How to find the right tenders by using our Advanced Search function
We have thousands of tenders in our database at any given time, so finding the tender you’re looking for may require additional filtering. In this article, we’ve broken down the components of our Advanced Search function to help you better find what you’re looking for.
- Click on SEARCH from the main menu bar to access the search page
Categories
The best way of searching for tenders is by choosing from our comprehensive list of categories. Our tender team carefully file each sourced tender into main categories and sub-categories that are the best match. We recommend the following:
- Choose a category that matches the specific services you supply, not whom you supply to (e.g. if you provide engineering services to construction, select only engineering categories, not construction categories which may only be tenders seeking the services of construction companies)
- Utilise sub-categories: your best bet is to find the category that’s the closest match to your industry; when you click on the main category (bolded), it will expand to show all the sub-categories (indented)
- There is a search on the category drop-down; click on the down arrow to see the sub-categories from the main category. If you are unsure if there is a category or which main category it can be found in, then we recommend you type in a keyword in the category box. The search will narrow down the list of categories to all that contain the keyword
- If you can’t find any categories that suit, we’d recommend selecting all categories you believe are the closest match to your service and then utilise the keyword function (read on); otherwise, you can always reach out to our friendly support team for help
Keywords
We recommend avoiding using keywords if you can find a category that matches your services because issuers may use different words and phrases in their tender titles and descriptions. By using keywords, you may be eliminating relevant tenders that didn’t use those specific words, or you otherwise might capture tenders that aren’t relevant at all. However, this function is fantastic if you’re looking for a particular tender or provide niche services. Here are our tips for keyword utilisation:
- Avoid generic words like 'and, it, the, tender, request' as most tenders will include words like this; therefore, you’re likely going to capture a large number of irrelevant results
- Ensure you separate individual keywords and phrases with a comma, e.g. construction, engineering, project management, drafting
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Matching Keywords
When searching for keywords, the default is to match any words, which means it will literally search for every and every keyword in the list across all tenders. You can change this to match exact phrase if you know exactly what you are looking for.
Organisation Type
There are many different types of organisations, sometimes called Issuers or Buyers; we only recommend selecting one of these if you know exactly what you’re looking for (e.g. whether the government entity you’re looking for fits into local, state or federal). We’ve broken these down below:
- Central Government (NZ): there are just two tiers of Government in New Zealand - Central Government and Local Government
- Federal Government: sometimes referred to as the Australian Government or Commonwealth Government. Federal governs all of Australia, meaning tenders from the Federal/Commonwealth government will likely be seeking services that can be provided nation-wide
- Local Government: Local Government looks after the interests and needs of specific communities through regional, city or district councils; these tend to be the most common type of issuers
- Private/Public Company: these are non-government entities/companies that have issued a tender; these will vary between one another as they don’t have to follow internal government policies for tendering
- Other: this includes clubs, committees, NFO’s
- OS Government: All Government entities that are not based in Australia or New Zealand
- School: selecting this option will show you only tenders issued by schools
- State Government or Territory Government: these are the 6 states and 2 territories that govern their own state/territory, so tenders from these will likely be for state/territory-wide provision
- TAFE: selecting this option will show you only tenders issued by TAFE’S
- University: selecting this option will show you only tenders issued by Universities
Regions
A region refers to the location where the word will take place and not where the buyer is located. Sometimes the Buyer will specify a state or country rather than specific regions. When searching, we recommend looking across the State/Country as well as specific regions.
Status
If you’re looking for open tenders, then you’ll only want to look for Current tenders; however, there are a few different statuses explained below:
- Current: the tender is open
- Closed: the tender has closed
- Future: the tender isn’t yet open but is expected to be released by a specific date, called the Expected Release Date. When a tender is released to the market, the status will be updated to current
- Awarded: the tender has closed, and the Buyer has published information on the awarded contract (note: not all tenders become Awarded Tenders after closing, they only get updated if the Buyer publically releases this information, which isn’t all of the time)
- Withdrawn: the tender was published but was subsequently withdrawn from the market by the Buyer (they may have decided not to go ahead or withdraw the tender to re-publish at a later time)
- Expired: a future tender that never got released
Need a little help?
Just email us at support@australiantenders.com.au or call our friendly Australian support team on 1800 934 117.