Tutorial: from signup to your first bid

This tutorial takes you from a new account to your first bid. It takes about fifteen minutes, plus a few minutes while ScoutTide finds your first matches. Each part links to a page with more detail.

Part 1: Create your account

1. Go to the signup page. The Individual plan is chosen for you. If colleagues will join you, choose Signing up for a team? Choose Team.
2. Choose Sign up with Google, or type your email and a password.
3. Optionally, open Add your name and company (optional) and fill them in.
4. Choose Create account.

Both plans start with a 14 day free trial, and no card is needed. See Sign up for ScoutTide for the full details.

Part 2: Confirm your email

If you signed up with Google, skip this part. Google has already confirmed your address.

1. Open the email from ScoutTide called "Confirm your email address".
2. Choose Confirm email address in the email.
3. On the page that opens, choose Confirm my address. You are signed in and taken to ScoutTide.

Nothing arrived? Check spam or promotions, then use Resend confirmation email. See Your confirmation email.

Part 3: Tell ScoutTide about your organisation

Setup has two steps. Step 1 of 2 is your organisation.

1. Paste your website address into Website.
2. Choose Fill from website. ScoutTide reads your site and drafts what your organisation does.
3. Read the draft like any draft. Change anything that is wrong. Nothing is saved until you press Save.
4. No website? Write a few lines under About this organisation instead, or use Fill in for me.
5. Choose Save.

See Your organisation profile.

Part 4: Add what you sell

Step 2 of 2 is your products. Each product gets its own phrases and its own matches. Tender search opens as soon as you save one product.

1. Choose Find my products. ScoutTide reads your website again and proposes products, each beside the line on your site that names it.
2. For each proposal, choose Add this product if it is right, Edit before adding to change it first, or Not this one.
3. To add a product by hand, choose Add your first product or Add a product.
4. Give it a Product name and a Short description in one line.
5. Under Phrases, one per line, write the words a buyer would use in a tender.
6. Under Where do you sell?, choose the places you can deliver.
7. Watch the count under the form. It shows how many open tenders match right now.
8. Choose Save & rescan. ScoutTide checks the open tenders against the product straight away.

See Add a product, Find my products and Search phrases.

Part 5: Read your first matches

A few minutes after you save a product, the first matches arrive in Tenders.

1. Open Tenders. This is your queue: open tenders the AI judged a fit, best match first.
2. Read a row: the deadline, the buyer and country, the value when the notice gives one, and the AI's score.
3. Use the filters on the left to narrow by closing date, product or country.
4. Search the full text of your matches with the search bar.
5. To look beyond your matches, switch from My products to Tender universe. This searches every open tender ScoutTide holds.
6. Choose Save search to keep a search you want to come back to.

No matches after a few minutes? See No matches yet. For the queue in detail, see Your tender queue and Read a tender row.

Part 6: Your first bid, and every morning after

1. Open a tender that looks right. Read why it matched, next to its AI match score.
2. Check the facts on the right: the closing date, the stage, and who is working on it.
3. Choose Claim this. The tender moves to My pipeline, and off your colleagues' list.
4. Read How to apply and the Documents from the buyer.
5. Choose Apply and bid now. ScoutTide adds the tender to your pipeline and takes you to the official tender page. Your bid goes in on the portal itself. ScoutTide never submits bids.
6. Back in ScoutTide, set the Stage as you go: Watching, Bidding, Submitted, then Won or Lost.
7. Use Add a note to keep what you learn about the tender in one place.

Work the rest of the queue the same way:

• Not a lead tells the AI this kind of work is wrong for you, so similar tenders stop arriving.
• Ignore hides one tender without teaching anything.
• Everything set aside is listed under Set aside, and Put back returns any of it to your queue.

Every morning at 07:00 UTC, ScoutTide emails you a digest of new matches and tenders closing soon, when there is something to report. Turn it on or off under Account, at Morning digest.

See Apply and bid, Claim and pipeline and The morning digest.

What next

• On the Team plan, invite colleagues under Members. See Invite your team.
• Find people asking for what you sell in Social leads. See Social leads.
• Missing a portal you bid on? Add its feed. See Add a tender feed.

Related

• What is ScoutTide?
• Quick setup from a tender
• How matching works
• No matches yet