Glossary

The words Costimate and these pages use, each in a line, with the page that says more.

What the words in Costimate mean. Each one links to the page that says more.

Finding work

Lead: a tender you might bid for. You convert it into an opportunity or dismiss it.
Public buyer: a ministry, council, agency or utility that publishes tenders.

Opportunity: a bid you are working on, from the first look to the client's decision.
RFP, RFQ, ITT, RFT: a request for proposal or quotation, an invitation or request to tender. You price them, and they are won or lost.
PQQ: a prequalification questionnaire. Answered, not priced, and you qualify or not.
EOI, RFI: an expression of interest, a request for information. Answered, not priced, then accepted or not qualified.
Capture plan: the case for bidding, in seven steps, before you spend time on the proposal.
Deliverable: one thing the buyer asks you to hand in or do.
Technical proposal: your answer to what the buyer asks, printed as a PDF, one for each document the tender asks you to write.
Commercial proposal: what the bid costs, line by line, and its price.
Customer format: the buyer's own Excel pricing form, filled in and handed back as it is.
Clarification: a round of the client's questions after you submitted.

Bid value: what the tender announced, or what you planned, when the bid was made. Anyone who can read the bid sees it.
Submitted value: the price you submitted, recorded when you finalise. Only for people who can see prices.
People who can see prices: those whose role or own access allows it, and those named on that opportunity.
Rate card: what a position, a material, a subcontractor and other direct costs cost your company. A bid copies it when its pricing starts.
Service line: one priced item of the work.
Sub-line: one of the client's cost elements inside a service line.
PMO: the project management office. Costs of running the whole contract, such as its manager, shared out over the service lines.
Mark-up: a percentage on a line's cost with its PMO, such as overheads or profit. Cost plus mark-ups is the selling price.
Finalise: fix the selling price as the one you submit. Each time makes a new revision.

Framework (FWA): an agreement that guarantees no work. Its prices are a reference.
LTA: a long-term agreement. It guarantees no work either, and its prices are fixed for the term unless the client approves a change.
Appointed: how an FWA or LTA succeeds. It is never won, and makes an agreement, not a project.
Lot: a part of a tender that is awarded on its own.
Agreed rates: the prices you hold with the client under an agreement, kept as versions.
Call-off: work the client orders under an agreement. It is an opportunity of its own, and winning it makes a project.
Task order, mini-competition, purchase order: the three kinds of call-off.

Project: the work you deliver. A won tender opens one, and you can add one yourself.
Contract value: the price of the contract. Only for people who can see prices.
Budget: what the project is planned to cost: the finalised proposal's cost before mark-ups, or typed.
Actual cost: what is recorded on the project up to today.
Profit: the contract value less the budget. Only for people who can see prices.
Crew: the people who work on a project.
Company Assets: your register of vehicles and machines.

Quotation: an offer of prices to a client.
Invoice: what a client owes you.
Credit note: takes back part or all of an issued invoice.
Supplier bill: what you owe for goods or work you bought, under Accounts payable.
Legal entity: the registered company your quotations and invoices are issued by, with its bank accounts.
Home currency: the currency a new bid, quotation or invoice starts in. Nothing is converted into it.

Member: someone who works in your company's workspace.
Seat: a member's place. The number of seats decides your plan. An expert takes none.
Read-only: a company with more members than seats. Everyone can read and export, and nothing can be changed.
Role: a set of permissions, module by module, that says what a member may do.
Employee: your company's record of a person who works for it, with a login or without one.
Expert: an independent person you invite onto a bid. Not a member: they sign in to a portal of their own and see only what you share.
Costimate Expert Network: the independent experts who work on bids with companies that use Costimate.
Workflow: one list of everything that waits for someone's decision.
Two-factor authentication: a code by email at every sign-in with your password.
Passkey: signing in with your fingerprint, face, screen lock or a security key.