The expensive mistake in bidding is rarely missing a solicitation. It is finding one, reading it carefully, and spending a week drafting against it — while the closing date moves, an amendment changes the requirement, or the attachments you were waiting for go up on a notice nobody reopened.
None of that is negligence. Public notices change after they are posted, often more than once, and the change is published in the same place as the original: on the notice you have already read and have no reason to open again.
So every notice on Offra now carries a record of what has changed since it was posted, and anyone can ask to be told about the next change without paying for anything.
What gets recorded
Offra checks its sources on a regular cycle and compares each open notice with what it held before. When something a bidder would act on has moved, it goes on the notice's timeline:
- The closing date or the questions deadline moved — and in which direction. An extension and a date brought forward are different news, and the timeline says which.
- The notice changed type, most usefully a Sources Sought that became a solicitation.
- The title changed.
- The notice was amended, where the source marks its amendments.
- More attachments were posted, where the source publishes attachments at all.
- It stopped being listed at least a week before its closing date — and, if it comes back, that it did.
This runs across the federal, state and city sources Offra carries. The same timeline appears on the public notice page and on the tender file's Changes tab inside the app.
What it deliberately does not claim
A change log has one way to fail that matters more than the others. If it reports our own data improving as though a buyer had changed something, it teaches you to ignore it — and then it is ignored on the day a deadline really moves. Most of what the log leaves out, it leaves out for that reason.
The dates are when Offra spotted the change, not when the buyer made it. A regular check can trail the buyer by up to a day, which is why every entry says "spotted". The official notice is authoritative, and the timeline points you back to it rather than standing in for it.
A field filling in for the first time is not a change. Sources publish some details days after a notice first appears, and a value arriving where there was none is our record catching up, not the buyer revising anything. The same goes for a shift that hits a whole feed at once, which is a change in how a source publishes rather than a decision any buyer made. Edits to descriptions are not compared at all. Where a source publishes the buyer's own addendum text, it stays on its own tab, in the buyer's words.
"No longer listed" is an inference, and is treated as one. A notice leaving a board before its closing date may have been cancelled or awarded early. The buyer has not said which, or that anything happened at all, so the entry stays on the timeline with a prompt to check the official notice, and it is never sent to anyone as an alert. We would rather you check than act on a guess made on your behalf.
Being told is free
On any open notice at /tenders, Watch this notice for changes creates a free account that is already watching it. There is no card, and nothing is sent before the account is activated.
From then on, an email arrives when a watched notice's closing date or questions deadline moves, its type or title changes, it is amended, or attachments are posted. Changes are grouped into one message per workspace per run rather than one per notice, so a firm watching a dozen notices does not get a dozen emails. The alert has its own one-click unsubscribe, separate from any saved-search digest.
A free account watches up to 10 notices. Paid plans watch 200, and on a paid plan every notice you have saved is watched automatically without counting against that number — nobody should have to watch what they have already said they care about. A notice you start a bid file on is followed through that bid file.
One thing to know before relying on it: a watch hears about changes spotted after it was created. Earlier changes are not re-sent, but they are on the timeline, and that is worth a glance on the day you start watching.
Where the paid line sits
Knowing that a notice changed is a fact about the notice, and facts about public notices are free on Offra. Knowing what the change does to your bid is different work. When you add an amendment to a submission you are already preparing, Offra reads it together with the rest of the package, works out which dates are actually in effect, and keeps the replaced ones visible and struck through so nobody works to the old deadline. That part needs your bid, and it is the product.
The free half is enough to stop the week of drafting against a package that already moved. It is one click from any open notice.
Related reading: what an addendum actually changes in your estimate and what the free tender portal shows, and what it does not.
