Turn Your Tender Spreadsheet Into a Controlled Team Workflow
Keep Excel. We build the workflow around it, so every BOQ, revision and addendum lands in one place your whole team can see.
Free. No sales deck. Send your workbook when you book and we arrive with a first cut already built.
Your estimating logic is sound. The workflow around it is where you lose money.
Most subcontractors we speak to price work well. The losses happen in the handling: which version went out, whether the addendum was reconciled, and who checked the exclusions. Every item below came from a real tender room.
Every tender arrives in a different format
One head contractor sends a clean BOQ. The next sends a locked PDF. The third sends a pricing schedule with its own item numbering. Someone re-keys all three into your template.
Several versions of the same tender exist at once
The estimator has one copy. The commercial manager has another with the margin edits. A third sits in an email attachment. Nobody can say for certain which one was submitted.
Priced items get missed in review
A sort detaches a rate from its line item. A row falls outside the sum range. The review catches it sometimes. On a tight close it does not, and the gap shows up during delivery.
Addenda are not reconciled against the priced BOQ
Addendum 3 changes twelve quantities two days before close. Someone updates the workbook by hand. No record shows which lines moved, or whether the summary picked all of them up.
Assumptions and exclusions live in scattered files
Some sit in a tab. Some sit in the covering letter. Some sit in an estimator's head. When a variation claim comes up eight months later, the qualification you relied on is hard to produce.
One person understands the formulas
The workbook grew over a decade. It carries the rate logic that makes your pricing competitive. Hiring a second estimator means handing that person a file nobody can safely explain.
No status view and no audit trail
You cannot open one screen and see the eleven tenders in flight, who owns each one, what stage it reached, and what changed since Monday. The answer lives in a phone call.
Keep Excel. Fix the workflow around it.
We do not sell an estimating package, and we will not ask you to move your rates into someone else's template. Your team keeps working the way it already works, and your workbook keeps doing the pricing it already does well.
We build the layer that is missing between the tender package, your people, and the spreadsheet. Tender packages come in and get structured. Revisions and addenda get tracked. Reviews get recorded against a named person. Exports go back out to Excel whenever you want them.
You end up with one live version of every tender, and the pricing logic you spent years building stays exactly where it is.
A system shaped around your tender process, not a product you bend to fit
Every build starts from the workbook you use now. Our AI agent, Leonardo, reads your structure and builds working software from it. Most first cuts are running within days, and you review them against a real tender.
BOQ and package intake
Incoming schedules get mapped to your item structure once. The re-keying stops. Each tender keeps a record of what arrived and when.
Controlled pricing and revisions
Rates sit in one protected place. Tender versions are explicit. Addenda apply against the priced schedule and leave a trail of every quantity that moved.
Review, submit, and look back
Reviews are assigned and signed off. Assumptions and exclusions attach to the tender itself. Months later you can show what you priced and why.
Where it usually goes next
Firms normally start at estimating because that is where the pain is loudest. Once tendering is under control, the same system extends into production tracking, purchase orders, and invoicing, using the job data that is already there. RSB Contracts followed exactly that path.
Two builds, both starting from a workbook
Lohman Contracting
Lohman's estimating logic had grown inside a macro-heavy workbook. We rebuilt that workflow as secure software: BOQ mapping, quantity-based productivity, regional rate sets, materials, equipment, project costs, pricing schedules, and tender versions. The proprietary rate logic stayed protected instead of being exposed to every user.
Read the Lohman build"I wouldn't hesitate to recommend you. Keep on doing what you did with me."
RSB Contracts
RSB fabricates and erects structural steel. We automated BOQ inputs, built tendering and revisions, tracked production across every live project, and matched purchase orders to supplier invoices. The same job data carries through each step, so commercial, production, and finance share one view.
Read the RSB build"I spent 100+ hours trying to improve our estimating spreadsheet with ChatGPT before I found LlamaPress. This new software reflects the way we actually think and has made everything so much more streamlined and practical."
The Tender Workflow Review
Bring one completed tender package, the spreadsheet your team used to price it, and how you currently handle reviews and addenda. We walk the process with you.
What you get from the call
- The version-control risks in your current process, named specifically.
- The repetitive prep work that a system could remove, with rough hours attached.
- The points where accountability is missing, such as unrecorded reviews and unreconciled addenda.
- An honest answer on whether custom software is financially justified for your volume. Sometimes it is not, and we will say so.
Send your workbook when you book
Tell us in the form that you can share a workbook and we will email you a secure upload link. We build a first cut before the call, so you spend the 30 minutes reacting to working software instead of describing your process.
Book your review
We reply within one business day to confirm a time that suits AEST hours.
Questions contractors ask us first
Do we have to stop using Excel?
No. Estimators keep using Excel where Excel is the right tool. We build the workflow around it and keep exports available, so you can still hand a client or a head contractor a spreadsheet.
Will our pricing logic be exposed to everyone?
No. Protecting rate logic is one of the main reasons firms come to us. We set permissions so estimators use the rates without being able to read or alter the formulas behind them. Lohman Contracting had exactly this requirement.
How long does a build take?
A first working cut usually takes days, not quarters, because our AI agent builds from your existing workbook instead of starting from a blank page. You then use it on a live tender and we adjust from what you find.
What does it cost?
Builds are quoted as fixed-scope sprints after the review, once we both understand the workflow. The review itself is free. If the numbers do not justify a build for your tender volume, we will tell you on the call.
Who owns the software?
You do. The system runs on your own instance and you can be given access to the source code. You are not renting a seat in someone else's product.
We are in Australia. Does that work?
Yes. We work with Australian civil and commercial contractors already, and we schedule calls in AEST hours.
Bring one tender. We will show you where the hours go.
Thirty minutes, no deck, and a straight answer on whether a custom system is worth building for your business.
Book a 30-minute tender workflow reviewPrefer to start by uploading a spreadsheet? Try the Excel to app builder.