Documentation

Tendering.ca is a Canada-wide construction tendering platform. Buyers (municipalities, school boards, developers, and general contractors) post tenders, manage documents and addenda, and receive sealed online bids. Suppliers (subcontractors, vendors, and consultants) find work, register as plan takers, and bid online.

Both sides pay one flat $25/month per organization — no per-tender fees. On top of tenders posted directly on the platform, we aggregate thousands of public construction notices from government sources so you can search everything in one place. Tendering.ca is proudly Indigenous woman–owned and operated in Canada.

1. Click Get started and sign up with your email and a password.
2. Set up your organization — your company is the actor on Tendering.ca, so it holds the subscription, tenders, bids, and teammates (not your personal login).
3. Choose whether you buy construction services, supply them, or both, and add your trades and service areas.

Already have an unclaimed company profile we created from public records? See Build your profile to claim it instead of starting fresh.

$25/month CAD per organization, everything included: unlimited tenders, unlimited bids, documents, addenda, Q&A, evaluations, awards, alerts, AI summaries, and the contractor directory. See the full breakdown on the pricing page.

Free to browse: anyone — signed in or not — can search public tenders, read a preview of each tender's scope, use the contractor directory, and preview matched tenders by keyword. A subscription unlocks full tender packages, document downloads, Q&A, and online bidding.

Invited contractors: if a buyer invites you to bid, your subscription is $10/month for your first year, then $25/month.

Optional add-ons: Visitor Insights ($10/month) and paid document verification ($4/document, $25 for insurance certificates).

Open Browse tenders and narrow down with filters that only ever show options that have matching results (each shows a live count):

• Keyword search — matches tender titles, scope, buyer names, and towns/cities. Tick Search uploaded documents to also match text inside drawings and specs, with page numbers and snippets.
• Province, category, project type, closing window, source, buyer — combine any of them; results re-sort by best match, closing date, newest, or title.

The search understands English and French, tolerates typos, and folds accents, so "montreal", "Montréal", and "watermian" all find the right tenders. Save any search to get daily email alerts — see Alerts & watchlist.

The homepage shows tenders matched to what you do:

• Not signed in: type up to three keywords for a one-time preview of two matching tenders — no account needed. Sign up free to search any trade as often as you like.
• Signed-in suppliers: once you set your trades on your profile, we match tenders to your trade categories and service areas automatically. Free accounts see two matches; subscribers see every relevant match.

No trades set yet? The homepage will prompt you to add them — see Build your profile.

A complete profile gets you matched tenders and makes you findable in the contractor directory. From your dashboard open Company profile and add:

• Logo, cover image, and description
• Trades and service areas — these power your matched tenders and directory placement
• Company details, certifications, featured projects, team members, and brochures

A completeness score shows what's missing, and privacy controls let you hide anything you don't want public. Declare an Indigenous-owned designation if it applies.

Claiming an existing profile: if we created an unclaimed profile for your company from public records, open it in the directory and choose Claim listing. We send a one-click link to the company's published email address; click it to take ownership — no password needed.

On a tender posted on Tendering.ca, choose Register as plan taker to join the official bidders list. As a plan taker you get:

• Access to view and download the tender documents in-app (PDF, images, Word, Excel)
• Automatic email notifications when addenda are issued
• The right to ask questions

Plan-taker registration and document access require an active subscription. (Aggregated notices work differently — see Aggregated notices.)

Ask the buyer questions from the tender page; published answers are visible to all plan takers. When a buyer issues an addendum, plan takers are emailed automatically. If the tender requires it, you must acknowledge every addendum before your bid can be submitted.

1. Open the bid workspace from the tender and choose Start a bid.
2. Enter your total price and attach your bid documents.
3. Attach any requested compliance documents (WCB, insurance, COR) from your company library or upload fresh copies.
4. Acknowledge any outstanding addenda, then Submit.

You get a timestamped receipt, and you can edit, withdraw, or resubmit any time before closing. After the closing time, nothing can be changed. Bids stay sealed until then — see Security. You can also track a bid / no-bid decision with a reason for your own records.

• Saved searches — save any filtered tender search and get a daily email digest of new matches.
• Watchlist — save individual tenders to your dashboard and a closing calendar.
• Follow buyers — get emailed when a buyer you follow posts a new tender.

On any tender you can generate an AI summary & risk flags — a plain-language overview, scope broken down by trade, key requirements, and things worth a question, read straight from the tender and its documents. Suppliers can also get an AI bid / no-bid fit score for their company.

Every organization gets 2 free AI generations; after that, AI tools are included with a subscription.

You can request that Tendering.ca verify a compliance document (WCB clearance, insurance certificate, COR). Verification is $4 per document, $25 for insurance certificates, and every one is reviewed by the Tendering.ca team — no automated rubber-stamping. A verified badge shows on your profile.

Verification indicates we reviewed the document for its stated purpose at the time of review; it is not a legal guarantee of compliance, and buyers remain responsible for their own due diligence. Tendering.ca is fully insured for professional liability.

For $10/month, Visitor Insights shows which companies viewed your profile and your tenders, how often they returned, and when — useful signal on who's interested before the bids come in. See a live sample. Signed-out visitors are always anonymous, and any company can opt out of appearing in others' analytics from their privacy settings.

From your dashboard choose Post a tender. The wizard walks through:

1. Project details — title, reference number, type, and scope.
2. Location & value — province, city, and either an exact site address (pins the map) or a highlight radius.
3. Dates & visibility — questions deadline, closing date, and public / invitational / private. Optionally publish bid results after closing.
4. Trades — so the right suppliers get matched.
5. Requested documents — ask bidders for WCB, insurance, or COR.
6. Invite bidders — optionally enter contractor emails to invite them directly (see below).

It saves as a draft so you can add document uploads before publishing. New tender? Explore a buyer walkthrough or a fully completed sample from the features page.

You can invite specific contractors to bid — whether or not they're already on Tendering.ca — from the Invite bidders step of the posting wizard or the Invited bidderspanel on the tender's manage page.

• On Tendering.ca: search the directory (or use the AI-suggested bidders) and invite with one click. They see the invitation on their Invitationspage and can view the tender even if it's private or invitational.
• Not on Tendering.ca yet: enter their email. They get a message with a one-click account setup link, then land straight on the invitation.

Invited-contractor rate: a contractor a buyer invites subscribes at $10/month for their first year (then the standard $25/month) — applied automatically at checkout. It applies once per organization.

From the tender's manage page you can:

• See your plan-taker list and invite bidders by directory search or email.
• Answer and publish questions.
• Issue addenda — plan takers are emailed, and you can see who has acknowledged each one and require acknowledgement before bidding.
• Re-upload a document to supersede the old version; search still points to the current one.

When you publish, tenders pass an automatic AI screening. Clean tenders go live immediately; anything flagged is held for a quick manual review.

Bids stay sealed until the closing time — before then you see only a count of bids received. After closing:

1. Open bids and download bid documents.
2. Run the evaluation page: tabulation, a compliance matrix against your requested documents, and weighted scorecards (multiple evaluators supported).
3. Issue the award, optionally publishing a public award notice with the winner.
4. Keep a contract record with an expiry reminder.

Publish bid results: if you enabled it on the tender, bidder names and totals appear publicly after closing as unofficial results, subject to verification — matching common public-sector practice.

Alongside tenders posted on Tendering.ca, we aggregate public construction notices from government sources (CanadaBuys, Québec's SEAO, the City of Toronto, Alberta Purchasing Connection, the Government of Yukon, and more), refreshed hourly. Each carries an Aggregated badge and a link back to the original posting.

You bid on aggregated notices through their original portal — Tendering.ca is not the submission platform for them — but you can still discover them here, read a scope preview, and see the AI summary.

On an aggregated notice, subscribers can express interest: we relay your company profile to the buyer's published contact and send them a one-click link to view your details and respond — a warm introduction without leaving the platform.

Your subscription is $25/month CAD per organization. Go to Dashboard → Billing → Manage billing to open the secure Stripe portal, where you can update your card, download invoices, or cancel anytime.

If a subscription lapses, your data stays put — you can still sign in and see your own tenders and bids, but posting, plan-taker registration, bidding, and full tender packages pause until it's active again.

Sign in with your email and password at the sign-in page. Forgot it? Choose Forgot password? to get a reset link by email, then set a new password.

Companies can declare an Indigenous-owned designation on their profile, and buyers can filter the contractor directory by it — useful for meeting federal (PSIB 5%) and provincial Indigenous procurement targets. The designation is self-declared; back it up by listing certifications such as CCIB on your profile.

• Sealed bids are locked at the database layer until the closing timestamp — the buyer sees only a count before then, and edits are blocked after closing by the database clock.
• Tender documents are visible to the owning buyer and registered plan takers (or invited bidders on restricted tenders).
• Bid documents are visible only to your company until closing, then to the buyer. Your company library stays private unless you mark a brochure public.

Still stuck? Email support@tendering.ca and we'll help. For feature overviews see Features and How it works.