Business development

Business development is where a record becomes work. Its items in the sidebar are Pipelines, Bids and Tasks, and the group's own page is the dashboard. You take an approach to market, a panel refresh or a contract that expires next winter, and turn it into a bid that sits on a pipeline with stages you define. The bid keeps a link back to the record it came from, so the closing date, the buying entity and the supplier stay correct without anyone retyping them.

Everything in Business development belongs to your organisation: pipelines and bids are shared by the team, and the API refuses to read or write another organisation's.

The words

A pipeline is one market you work — Defence ICT, health services, state civil works. Teams usually run two or three, not twenty. One of them is your default, which is where a bid lands when nothing says otherwise.
A stage is a column on that pipeline, in an order you choose. Rename them, add one, move one left or right, delete one — deleting a stage that still holds bids asks you where to move them first, so nothing is lost by accident.
A bid is one opportunity your team has decided to chase. It carries a name, a description in Markdown, an estimated value, a win probability, a due date, an estimated award date and a duration. Probable value is estimated value × win probability, computed for you and never stored — leave either blank and there is no probable value, which is different from zero.
A link attaches a bid to a record: the ATM it came from, the agency buying, the contract it would replace. The record has to exist — its title and agency are copied across when the link is made, so a typo is refused rather than stored as an empty chip. Any record type can be linked — a state tender, forward plan or award by its id (such as NSW:…), a grant, a panel, a supplier, ACT payments — and each link opens that record's own page. The link the bid was created from is flagged as its source.
A task is one piece of work behind a bid. It has a name, a priority, a due date, an owner and notes, and it is either open or done — two words, not four, because "in progress" is a state nobody updates truthfully.
A tag is a label. The same tags ride on bids and on tasks, and a tag exists by being used: type a word that is not a tag yet and it becomes one.
A custom field is something only your team tracks — an internal bid number, a go/no-go decision, the partner on the account. You define it once and it is on every bid.

The dashboard

Business development opens on its dashboard rather than a list. Six figures across the top — open bids, probable value, estimated value, won, capture rate and tasks overdue — then five blocks: Bids funnel, Won, lost and abandoned by month, Projected revenue, Top bids by probable value and Tasks due soon. The filter row picks one pipeline or all of them, a period of 3, 6 or 12 months, and whether the bars count value or bids. Each block exports its own CSV with the same filters — it is your own work, so it downloads on every plan.

Add to pipeline

Every opportunity and award record page — tenders, planned procurement, grant rounds, contracts, panel places, grant awards and state records — has an Add to pipeline button in its header. One click makes a bid named after the record, due on its closing or end date, valued where the record publishes a value, and linked to both the record and its agency. It lands in the first stage of your default pipeline — and if you have no pipeline at all, one is made for you from the ATM lifecycle template.

The button is idempotent. A record you are already chasing answers with the bid that exists rather than making a second one, and the button reads Pursuing with a link straight to it.

Find suitable opportunities

You can also ask Bower to prepare a bid and tasks for a named pipeline, or tasks on an existing bid. Its review card lets you edit the destination, task names, owners and dates, and exclude tasks. Save changes prepares an updated card; Confirm add adds its contents together. Cancel leaves your bids unchanged. Both the full conversation and the mini chat show the result and a link to the bid. See Add bids and tasks.

A new pipeline has its stages and nothing in them, so its board opens with a short guide. Its first step is Find suitable opportunities: describe what your team does and wants to win — the box starts with your organisation's capability statement, or what you told the sign-up form you sell — tick the jurisdictions (the Commonwealth and every state and territory, Tasmania included) and the kinds of record (open tenders, grants, panels, planned procurement), and press Find. This is keyword search, not AI search: the AI turns the description into a few searches, runs them over the open records your plan includes, and then grades each match against what you described. Each result shows its grade (Strong match or Weak match), the words it matched on, quoted from the record itself, and one line on why it may suit you. A match whose text does not show your kind of work — a shared word such as "network" in a notice about something else — is left out, and the page says how many were; so is a match whose own reason says it is not your work. Every result is a real published record; when nothing matches, or nothing is a fit, the page shows the searches it used and lets you change the description, and nothing is added. A record you already pursue says which pipeline it is on and links to it. Preview one to see where it will go — this pipeline, the stage you pick (the first by default), named after the record — and press Create bid. The bid page then offers to generate its preparation checklist. One record at a time, and nothing goes on the board until you press Create. Finding opportunities is part of Business development and does not use your organisation's AI credits.

The four templates

Creating a pipeline starts from a template, or from your own stage names, one per line. A template only chooses what the stages start as — rename, reorder and remove them afterwards.

| Template | Stages | | --- | --- | | ATM lifecycle | Watching · Qualifying · Bid or no-bid · Writing · Submitted · Decided | | Quick response | Triage · Responding · Submitted | | Panel and standing offer | Watching · Eligibility · Application · Submitted · Decided | | Expiring contracts | Watching · Relationship · Positioning · Approach · Decided |

Open, won, lost, abandoned

A bid's stage is where the work has got to. Its status is whether the work is still going: open to start with, then won, lost or abandoned when it ends. The two are separate on purpose.

Setting a terminal status does not move the bid. It keeps the stage it reached, so a bid that was lost after submission still reads as having been submitted, and the capture rate — the share of ended bids that were won, lost and abandoned — is a fact about the work rather than about how someone named the columns. A bid can be reopened; the boards and lists show open bids by default, and the bids list has a status filter for the rest.

Moving things

There is no drag-and-drop, deliberately. A move is a select and a button: on the board, the card's menu; on the bid page, the progress bar, where every stage is a step you can click and the final Complete step opens the won / lost / abandoned choice. It all works from a keyboard, it all works with JavaScript off, and a move can cross pipelines — a bid sent to another pipeline lands in that pipeline's first stage.

Tasks

The Tasks page is every task across every bid, with the same action row the other lists have: a search box, and filters for status, priority, due date (overdue, today, this week, no date), pipeline and tag. Each row already knows its bid, that bid's pipeline and its stage, so nothing has to be opened to see where a job belongs.

Task date/time entry uses Australia/Sydney, including daylight saving. Saved deadline timestamps display in your browser or device timezone. A due date with no time means the end of that day in Sydney, so a task due today is not overdue until the day is over. A task is overdue when it is still open and its due date has passed. That is computed when the page is drawn and never stored, so a deadline that passes at midnight is overdue at 12.01 and not the next time somebody happens to edit the row. A task with no due date is never overdue — an empty date is a real answer, not a missing one.

Every bid page carries its own tasks in the order your team put them in, with a one-line form to add another and arrows to move one up or down. Ticking a task off stamps when it was finished; reopening it clears that, so "finished on" stays a fact rather than the row's last edit.

Owners

Bids and tasks belong to the whole team, so each one can also name the person responsible.

A bid has an Owner. Whoever creates it owns it — by hand, with Add to pipeline, from Find or over MCP — and it can go to anyone in your organisation, or to nobody. Cards show the owner's initials; hover for the name.
A task has an Owner too: anyone in your organisation, or nobody.
On the Tasks list the Owner column sits next to the task name. Click an owner — or + Assign on a task nobody has — to pick someone else: search by name or email, choose, and it is saved straight away. Choose Nobody to unassign it. The task name opens the task's edit form on its bid.
The Bids list works the same way: click the owner in the Owner column, or + Assign, and pick someone — it is saved at once, without opening the bid. The owner next to a bid's name on its own page changes the same way.
Someone who has not set a name on their account shows by the start of their email address.
Mine above the bids and tasks lists shows only what you own. All shows everyone's, and Unassigned shows what nobody has yet. The Anyone filter narrows either list to one person.
When someone is removed from the organisation, their bids and tasks stay and become unassigned. Pick a new owner the same way.

AI on a bid

Two buttons on a bid ask the AI for a first draft. Analyse this opportunity sits in the Analysis card on the right of the bid page; Generate preparation checklist is in the Tasks section and opens its own page. Any member of the team can use either.

What is read. The bid and its tasks, up to ten of its linked records — only the ones your plan covers; a record outside it contributes its title and nothing else — the summary and details the product already holds for them, the files you tick (up to five ready documents from Bower › Files), and your organisation's capability statement. The statement is written by the owner or an administrator on your profile page, under Organisation; without one the analysis uses what you told the sign-up form you sell, and with neither it says the capability is unknown and gives a general analysis. You can also type what your team does for one run only; that is never stored.

What comes back. An analysis is an overview, the requirements — each marked official when a linked record or an attached file says so, with the evidence underneath, or suggestion when it is advice — how you fit, next steps and the open questions. A checklist is up to 25 draft tasks, each official or suggested, with a due date only where one is published or a suggested one marked as such. Both say when they were generated and what data they saw, and say so when the bid or a linked record has changed since.

Drafts, not changes. Nothing on the bid changes until you press a button. On the checklist page you tick the drafts you want, adjust a name, a priority or a date, and press Add; only those become tasks, each with a line saying which checklist it came from. A draft that looks like a task the bid already has is flagged with that task's name and skipped unless you tick Keep anyway. If some drafts are not added — a duplicate, the task limit, a name that is too long — the page says which and why, and Retry sends only those again. Saving the same checklist twice adds nothing twice. Save to notes on an analysis first shows you the exact text and where it goes, then appends it to the end of the description with a line saying it is AI-generated; nothing already written there is changed. Each analysis is saved once: afterwards the card says when it was saved, and a second click adds nothing.

No AI credits. Analyses, preparation checklists and finding opportunities are built into Business development (they are called Capture AI): they do not use your organisation's AI credits, and they work even when the pool is empty. Adding drafts as tasks and saving to notes are free too.

Custom fields

Custom fields are defined once for the whole workspace, under Custom fields in the account menu (your name, top right), and appear on every bid. A field is text, a number, a date, a choice from a list you write, or a checkbox.

Three things worth knowing:

A field's kind cannot be changed after it is made. Every value already stored is in that kind's shape, so the way to change a type is to make a second field.
Required is a form rule, never a write error. A field you mark required is flagged on the bids that have not answered it — it never stops anyone saving, because a field added today must not lock two hundred bids created before it existed.
Removing a choice that bids still hold is refused with a count of them. The page then offers to clear those values on purpose, which is different from doing it by accident.

Limits

Pipeline caps apply to your whole organisation and follow its plan: Essentials 1, Pro 4, and Team and Enterprise unlimited (fair use). The trial uses Pro's cap. At the cap, creating another says which plan has more. If the cap is lowered or your plan changes, your existing pipelines stay available; you can create another once your organisation is below its cap. Platform administrators can change the caps in Admin › Settings.

Twenty stages on a pipeline, five hundred bids and fifty links on a bid. A hundred tasks on a bid and two thousand in all; a hundred tags, twenty on any one bid or task; thirty custom fields. The limits exist so one runaway import cannot fill the workspace; if you are near one, say so and we will look at it.