
Undo is available for the batch you just imported. Once you have moved on and edited records, prefer fixing individual records over re-importing.
Tips for a Clean Import
- Start from the template — it has the right headers, so auto-mapping is exact.
- Normalize outcomes to the five accepted values (won, lost, pending, no_bid, withdrawn) before uploading.
- Include amounts and dates where you have them — they power the win-margin and trend analytics; the completeness notice in Analytics will tell you what is missing.
- Put competitor names in the competitors column to have competitor entries created automatically alongside the bid records.
Note
This is the one bulk importer in Bid Intelligence, and it imports bid records. To bring in competitors from public vendor databases, use Vendor Search instead.
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