How To Budget When You Lack Firm Project Dates
Do project dates matter when getting bids from suppliers? They do. Because supplier availability (or lack thereof) can affect your costs. Here's how it works:
When you lack firm project dates when requesting bids from suppliers, you can't count on those costs being useful. If the supplier with the lowest cost is not available when you decide on dates, you obviously won't be able to use that vendor. That means you may have no choice but to use a more expensive supplier.
And since costs can vary between suppliers from hundreds -- even thousands -- of dollars, it can be a mistake to base your costs on the lowest bid. Instead, either base your costs on the highest bid (that way, when you do secure dates, you have it in the budget to use any available supplier), or be flexible with your dates to fit the cheaper supplier's availability.
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