Terms of Service

BidSquirrel is operated by Orcana Ltd, a company registered in England & Wales (company no. 17263330), registered office Beverley Road, Hull, HU6 7JN, United Kingdom ("we", "us", "our"). By creating an account or using BidSquirrel (the "Service") you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

BidSquirrel helps you discover, assess, prepare for and track UK public-sector tenders. We aggregate publicly-available procurement notices from official sources and use AI to match, score and comment on them against the business service line you provide; to produce bidding guidance; and - when you choose - to build a full draft bid response and supporting materials with you, from the evidence you give us (your business profile and the documents and answers you store in your Evidence Vault). You can also store documents and reusable answers in the Evidence Vault and track your own contracts, deadlines and renewals.

This is important, so please read it carefully.

BidSquirrel is a convenience and decision-support tool, not an official source and not a guarantee of coverage. Tender information comes from third-party and public sources (such as Find a Tender, Contracts Finder, Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales and council portals) which we do not control and which can be incomplete, delayed, change without notice, or be temporarily unavailable.

To explain the scope of what we provide: we do not warrant, and (subject to section 11) are not liable for:

• the completeness, accuracy, timeliness or availability of any tender, deadline, value, eligibility requirement or other notice detail;
• any tender, framework or opportunity that is not shown, shown late, mis-categorised, or filtered out by our matching - including any opportunity you would have wanted to bid for;
• any bid you submit late, do not submit, or submit in reliance on information shown in the Service; or
• any contract, revenue or opportunity you do not win or are found ineligible for.

You remain solely responsible for checking each opportunity, its deadline and its requirements against the official notice and contracting authority, and for your own bid decisions. Always treat the official source as authoritative. Nothing in this section affects your statutory rights, including (where you are a consumer) our duty to provide the Service with reasonable care and skill.

Our scoring, regime classification, eligibility checks and bidding guidance are decision support, not legal, financial, procurement or other professional advice. AI output can be incomplete or wrong. Where a decision matters - particularly on eligibility, regulatory regime, or a challenge under the Procurement Act 2023 - you should verify it against the official notice and take qualified professional advice. Subject to section 11, we are not liable for decisions you make in reliance on the Service.

AI-drafted bids. Where you use the bid build, the Service produces a draftfrom the evidence you provide and flags anything it cannot evidence for you to confirm. It is drafted with you, not submitted for you: you are responsible for reviewing it, confirming every flagged item, checking that every statement is accurate and properly evidenced, ensuring it truthfully represents your business and meets the tender's requirements, and for the bid you ultimately submit. We do not warrant that any draft is accurate, complete, compliant or successful, and an AI draft is never a substitute for your own judgement or, where it matters, professional advice.

You must be 18 or over. BidSquirrelis designed for use in connection with a trade or business. Some customers (for example sole traders) may still be "consumers" in law, and where that is the case your statutory consumer rights apply and are not affected by these Terms. You are responsible for keeping your login secure and for activity under your account, and for providing accurate service-line information - the quality of matching depends on it.

• BidSquirrel has a free tier (browse and see your top matches scored, no payment card) and a paid Pro plan, billed via Stripe at the price shown at sign-up (currently £49.99/month or £479.90/year), inclusive of any applicable taxes. A valid payment card is required only to move onto (or stay on) Pro.
• Adding your business starts a free Pro trial (currently 30 days). No payment card is required to start the trial. Because we hold no card during the trial you are never auto-charged: to continue on Pro after it ends you add a card and are then billed at the standard price; if you do nothing you simply keep the free tier. The trial length and the price thereafter are shown before you start, and the free trial is limited to first-time customers (one per customer).
• Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each period (monthly or annually) at the then-current price, until cancelled. We will tell you the renewal date and amount, and you can cancel any time from your billing settings; access continues until the end of the period already paid for.
• We may change the price, but only with at least 30 days' notice before it takes effect, and the change applies from your next renewal - you can cancel before then if you don't accept it.
• Your subscription includes a monthly allowance of AI credits for the AI features (such as ITT analysis, bid scoring and the bid build). If you need more in a given month you can buy optional top-up credit packs (currently £9.99 each). The monthly allowance is for use within that period, and credits that have been used are non-refundable; top-up packs are one-off purchases. We may adjust allowances or per-action credit costs with reasonable notice.

If you are a consumer, you normally have a 14-day "cooling-off" right to cancel a distance contract for a refund, under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013.

Because the Service is digital and you get immediate access when your subscription begins, when you start you will be asked to expressly request that we begin straight away and to acknowledge that you lose the 14-day right to cancel for a refund of the part of the service already provided once it has started. You can still cancel at any time to stop future renewals (see section 6); access continues until the end of the period already paid for.

To cancel, use the cancellation option in your billing settings, or email hello@bidsquirrel.co.uk. Except where the law requires otherwise (including your statutory rights), fees already paid for a period of access are non-refundable and we do not provide partial refunds for unused time.

If you are a consumer, you have legal rights that these Terms do not exclude or limit - including that digital services are provided with reasonable care and skill, and digital content is of satisfactory quality, fit for purpose and as described (Consumer Rights Act 2015). For more on your rights, contact your local Citizens Advice.

You may not scrape, resell, redistribute or commercially exploit our data, scores or guidance; attempt to overload, probe or circumvent the Service or its limits; reverse engineer it; share your login; upload content you have no right to share; or use the Service unlawfully. We may suspend or terminate accounts that breach these Terms.

You may upload documents and save answers and other information (for example insurances, accreditations, case studies and standard bid answers) to your Evidence Vault, and provide other business information to the Service. You keep ownership of that content. You confirm that you have the right to upload and use it, that it is accurate, and that it does not infringe anyone else's rights or disclose anything confidential to a third party that you are not entitled to share.

You grant us a limited licence to store and process your content only to provide the Service to you - for example to build bids from your evidence, to match and score tenders, and to produce guidance. We do not sell it, share it for advertising, or use it to train AI models (see our Privacy Policy). You can delete documents, answers and your account at any time. We are not responsible for content you provide, and you remain responsible for its accuracy and for anything you submit to a buyer.

Invitation to Tender (ITT) documents are different.An ITT is the buyer's public tender pack, issued to every bidder on a procurement - it is not your own content. When you add an ITT for a tender, you confirm you are permitted to share it, and you agree we may keep its extracted text as a shared reference for that tender so other bidders do not have to re-upload the same document. This shared reference is used only to power the tools and is never used to train AI models. We validate that an added ITT relates to the tender before it is shared, and we will remove a shared ITT reference on a valid request from the buyer or a rights-holder. Your own bid answers, drafts and Evidence Vault are never shared.

The Service, including our software, matching, scoring and guidance output and our branding, belongs to Orcana Ltdand is protected by intellectual-property law. We grant you a personal, non-transferable, revocable licence to use the Service and its output for your own business's bidding activity for as long as your subscription lasts. The underlying public tender data remains the property of its original sources and is used under the licences set out in the next section.

The tender, award and buyer information we surface is drawn from official UK public-sector sources - including Find a Tender, Contracts Finder, Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales and local-authority procurement portals - together with UK Companies House (for business enrichment). This public sector information is licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0, and our use and onward display of it is made under, and subject to, that licence.

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Distance and coverage calculations use UK postcode data via postcodes.io, which in turn contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right, Royal Mail data © Royal Mail copyright and database right, and National Statistics data © Crown copyright and database right. We are not affiliated with, or endorsed by, any of these sources, and they do not warrant the data we redistribute.

We aim for reliable service but provide it "as is" and "as available", without warranty of uninterrupted or error-free operation or complete coverage. We may change, suspend or withdraw features, and perform maintenance, from time to time.

Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited - including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, for breach of your statutory (including consumer) rights, or for our data-protection obligations.

Subject to that, and to the fullest extent permitted by law:

• we are not liable for indirect, special or consequential losses, or for loss of profit, revenue, contracts, opportunities, goodwill or anticipated savings - including any bid or contract not won, or any opportunity missed; and
• our total liability to you arising out of or in connection with the Service is limited to the fees you paid to us in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim.

We handle personal data in accordance with our Privacy Policy, which explains what we collect, our lawful bases, who we share it with, international transfers, retention and your rights. Please read it alongside these Terms.

You can stop using the Service and delete your account at any time. We may suspend or end your access if you breach these Terms or to comply with the law. On termination the licence in section 10 ends; sections that by their nature should survive (including 3, 4, 10, 11 and 16) continue to apply.

We may update these Terms from time to time. We will post the updated version here and, for significant changes, notify you by email with reasonable notice; if you are a consumer and don't accept a material change, you may cancel before it takes effect. Continuing to use the Service after a change takes effect means you accept the updated Terms.

The Service links to and relies on third-party sources (official tender portals and others). We don't control those sites and aren't responsible for their content or availability. We are not liable for failure or delay caused by events beyond our reasonable control (for example outages of the public data sources or hosting/payment providers), though this does not affect your payment obligations or your statutory rights.

These Terms, together with our Privacy Policy, are the entire agreement between us about the Service and supersede earlier discussions - though nothing here limits liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation. If any term is found unenforceable, the rest continue to apply. These Terms and any dispute arising from them are governed by the laws of England & Wales and subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of its courts; if you are a consumer in another UK nation, you keep the mandatory protections of your home jurisdiction.

If something's wrong, please tell us first so we can fix it - Orcana Ltd (trading as BidSquirrel), company no. 17263330, registered office Beverley Road, Hull, HU6 7JN, United Kingdom. Contact: hello@bidsquirrel.co.uk.