Invitations, questions and amendments

While a tender is open for bids, three tabs of its Publication help you run it: Invitations, Questions and Amendments. They become available once you publish.

Invitations

Invite companies by email. Everyone gets the same message and a link to the tender. Any member of your organization can send invitations.

1. On the Invitations tab, click Invite companies.
2. Add the companies:
   • From your suppliers: pick companies from your supplier register. For a supplier without an email, type it in; it is saved to the supplier.
   • Found by market research: suppliers your latest market research found, with the public email a web page listed for them. Approved suppliers come first, rejected ones are left out, and Found on links to the page the email came from. Inviting one does not add it to your supplier register.
   • By email: one email per line, or paste a list. Addresses that are not valid, already invited or have unsubscribed are marked.
3. Under Every company gets this message, check the preview. Choose the Email language: English or Latvian. You cannot change the text, so every company gets exactly the same message.
4. Tick These are business addresses, and I am inviting them on behalf of your organization, then click Send invitations.

While the tender is still a draft, the Companies to invite card on the Overview tab shows how many suppliers market research found with an email, or lets you start the research, so you have companies to invite once you publish.

The email comes from your organization "via Tendergate", with the subject "Invitation to bid" and the tender title. It says when bids are due and that bidding on Tendergate is free. You can send up to 200 invitations per tender; the footer shows how many you have used.

Invitation statuses

From a row's Actions you can:

• Resend: once, 48 hours after the invitation was sent, with the same message.
• Revoke: the invitation link stops working. A company that already started a bid keeps access.

For an invite-only tender you can also share an invitation link yourself; see Sharing the link.

Questions

Bidders ask privately. Your answer is published to everyone, without the asker's name. You never see which company asked.

The Questions tab has two lists: Waiting for an answer and Published answers. The procurement owner and the openers get an email when a new question arrives. For each waiting question:

1. Click Answer.
2. Under Question as published, edit the wording if it identifies the company that asked. The original is kept in the log.
3. Write the answer. Save answer keeps it as a draft; Publish answer publishes it to all bidders at once.

Published answers appear on the public tender page under Questions and answers, and everyone following the tender gets an email.

• Do not answer: decline a question. Write a reason; only the company that asked sees it.
• This changes the tender — start an amendment: when the answer changes the tender, publish it together with an amendment.
• Late questions: after the Last day for questions, bidders can still ask. Such questions are marked Late, and answering them is up to you.
• If you publish an answer close to the deadline, Tendergate warns that bidders may not have time to use it and offers Extend deadline.

Any member of your organization can answer questions.

Amendments

To change a published tender, publish an amendment. Every amendment is numbered (Amendment 1, Amendment 2 and so on), has a public summary, and everyone is told. Owners, admins and the procurement owner can publish amendments while the tender is open for bids.

1. Click Change tender on the Amendments tab (or on Settings).
2. Change what you need. You can change the description, the documents (replace, remove or Add file), the items and lots, the required documents, the deadline, the last day for questions, the opening time and the contact. Changed fields show Changed, with Revert to undo.
3. Write the Summary of changes (public): what changed and why, in a sentence or two.
4. Check the deadline line under the form, then click Review amendment and Publish amendment.

Everyone following the tender and every invited company is notified by email. Bidders who already submitted are asked to check their bid: their bid stays valid, and they can replace it before the deadline.

What cannot change

• Title, CPV, value, visibility and rules cannot be changed. To change them, cancel the tender and publish a new one; see Cancelling a tender.
• The deadline cannot be shortened after publishing.
• A substantive change needs enough time before the deadline. In a simple purchase, at least the number of working days set under Changes after publishing must remain (2 by default). If less would remain, Tendergate says so and suggests the earliest deadline to move to. A change that only extends the deadline needs no minimum.
• In a regulated MK 104 procedure, the tender cannot be changed on the day of the deadline. Republish the change in the IUB publication system; at least 5 working days must remain after that republication. Tendergate adds it to your duties.

What bidders see

The public tender page lists the amendments under Changes, with the deadline change if any. Replaced documents are marked "Replaced in amendment" with the number, and their earlier versions stay available. A bidder whose bid was submitted before the amendment sees a notice on their bid page and gets an email.

If Tendergate was unavailable close to a deadline, the deadline may move by one working day. That shows as a Service notice, not an amendment. See Service outages.