Place an order with the right vendor in minutes
Bidding presents an assignment to a matched group of vendors at the same time, within a response window you define. Vendors reply with terms rather than a decline, and selection runs automatically against criteria you configure.
Routine assignments place quickly. The difficulty sits with the remainder — rush due dates, rural properties, complex builds, and markets where panel coverage is thin. Those orders are typically offered, declined and re-offered, and each cycle returns little information about why the previous attempt failed.
Bidding is designed for that category of order. The assignment is presented to a matched group of vendors simultaneously, each of whom may respond with terms of their own, and selection runs when the round closes.
How a round works
The shortlist is assembled for you. Invitations are sent to vendors who already match the assignment on license and certification level, geographic competency, property type experience, and their recorded history of quality and timeliness. Matching is applied before any vendor is contacted, so the order is reviewed only by vendors qualified to complete it.
The response window is yours to define, and it closes on its own. Unanswered invitations expire without intervention, and a round can be ended early once sufficient responses have been received.
Window length is a configuration rather than a constraint. A thirty-minute window on an urgent order allows placement within the hour, on the type of assignment that would otherwise take a day or more of sequential re-offers.
Responses that carry information
A decline conveys very little. It may indicate that the fee was insufficient, the due date unworkable, or the vendor unavailable, and without that distinction the next offer is likely to repeat the same error.
Bidding gives the vendor a third option: respond with conditions. A higher fee, a later due date, or both, accompanied by a stated reason. Those terms arrive alongside every other response, so availability and pricing can be compared directly rather than inferred.
Declines carry a reason as well, which is of comparable value. It identifies a mispriced or unrealistic order before the same terms are applied to the next set.
Selection against your criteria
Responses do not require manual review. When the round closes, selection runs against the criteria you configure — proximity to the property, scorecard strength, timeliness history, fee and turnaround — weighted as you determine. The configuration is yours rather than a platform default, and it is applied consistently to every order.
Where a set of conditions is acceptable, approving it issues the revised offer automatically, without a separate negotiation or re-entry of the order.
A fee floor, by design
Bids cannot be submitted below the proposed fee. They may match it or exceed it.
The process is therefore not an auction, and vendors do not compete against one another on price. A vendor requests an increase where the property warrants one — a complex build, extended travel, access requiring a second visit — and accepts the stated fee where it does not.
This is a coverage consideration as much as a fairness one. Vendors who are confident of appropriate compensation continue to respond to invitations. Those who are not withdraw from the offer first, and they are generally the vendors with the most alternatives.
Reviewing it against your own order flow
The settings that determine turnaround are yours: invitation scope, how wide the first round goes, window length, and selection criteria.
Book a demo to review bidding against your own order flow and markets, including what a first round would look like at your current volume.
For lenders already placing orders with us, bidding can be enabled on an existing account without a migration or a new integration. Your account team can arrange it.