Delivering the bid pack and proving lodgement

How a bid pack goes to the address a South African tender prescribes, what Achekam records about delivery, and how a colleague proves the bid was lodged.

By Achekam · 11 October 2026 · 4 min read · For Accountants & audit firms in South Africa

Weeks of work on a bid can be lost in the last hour. The pack goes to the wrong mailbox, arrives after the closing time, or reaches the buyer without the signed declaration that was sitting on someone's desk. A buyer will not ask why. The bid is simply not considered.

The second risk comes later. A bid that was delivered on time can still be lost in the buyer's process, and when the firm asks, the question is always the same: can you prove it was lodged? "We e-mailed it" is not always enough.

This article follows the pack from the submission instructions to the buyer's acknowledgement, and shows which steps Achekam handles and which remain with your people.

Reading the submission rules

Every tender prescribes how it must be submitted. The instructions usually sit in the invitation or the conditions of tender, and they cover the delivery address or channel, the closing date and time, the format, how documents must be named or bound, and which returnable documents must be signed.

Treat these instructions as requirements in their own right, not background reading. Where the firm has an AI key set up, AI can read the tender's documents and add a requirement to the tender, but only when the exact words it quotes are found in those documents. Each requirement it adds is marked unverified until the bid manager confirms it. That makes the submission rules something the bid manager ticks off, with the buyer's own wording beside each one.

Read them for these points in particular:

• the e-mail address, tender box or portal the buyer prescribes;
• the closing date and time, and whether late submissions are refused;
• file format and size limits for electronic submissions;
• the returnable documents that must be completed and signed;
• any instruction about the subject line or reference to use.

If the buyer prescribes a tender box or a portal upload, the e-mail step described below is not the lodgement. The team still has to deliver by the prescribed route.

Confirming the pack before sending

The bid should already rest on a recorded decision. Achekam requires a reason for every bid/no-bid decision and, on a tender of R5 million or more, a named active partner as approver.

The pack itself goes out only when a person has confirmed it. That confirmation is the moment to slow down, because one gap is easy to miss. In the Response Studio, AI drafts bid sections only from the firm's approved capabilities, verified references and the buyer's documents, and saves nothing when a draft claims something those records do not support. A saved draft is marked "ready for review". No rule was found that blocks submitting a section that has not been reviewed.

So the person confirming the pack should check, section by section, that a named reviewer has read every drafted section. A pre-send checklist helps:

1. Every requirement confirmed by the bid manager, none left unverified.
2. Every drafted section reviewed by a person, not just marked ready for review.
3. Returnable documents signed and dated by the right signatory.
4. Pricing schedules agreed with the partner who approved the bid.
5. Tax status and registration evidence the tender asks for, current on the closing date.
6. File names, formats and sizes as the instructions require.

Most South African tenders ask for proof of the bidder's tax standing. SARS explains on its page about how to manage your Tax Compliance Status how to request a TCS and PIN on eFiling, including the Good Standing option used for tenders.

Delivery and download records

Once confirmed, Achekam can e-mail the bid pack to the address the tender prescribes. It records the delivery and the downloads of the pack. You can find this under the tender page's Submission Pack.

Those records are useful evidence of what the firm did: that the pack left, when it left and where it went, and that it was downloaded. They are not the buyer's statement that the bid was received and lodged in its process. Keep the two apart in your mind and in your file.

A colleague verifies against the buyer's acknowledgement

Achekam's design keeps a second person in the loop: a colleague still verifies lodgement against the buyer's acknowledgement. What counts as that acknowledgement depends on the channel the tender prescribed. It may be a reply e-mail from the buyer, a receipt slip from the tender box register, or a submission reference from a portal.

Ask the colleague to check:

• that the acknowledgement names the right tender number and bidder;
• that its time is before the closing time;
• that it refers to the full pack and not a partial upload;
• that a copy is saved with the tender's documents.

Ideally the person who verifies is not the one who pressed send. Their job is to compare two records that should agree, and to raise a flag if they do not, while there may still be time to act.

Sections still marked ready for review

After lodgement, look back at the bid's sections. Any that still say "ready for review" were submitted without a recorded review. That is worth knowing before the clarification meeting, before the buyer asks a question about a claim nobody checked, and before the next bid reuses the same text.

Make it a closing step: list the sections, record who reviewed each, and note any that went out unreviewed and why. The Delivery Tracker, which lists every tender being prepared with its owner, stage and overdue milestones, is the place to see which bids are close to their submission dates; it is covered in tracking tender delivery. For the decision that comes before all of this, see bid/no-bid decisions.

For your next submission, name the confirmer and the verifier when the bid is approved, not on closing day, and agree in advance which acknowledgement each channel produces.

General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.