Submit a Proposal
Submit a proposal when you are ready to respond to a client’s opportunity. Your proposal defines the billing schedule and total price for the complete service period, with optional context and supporting PDFs.
This article is for lobbying accounts.
You need Practicing Lobbyist access to submit a proposal. Client accounts review proposals and can accept, reject, or return a counter proposal.
Before you begin
Review the opportunity before you decide on terms. Pay particular attention to:
- The requested scope, issue areas, and jurisdictions.
- The service period and any proposal deadline.
- The client’s target budget and invoicing structure, when provided.
- Any supporting documents attached to the opportunity.
Open the opportunity
- In Civalta, select Opportunities in the main navigation.
- Open the public opportunity—or a private opportunity to which your organization was invited.
- Review the opportunity details, then select Create Proposal.
Submit your proposal
- Confirm the Opportunity service period shown at the top of the dialog.
- Choose a Billing Schedule: Monthly for recurring invoices or Upfront for one payment.
- Enter the Proposed Total (USD). This is the total price for the complete service period—even when the billing schedule is Monthly.
- Optionally add a description of up to 250 characters to explain your approach, assumptions, or payment cadence.
- Optionally select Upload PDF to attach supporting material.
- Review the terms, then select Submit.
Choose a billing schedule, enter the total price for the service period, and add context or a PDF when helpful.
You may propose different commercial terms.
The dialog may begin with the client’s target billing terms, but you can change the billing schedule and total before submitting. The opportunity’s service period does not change.
What happens after you submit
- Your proposal appears in the opportunity’s Submitted Proposals workspace with a Submitted status.
- While the opportunity remains open and the client has not responded, select Edit Proposal to update your terms.
- The client can Accept, Reject, or select Counter Proposal to suggest different terms.
From the client’s proposal workspace, the client can reject, counter, or accept your submitted terms.
Respond to a counter proposal
When the client sends a counter, the proposal status changes to Action Needed. Review the latest service period, total cost, pay structure, description, and attachments, then choose one of these actions:
The client and lobbying firm can continue exchanging counters until one side accepts or rejects the latest terms.
After a proposal is accepted
The proposal status changes to Accepted, and Civalta automatically creates an engagement using the agreed terms. Select Open engagement to continue the work in the engagement workspace.
Acceptance creates the engagement and preserves the agreed proposal terms in the proposal workspace.