Tender software for Australian trades and service businesses

You only show up when the hard work's done.

Blisters reads the council's tender, pulls out every requirement, and writes the first draft in the council's own templates — from what's public about your business and what you've told us. You check it, fill the gaps it flags, put your price in and lodge it. Government work without most of the government paperwork.

See how it works Download a sample bid

$149 buys the finished pack for one tender. Plans from $199 a month if you want more. No demo, no sales call, no follow-up phone calls, nothing extra at the end.

Plumbing & Drainage Maintenance — Springfield ShireExample · fictional council

Example compliance matrix: status, requirement, and where it comes from in the tender
Status	Requirement	Source
Ready	Public liability $20mCertificate on file, $20m, current to Mar 2027 — checked against clause 4.3	Part 2 · 4.3 · p17
Your review	Safety management systemDrafted from your safety plan, 31 items. Read it before it goes anywhere.	Sched 3 · p41
Needs you	Two referees, similar contractsGot one. Need a second — who else do you do maintenance for?	Part 3 · 6.1 · p22
Missing	Pricing scheduleYour numbers, never ours. The council's spreadsheet, waiting for your rates.	Sched 4 · xlsx
Heads up	Local supplier preferenceYour depot's outside the shire, so no local preference. You can still bid — this council applies a 10% / $10k price tolerance instead (their policy, p9).	Part 1 · 2.8 · p9

Green = checked. Amber = drafted or needs you. Red = missing. Every line cites the clause.Static preview

Who the hell are Blisters?

Fair question. Here's the short version.

If you're reading this, chances are Ben emailed you about a tender that suits your business — and we'd already made a start on it. That's the whole idea. If you got here another way — a mate, an ad, your own tender in hand — the bottom of this page is for you.

FIND

We find the work

We read council and government tenders across Australia — the $50k to $500k jobs that are big enough to matter and small enough that nobody's got a bid team for them. Then we work out which businesses actually fit each one — the trade, the patch, the size of job. Not who's got the shiniest brochure. Who can do the work.

START

We start the draft

Every requirement pulled out and traced back to the page it came from — all forty pages of shiny-bum prose, read so you don't have to. First-draft answers written from what's public about your business (your website, your licences, your ABN record) — every fact shows where it came from, and anything we've assumed is marked for you to confirm or correct. The response schedule in the council's own template, not a generic PDF.

SUBMIT

You finish it and submit it

Your price, your signature, your login on the council's portal. Blisters drafts; you submit. We never lodge a bid on your behalf and we never speak to the buyer — that's your name on the front page.

Two paddles. Same wave.

Fifteen hours of your evenings, or under an hour.

The same tender, two ways. The grey line counts what's in the pack — pages, questions, referees, mandatories, rates — at a stated minutes-per-item, so it's an estimate you can argue with, not a number we made up. Your side assumes a first submission with the quick questions answered; getting your prices together and chasing a referee are on you either way.

Why we exist

A great tender can lose before anyone reads it.

Wollongong City Council received six tenders to replace a community centre roof. Four were found non-conforming — the mandatory returnable schedules weren't completed or returned — and never reached the assessment panel. Six bids written; two evaluated. Council's report, April 2021.

It isn't rare. In four council reports we can link you to, 7 of 18 bids were knocked out before scoring — every one for something fixable before lodging — and MidCoast once set aside 9 of 17. That's the whole reason Blisters exists: every mandatory item is a light, and nothing goes out red.

Read the evidence — councils, reports, numbers

Wollongong, six bidders. Four set aside before scoring.

HOW IT WORKS

One sitting. Under an hour of yours.

Open the invitation, check the lights, fill the gaps, put your price in, download the pack, lodge it on the council's portal. No demo, no waiting on us. See the flow

THE VAULT

Tenders, quotes, the lot.

Everything worth knowing about your business, saved once — licences, insurances, past jobs, the people. Next Tuesday a strata manager asks for a proposal for a block of units: it's the same vault, drafted in an afternoon, with your credentials already in it. How it gets easier

PRICING

$149 first. From $199 a month.

$149 is one tender, start to finished pack — you pay before you download, nothing before that. Subscribe only if you want the next ones. Unlimited users, no success fees, cancel any month. Prices in AUD, inc GST. See the plans

About Ben

The email comes from a person. This one.

Twenty-odd years answering council and government tenders as the sales bloke — the one they land on at 4pm on a Friday — then a few small businesses of his own. Blisters is the thing he wished existed. The whole story, stop bat and all.

Glossary

Blister, shiny bum, sensor light — where the name comes from, and the tender-speak decoded. The glossary

So what do I do now?

Depends who you are.

GOT OUR EMAIL

Open the link in it.

That's your workspace, already started. No account to create — the link is the login. Lost it? Sign in with your email and we'll send a fresh one.

Open my workspace

ALREADY A CUSTOMER

Sign in.

Your jobs, your vault, and every tender in your patch since you joined.

JUST LOOKING

Have a read first.

Download a finished sample bid and see the flow. Want an invitation for the next tender that fits your business? Tell us your trade and your patch.

Download the sample bid