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38 short guides, written for people doing this for the first time. Search, or pick a topic below.
38 guides
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Video guides
Short walkthroughs of the main tasks, with captions.
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Answer your first tender question with Velstrian Bid
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Start here with Velstrian Bid
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Start here with Velstrian Buy
Getting started
Set up your workspace and run the first useful bid workflow.
- Quick start: set up Velstrian Tenderworks for your first tender Configure your organisation profile, upload core corporate evidence, and initiate your first tender workspace.
- End-to-end bid management workflow in Velstrian Bid Step-by-step master workflow from procurement document ingestion to compliant submission export.
- Procurement Act 2023: compliance & transparency notices guide Understand the key changes under the Procurement Act 2023 and how Velstrian Tenderworks supports compliance for buyers and suppliers.
Velstrian Bid
Create tenders, build evidence and write social value answers.
- Create and structure a Velstrian Bid tender workspace Enter tender parameters, configure evaluation weighting, and establish a clean procurement project workspace.
- Upload, parse and organise procurement documents Prepare ITTs, specifications, pricing schedules, and appendices for high-accuracy requirement extraction.
- Build an audit-proof compliance matrix before drafting Turn complex buyer specifications into a matrix of every mandatory obligation, its owner and its evidence.
- Generate, cite and edit winning bid narratives Draft with AI grounded strictly in your corporate evidence, edit for evaluative tone, and keep the proof behind every claim.
- Collaborative review, team assignments & sign-off gates Manage multi-author bid workflows, review gates (Red, Amber, Gold team reviews), and executive sign-off.
- Exporting submission packs (Word, PDF, Excel Matrix, Audit ZIP) Generate clean, client-ready tender submissions in Microsoft Word, PDF, Excel compliance matrices, or complete audit archives.
- How social value scoring & TOMs proxy calculations work Understand how committed measures are priced with Oxford Social Value Bank proxy values, and the minimum weightings PPN 026 states.
- PPN 06/20 social value themes & Model Award Criteria (superseded) The five social value themes and Model Award Criteria introduced by PPN 06/20. PPN 06/20 was superseded for procurements commencing on or after 24 February 2025, so this article is a reference for contracts recorded under it.
- Oxford Social Value Bank proxy methodology Detailed guide to the economic assumptions, proxy valuations and measure selection behind the figures Velstrian Bid calculates.
- Carbon Reduction Plans (PPN 006) & Net Zero commitments How to draft, verify and cite PPN 006 compliant Carbon Reduction Plans for major UK public contracts. PPN 006 replaced PPN 06/21.
- Evidence Vault: managing policies, accreditations & case studies Build and maintain a single source of truth for corporate certifications, policies, and past contract performance.
- Verifiable proof & automated citation mapping in answers How Velstrian Bid links draft claims to specific Evidence Vault source files, maintaining full audit traceability.
- Bid to a private sector buyer Start a bid for a commercial buyer, and see what the workspace keeps and leaves off when no procurement statute applies.
- Price a quote for a private buyer with Quick Quote Turn a buyer's request into a priced quotation, one line at a time, in the buyer's currency.
Velstrian Buy
Use buyer side tools for suppliers, requirements and evaluations.
- Buyer-side supplier management & compliance review Track suppliers, submitted documents, mandatory qualifications, and evaluation notes from the purchasing authority perspective.
- Objective evaluation rubrics, moderation & consensus audits Configure evaluation rubrics, score tender bids objectively, record moderation notes and export consensus audits.
- Set up your Velstrian Buy workspace and buyer profile Tell us what kind of organisation is buying, where you buy and in what currency, so the right rules reach every requirement.
- Build a requirement, from a document or from blank Start a requirement pack from a draft specification, last year's pack or a business case, or fill it in yourself.
- Local priorities and social value measures (public buyers) Attach the outcomes your organisation cares about, then choose the social value measures the contract should deliver.
- Set the award weightings and scoring bands Enter price, quality and social value weightings from your tender notice, and see the minimum that applies to your organisation.
- Publish, download and share the requirement pack Preview the pack, lock the weightings at publication, then download it as PDF or Word to send to suppliers.
- Record suppliers in your directory Add the suppliers you buy from, check them on Companies House, and see their contracts and delivery track record.
- Open and run an evaluation, with the AI pre-read and consistency check Score each bid against the published pack. The AI helps you read and checks consistency, and never sets or changes a score.
- Compare bids, whole life cost and bid normalisation Lay options side by side, cost each way of delivering a requirement over its whole life, and put supplier prices on one footing.
- Award a contract: standstill for public buyers, letters for every bidder Award from the ranking, see the standstill that applies to a public buyer, and draft award and regret letters.
- Manage the contract, commitments and supplier reviews Record contracts, confirm what the supplier promised, score delivery and run review meetings.
- Quick RFQ for private sector buyers Describe a job or upload what you have, check the scope, then download an RFQ pack and a price schedule for suppliers.
- Run a private sector purchase in Velstrian Buy What changes for a private company buying: the document you issue, your own currency, optional social value and no statutory standstill.
Knowledge base
Find the right guide, FAQ answer or support route.
Account
Manage billing, team access, security and data.
- Set your market and default currency Tell Velstrian Bid which country you trade from and which currency new values start in, without changing any public sector rule.
- Enterprise Single Sign-On (SAML 2.0) & SCIM directory sync Configure identity provider integration (Okta, Microsoft Entra ID, Google Workspace) and automated SCIM user provisioning.
- Enterprise plans, subscriptions, seats & AI credit allocation Manage subscription tiers, additional user seats, monthly AI generation allowances, and Stripe invoicing.
- Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), seat governance & team permissions Assign granular user roles (Owner, Admin, Member, Evaluator) and govern workspace permissions.
- Security baselines, MFA enforcement, recovery codes & data controls Implement multi-factor authentication (MFA/Passkeys), session policies, and corporate data protection.
- Immutable compliance audit trails, session logs & export forensics Track user actions, data modifications, export timestamps and security events for internal and external audits.
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