Tender Summary

What are bills?

Bills are the client-facing documents you produce from your estimate — the final output you send to win the job. Unlike reports, which are internal documentation for your own records, bills contain only the information suitable for your client.

The bills page is Stage 6 of the job workflow. It is where you generate your tender summary, quantified schedule of rates, and any supporting documentation before sending your quotation.

Navigating the bills page

When you reach Stage 6, the bills page is divided into three areas:

• Left side — summaries, including the tender summary and section summaries. This is typically what you send to your client initially.
• Right side — the quantified schedule of rates, giving the full itemised breakdown that underpins your tender summary.
• Centre — optional client documentation such as pre-set cover letters, terms and conditions, and similar templates. For details, see Pre-set Client Documentation.

Generating a tender summary

The tender summary is the headline document for your quotation. It provides a sectional breakdown of your estimate with subtotals for each area and a grand total at the bottom. This is the document most contractors either send directly to the client or copy information from onto the client's own forms.

1. 1

   Navigate to Stage 6 — Bills.

2. 2

   Select the Tender Summary option from the left-hand side of the screen.

3. 3

   Configure any display settings you need — letterhead, grid lines, page numbers. For details on these settings, see Bill Document Settings.

4. 4

   Click Preview and Export at the bottom of the page to generate the document in the preview window.

What the tender summary displays

The tender summary includes the following information:

• Company letterhead or logo at the top of the document (if enabled in the display settings)
• Client information and job details — drawn from the job header you completed at Stage 1, including the client name, job name, and job code
• Sectional breakdown — each section from your sectional structure is listed with its individual cost. For example, if you structured your estimate by location (ground floor, first floor) and by service (lighting, small power, containment), the tender summary reflects that exact structure
• Subtotals for each top-level section — if you have a ground floor section containing lighting, small power, and containment, the tender summary shows a subtotal for the entire ground floor before moving on to the first floor
• Section multipliers — if you used section multipliers (for example, 20 identical room types), the tender summary shows the unit cost, the quantity, and the extended total. This gives your client a clear breakdown of how repeating elements are costed
• Preliminaries — if set to appear rather than being spread across the rates. For details, see Preliminaries on Bills
• Total contract cost — the grand total at the bottom of the document, representing the full value of your quotation

How your sectional structure affects the tender summary

The layout of your tender summary is determined entirely by the sectional structure you built at Stage 2 (the takeoff screen). If you structured your estimate with A-level sections for locations and B-level sections for services, the tender summary groups items the same way, with subtotals at each level.

This means the time you invest in organising your sections pays off directly in the quality of your final tender document. A well-structured estimate produces a clear, professional tender summary without any additional formatting.

Reviewing before you send

Before exporting your tender documents, follow this review checklist:

1. Check the quantified schedule of rates first — confirm that item descriptions, quantities, and rates are correct. See Quantified Schedule of Rates for details
2. Review the tender summary — verify that section headings, subtotals, and the grand total match your expectations
3. Check prelim visibility — ensure preliminaries are showing or spreading as intended for this particular quotation
4. Preview multi-page documents — use the navigation arrows to review every page, not just the first

Next steps

Once your tender summary is ready, you can generate a Quantified Schedule of Rates to underpin it, configure your document appearance via Bill Document Settings, or produce a complete tender package using Generating a Merged PDF.