Pre-Submission Bid Review Checklist

This article is a practical checklist for the final review of a bid before you submit it in Stimaro. The software's Validation feature catches many issues automatically, but a deliberate human pass before submission catches the things a machine can't judge — and bid day is no time for surprises.

Run validation first

Start with the Validate button on the Bid tab. It checks completeness, pricing sanity, structure, and a bid-day review across many rules, and flags anything that needs attention. Clear the errors and review the warnings before you go further. See Using the Validation feature for what each check means. Validation is your first pass — the checklist below is your second, human pass on top of it.

Completeness

• Every item is priced. No $0 items, no rows with a quantity but no price. An unpriced line is money you forgot to charge for.
• Every priced item is on the bid. Check that item sheets you built actually got linked to the bid — an orphaned item is work you costed but didn't bid.
• Quantities match the bid documents. Confirm your bid quantities against the owner's bid form, line by line, especially on unit-price work where a wrong quantity scales straight into the total.
• Units of measure are correct. A quantity in the wrong unit (CY vs. SF, LF vs. EA) can be off by orders of magnitude.
• Nothing is left as a placeholder. Any write-in you dropped in as a temporary stand-in has been replaced with a real number.

Pricing and markup

• Markup is actually applied. Confirm your category markups, overhead, and profit are set — not sitting at 0%. This is one of the most common and most expensive mistakes.
• Overhead is realistic for this job. Project overhead reflects this project's actual indirect costs; corporate overhead carries its fair share of running the company.
• Profit is where you want it. Not left at a default, not zeroed out, set deliberately for this job's risk and competitive situation.
• The bid is balanced. Actual and balanced totals agree, or any gap is intentional. If you've hand-adjusted line prices, run Auto-Balance after finalizing markup (markup first, then balance).
• Bond is included if required. If the job needs a bond, your bond table is set and the premium is in the total.

Sanity-check the numbers

• Does the total feel right? Step back from the line items and ask whether the bottom-line number is believable for this scope. A bid that's wildly high or low against your gut usually has an error behind it.
• Check your unit prices against experience. Do the per-unit numbers look like what this work actually costs? Use the Analyze tab's market and benchmark data as a reality check where it's available.
• Look at your biggest line items hardest. The largest items drive the bid — an error in a small line is a rounding issue; an error in your biggest line is a disaster. Scrutinize the top few.
• Review your riskiest, least-quoted lines. The estimated lines you didn't get hard quotes on carry the most uncertainty. If a Monte Carlo run flags them, decide whether you're comfortable carrying that risk or want to chase a quote.

Quotes and subcontractors

• Vendor quotes are current and applied. If you collected RFQ quotes, the ones you're using are locked and applied to the bid.
• Subcontractor scopes are complete. Nothing falls in a gap between your scope and a sub's, and nothing is double-covered.
• Allowances are clearly carried. Any owner-required allowances or provisional sums are in the bid at the right amounts.

The documents you're submitting

• The bid form matches the owner's format. Your sections, item numbers, and structure line up with what the owner expects to receive.
• The right reports are generated and branded. Your submittal package has the correct templates, your Brand Kit is applied, and the preparer name and date are right.
• Signatures and required forms are in place. Any certifications (prevailing wage, bonding) the bid requires are included.

Logistics

• You know the bid deadline — exactly. Date, time, and time zone. Confirm it against the bid documents, not your memory.
• You know how it's submitted. Electronic portal, sealed hard copy, email — and you've allowed time for whatever that method requires.
• You've saved a record of what you submitted. A point-in-time snapshot (a Bid Snapshot report or project backup) of exactly what went out, so you have an authoritative record later.

A final word

The goal of this pass isn't to second-guess every number — it's to catch the handful of errors that are easy to make and expensive to miss: forgotten markup, a wrong quantity, an orphaned item, a unit-of-measure slip. Validation catches most of these. A calm, deliberate human review catches the rest. Build the habit, and bid day gets a lot less stressful.