DIBBS Navigator Bid Manager - User Guide

The solicitation is the record. There's no separate "opportunity" to create and keep in sync - one row holds the solicitation facts, your vendor quotes, the selected price, and the outcome, from the moment you find it to the moment DLA decides. No redundant adding to a spreadsheet somewhere on you PC.

Four steps carry a bid from start to finish: Solicitation (what DLA is asking for) → Quotes (source it) → Compare (who's cheapest landed) → Pricing (what to actually type into DLA/ bid form). A menu at the top of every bid page - Dashboard, Solicitation, Vendor Quotes, Compare Vendors, Price and Submit to DLA - jumps straight between them. On Dashboard and the vendor list, where there's no single bid open yet, the bid-specific links show disabled with a reminder to select a solicitation, instead of guessing which bid you meant.

The Manage button on the DIBBS Navigator search grid is the way in - it's the only way a solicitation enters Bid Manager. Click it on any solicitation row and it lands in your Bid Manager pipeline automatically, carrying over the NSN, nomenclature, quantity, delivery days, close date, solicitation type, CAGE codes, FOB - delivery location, inspection location, delivery destination, packaging standard, the packaging clause, and the most recent unit price - nothing to retype.

Your pipeline: every open bid, plus win rate and total won value at the top. Click any solicitation to open it - straight to whichever step matches where it currently stands, not always the Solicitation page - click a column header to sort the pipeline by it, or use Review in DIBBS Navigator on a row to jump straight back to that solicitation on the live DIBBS Navigator grid without opening the bid first. Mark No Bid sets a bid aside without deleting it - a solicitation that turned out not to be worth pursuing; Undo No Bid on that same row brings it back to wherever it was before. Vendors and Settings are also reached from here.

Confirm the solicitation number, NSN, nomenclature, quantity, unit of issue, close date, delivery days ARO, solicitation type, most recent unit price, FOB - delivery location, and inspection location that DIBBS Navigator carried over via Manage. These fields are locked (shown grayed out) since they came straight from DIBBS Navigator - editing them here wouldn't change what DLA actually asked for.

Review in DIBBS Navigator, Solicitation document, Price history, and Part characteristics, near the top of the page, jump straight to the live DIBBS Navigator grid row, the actual solicitation PDF, and DIBBS Navigator's own price/characteristics lookups (each opens in its own popup window) - useful any time you need to double-check something against the source instead of trusting what got carried over. Price history is available the same way from Quotes, Compare, and Pricing too.

Packaging standard - commercial (ASTM D3951) or military (MIL-STD-2073-1) - comes straight from DIBBS Navigator's own Com. Pack flag, not a choice made here. Delivery destination and the packaging clause codes - quantity per unit pack, preservation method, cleaning, wrapping, cushioning, marking, and the rest of the MIL-STD-2073 detail, shown further down under Packaging clause - are both read straight out of the solicitation PDF automatically, as soon as the bid is managed in and again on every visit to this page until they're found, rather than guessing a packaging level or retyping an address. Each code's row links out (Details in 2073) to where MIL-STD-2073-1 itself defines what that specific code means, in case one needs a closer look. A commercial (ASTM D3951) solicitation has no MIL-STD-2073 code block to find, so that section stays empty for those by design.

Approved sources lists the companies DLA already has approved to supply this specific NSN. Add to vendors adds one to your vendor list and to this bid's RFQ list in one step; Add all as vendors does every listed source at once. A source that already has a quote row on this bid shows an ON BID badge next to its name, so you can tell at a glance who's already been added without hunting through Step 2.

Add vendors to the RFQ list from Use a previous vendor (a dropdown of vendors you've already used) or Add a new vendor (type a new company name and email to create and add them in one step) - both start collapsed, since most bids don't need either on every visit, so click the link to open the one you need. A freshly added vendor's status starts as Not Requested - change it once you've actually sent the RFQ, since nothing does that automatically (drafting or copying the RFQ text below doesn't confirm it was actually sent).

Add In-House is the normal option if you manufacture the part yourself instead of buying it - it adds your own company (named from Settings, or your account name if that's blank) to the RFQ list the same way a vendor would be, so your own cost buildup ranks and prices right alongside any vendor quotes on the same bid.

Open Quote on a vendor's row brings up that vendor's quote for editing: status, the vendor's own quote number (their reference, for following up on their end), unit price, minimum order quantity, lead time, Vendor Quote Due Date (defaults to a few days ahead of when the bid needs to be submitted, adjustable, and never overwritten once set - this is the date you need back from the vendor, not one they set themselves), Quote received once they've actually responded, quote expiration, and every landed-cost add-on line (packaging, inbound/outbound freight, marking, first article, inspection, certification, admin, storage, financing, other) - Show more cost elements reveals the less-common ones so the form isn't cluttered with fields most quotes don't need. On an in-house entry, that same unit price field is your own lump-sum cost by default; Itemize this cost optionally breaks it into engineering/NRE, drafting, production labor, and material instead of one number - leave the lump sum at $0 if you itemize, so it isn't counted twice. Saving closes the editor and returns to the vendor list.

Vendor Supplied Information, inside the quote editor, is where the actual evidence behind a price lives - drag a saved RFQ reply, a vendor's PDF quote, or a screenshot of their pricing onto the drop zone (click to browse, or paste from the clipboard also work) and it's attached to that quote for reference later, without needing to keep it somewhere else.

Delivery shows Fits, Tight, Misses, or Unknown, comparing the vendor's quoted lead time against the solicitation's required delivery days - see the legend under the table for exactly what each means.

Edit vendor jumps straight to that vendor's contact record if their email or phone needs adding or fixing, carrying this bid along so the vendor list it opens can be filtered to it. Reputation opens that vendor's Vendor Reputation - see below.

Every vendor with a quoted unit price shows up here, ranked by landed cost - unit price plus every add-on entered in Step 2.

LOWEST marks the cheapest total landed cost when there's more than one quote to compare - with only a single quote on the bid, that same badge reads ONLY QUOTE instead, since "lowest" doesn't mean much with nothing to compare it against. APPROVED marks a vendor who was a DLA-listed approved source specifically for this solicitation - approved status does not carry over between solicitations, so a vendor approved on one bid is not automatically approved on another.

Edit jumps back to that vendor's quote to adjust anything before deciding. Reputation opens that vendor's Vendor Reputation - see below.

Choose markup on cost or margin on price - profit, bid total, and the unit price. You will see a live update as you type the percent or switch basis, no need to tab out or save first.

Submit to DLA copies the solicitation number to your clipboard and opens DLA' own quote form for it in a new tab - the same flow as Quote on the DIBBS Navigator search grid, so you paste into DLA' Fast Trak Quoting box from there. It also marks this bid Submitted automatically, filling in Status and Submitted on below without needing to set them by hand. Review in DIBBS Navigator, Solicitation document, and Price history jump to the live grid row, the PDF, and DIBBS Navigator' price lookup, same as on the Solicitation page.

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Status and outcome, below the checklist, tracks itself automatically as the bid moves through the pipeline, and once DLA posts an award, pulls in who won it and at what price with nothing to type in by hand. Status reads Won or Lost based on whether the awarded CAGE code matches your own; Apparent unit price is the total awarded price divided by the solicited quantity (assumes the awarded quantity matched what was solicited); Get Award Document opens the actual contract document DLA posted. Until DLA posts an award, status simply stays at Submitted - there's no manual Won/Lost entry. This is what feeds the Dashboard's win rate and won value, and a vendor's Won/Lost record in Vendor Reputation.

Your full vendor roster, reused across every bid - add a vendor once, use them on any solicitation. Add a vendor, above the roster, opens a blank form; clicking Edit on a roster row opens that same form pre-filled instead - either way the roster steps aside while you're working on one vendor. Save vendor writes your changes and returns you to the roster. Close (or Clear, on a blank "Add a vendor" form) leaves without saving - it asks first if you've actually typed something, so a stray click can't lose changes by accident.

A vendor's Source is External by default - a real outside company - or In-house manufacturing, for capability you make in-house rather than buy. An in-house entry shows an IN-HOUSE badge in the list and behaves like any other vendor everywhere else (RFQ-style fields it doesn't need, like CAGE code, simply go unused).

The APPROVED SOURCE badge means the vendor has been a DLA-approved source on at least one past bid - a track record worth knowing, not a claim they're approved for whatever you're currently working (check that on the Compare page for the specific solicitation). The Show filter can narrow the list to approved sources only, approved specifically for the solicitation you arrived from, or just added to that solicitation at all (has a quote there, approved-flagged or not) - the last two options only appear once you've arrived here from a specific bid. Close (or Clear), when arrived from a bid, also switches the list to that "added to this solicitation" view instead of resetting to everything.

A vendor's Website shows as a live link once entered. Look up website from CAGE fills it in automatically from SAM using the CAGE code already on the form, without overwriting a website already typed in by hand - the same lookup runs automatically when a vendor is added from Approved Sources on the Solicitation page, again only filling in a blank field.

Reputation opens that vendor's Vendor Reputation - see below.

Reachable via the Reputation button next to any vendor - on Vendors, Quotes, or Compare - this is a running history of how a vendor's actually performed, independent of any one bid. Each entry rates up to six things, 1-5 stars, all optional so an entry can note just one thing without forcing a score on everything else: ease of working with, responsiveness, prices, ability to package to MIL-STD-2073, quote/lead-time reliability, and quality or DLA rejection issues, plus a free-text note and who left it.

The summary at the top averages whatever's actually been rated, and works out a Won/Lost/Pending count automatically from your own bid outcomes - only counting bids where that vendor was the selected supplier, not merely quoted, so it reflects real performance rather than every vendor who happened to submit a price.

+ Add a review opens the rating form without cluttering the summary view by default. Open full page takes you to the same vendor's reputation on its own page, with a picker for which solicitation a new entry is about - handy when adding a review outside the context of any one bid.

Vendor RFQ emails - pick which mail service Draft RFQ email opens (system default, Gmail, Outlook.com, Microsoft 365, Yahoo Mail, or copy-to-clipboard only if none of those fit - Yahoo's own compose window can't keep line breaks, so its draft opens with the subject filled in and a note in the body telling you to paste the full text, already copied to your clipboard, over it), and optionally add your company website and physical address, both of which appear in the RFQ email's closing signature - the address also unlocks the two "shipped to you" pricing options on the RFQ itself (see Step 2 above). Company name lets RFQs sign off under a different name than your DIBBS Navigator's account registered company name, if you quote under one - leave it blank to keep using the account's own name. This only affects the RFQ email signature; the "Awarded to" field on Pricing always uses your real account name, since that's what actually goes on the award. Packaging and any labor to charge for it are typed directly into each quote as a lump sum - there is no rate table to configure.