Creating a bid
Walk through creating a bid from scratch — entering customer details, setting the site address, adding line items, and getting your first estimate out the door.
A bid is the starting point for every project in Gradeworks. It captures who the customer is, where the job site is, what work is being done, and how much it costs. Creating a bid takes a few minutes — the system handles address lookup, drive time, and travel cost calculations automatically as you go.
Starting a new bid
- Navigate to Estimating from the sidebar
- Click New Bid (or press Cmd/Ctrl + N)
- Enter the customer name — start typing and Gradeworks suggests existing customers, or create a new one inline
- Enter the project name — a short description of the work (e.g., 'Parking Lot Regrading')
- Select a bid category if your company uses them (e.g., Grading, Paving, Utility)
Setting the site address
Enter the job site address in the Site Address field and press Tab or click away. Gradeworks verifies the address automatically — calculating the truck-adjusted drive time from your yard and applying your drive factor tier to compute travel cost. You'll see the results appear within a few seconds.
If the system finds a clear match, the formatted address and city populate automatically. If the address is ambiguous, you'll see suggestions to choose from. For rural sites without a standard address, you can enter cross streets or a landmark and adjust the pin on the map.
Adding line items
Line items are the individual pieces of work that make up the bid. Each has a description, quantity, unit (SF, LF, CY, EA, etc.), unit cost, and total. Navigate to the Line Items tab and click Add Line Item — or press Cmd/Ctrl + N to add one with the keyboard.
For a basic bid, type the description, Tab to quantity, enter the number, Tab to unit, select from the dropdown, Tab to unit cost, and enter the price. The total calculates automatically. Repeat for each item. See the Line Items article for advanced features like cost codes, formulas, and drag reordering.
Saving and next steps
Bids auto-save as you work — there's no save button to forget. When you're done adding line items, review the bid summary at the top: total cost, travel cost, and margin. From here you can generate a proposal PDF, change the bid status, or keep it in Draft while you refine the numbers. See the Bid Lifecycle article for how bids move through statuses.
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