For multi-academy trusts and schools in England

Three quotes for every purchase, recorded the way your auditor wants to see it.

Trust finance teams run hundreds of small purchases a year across their schools: furniture, IT, maintenance, catering equipment, coaches. The handbook expects competition and a record of the decision. Bidalize does that per request, by email, without asking a single supplier to register anywhere.

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No supplier portal or loginsAny format, any languageApprovers sign off from an emailPay by request, not by login
The situation

Where the hours and the audit questions come from.

  • The rule is clear, the evidence is scatteredThe Academy Trust Handbook and your own scheme of delegation expect quotes to be sought above a threshold and the decision to be documented. In practice the quotes sit in three inboxes and the decision sits in someone’s head. At audit time, the file is rebuilt from memory.
  • School staff are not buyersA site manager or office manager raises most of these requests. They know what they need, not how to run a tender. Bidalize gives them one form, sends the emails, reads the replies and shows them a comparison they can act on.
  • Suppliers are local and will not use a portalThe glazier, the minibus company and the stationery supplier quote by email or by a photo of a printed sheet. Bidalize reads PDFs, photos and email replies, including handwritten ones, and puts them on one sheet in pounds, VAT handled.
Try it in 60 seconds

Who will you award?

Classroom furniture for two schools: one supplier prices chairs per pair, one offers the wrong whiteboard size and an eight-week lead time, one hides a delivery and installation line. Sixty seconds. Who will you award?

Start my 60 seconds
How a request runs

From the request to the record, in one place.

01

The request

Items, quantities, the need-by date and the must-haves: a whiteboard size, a delivery window, a DBS requirement. Must-haves disqualify, so a cheaper quote that fails one cannot be awarded by mistake.

02

The quotes

Suppliers reply to an ordinary email. Each reply is read, matched to your lines, flagged where unclear, and locked at the deadline. A late quote is held, not slipped in.

03

The decision

One sheet, cheapest compliant quote marked, negotiation notes per supplier, a recommendation with reasons. The budget holder signs off from an email link; no account needed.

04

The record

The frozen award sheet, every reading, every scoring run, every change and every sign-off, downloadable as one Excel or PDF record. Internal scrutiny and the external auditor get the same file.

A Bidalize comparison sheet: suppliers side by side, cheapest items in green, a typed-over figure in blue, one supplier disqualified on a must-have, totals and rank.
The comparison sheet in the app. Example request with test data.
Is it for you

A good fit, and not.

A good fit

A trust running from a few to a few dozen requests a month across its schools, with one or two people in central finance responsible for showing competition took place.

Probably not

A trust with a full procurement function and a tendering platform already in use for everything. Bidalize sits below formal tenders, not instead of them.

Doing fewer than a handful of requests a month? A spreadsheet is fine and we will tell you so. Bidalize earns its keep from about ten requests a month, or earlier when quotes come in several languages or someone has to answer for the decision.

Pricing

Pay for requests, not for people.

Starter is £29 a month + VAT for 10 requests, Team £59 for 30, Business £135 for 125 (US$39, $79 and $179 outside the UK), each with unlimited logins and suppliers. Blocks of 10 requests, valid 12 months, for irregular volume. The first 5 requests are free, no card. Most trusts fit Starter or Team. A trust with ten schools and several requests a week is a Team. Approvers, headteachers and governors never need a login and are free.

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Questions

Before you ask

Does this cover the Academy Trust Handbook requirements?

It gives you the evidence the handbook asks for: that quotes were sought, how they were compared, who decided and who approved. What your scheme of delegation sets as thresholds and approvers is yours to decide; Bidalize records that you followed it.

We already have a finance system

Keep it. Bidalize produces the comparison and the decision record; the purchase order and payment stay where they are. A CSV with fixed column names is there if you want to import the award.

Who in the trust uses it?

Usually one or two people in central finance set it up, and school office or site staff raise requests. Everyone who needs to see a request can be given a login; logins are not charged.

Can we try it on real purchases?

Yes. The first 5 requests are free, no card, no time limit. Run your next real request through it and compare the file you get with what you keep today.

More in the general questions, or email us.

Run your next request on Bidalize.

Your suppliers will not notice a thing. You will have the comparison, the recommendation and the record the same day.

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