If you are a General Contractor doing between $2M and $10M in revenue, your Friday afternoons probably look the same.
You have a new custom home or a large remodel starting. You have the plans. You have the list of subs. And now, you have the tedious task of getting those plans into the hands of 30, 40, or 50 different trades.
If you are like most builders in this stage, you open Outlook or Gmail. You draft an email. You attach a Dropbox link. You start copy-pasting email addresses into the BCC field. You hit send.
Then the chaos begins.
You spend the next two weeks chasing people just to get a “No thanks,” or worse, you get zero replies and have to scramble to find a plumber at the 11th hour.
There is a better way. It’s called an Invitation to Bid (ITB) System. Here is why you need one, and what to look for.
Using standard email to manage bids works when you are doing bathroom remodels and working with the same three guys. It breaks down immediately when you scale up to custom builds.
When you send a BCC email, you have no idea who opened it. You don’t know who clicked the plan link. You are flying blind. When you call a sub to follow up, you don’t know if they’ve studied the plans or if they never even saw your email.
Architects change plans. It happens on every job. If you sent a Dropbox link or attached a PDF to an email, that file is now “dead.” If the plans update, you have to send another email. Now your electrician is bidding off V1, your framer is bidding off V2, and your budget is a mess.
We have all seen it. You accidentally put the subs in the “CC” field instead of “BCC.” Now your framer knows who else is bidding, and they are replying to the whole group. It looks unprofessional and leaks sensitive data.
A bid invitation system (or ITB software) replaces the manual email process with a centralized workflow. It’s not just for the big commercial GCs anymore; modern micro-SaaS tools have made this accessible for residential builders too.
Here is how it changes your workflow:
Instead of attaching files, you upload your plans to one cloud location. You send a link. If you update the plans, the link stays the same, but the files update. Everyone is always bidding on the current set.
This is the game changer. A good system will tell you:
Now, when you do your follow-up calls, you prioritize the people who haven’t opened the invite yet. You stop pestering the guys who already looked.
This is critical. If your system requires your painter to create a username, password, and 2-factor authentication just to see a floorplan, they won’t bid.
The best systems for residential construction are “frictionless.” They send the sub a magic link. They click it, they see the files, they upload their quote. Done.
Sending the invites is only half the battle. The other half is catching the quotes when they come back.
In the manual method, quotes come in via text, email, and paper napkins. You have to manually type that data into an Excel spreadsheet to compare them.
Modern bid systems are starting to solve this too. Some tools (like ours) allow you to upload the PDF proposals you receive. The system then organizes them by trade (Plumbing, Electrical, HVAC) so you can compare them side-by-side without digging through your inbox.
You build high-quality homes. Your back-office process should match that quality.
Moving from “BCC emails” to a dedicated Bid Invitation System doesn’t just save you time—it signals to your subcontractors that you are organized and easy to work with. In a tight labor market, being the “easy to work with” GC means you get the best pricing and the best crews.
Stop chasing emails. Start tracking bids.