Part of The Manufacturer's Complete Guide to Selling Automotive Products to US Retail, the operator's playbook covering retailer landscape, line review, ACES/PIES, EDI, slotting, packaging, and launch sequence.
The bid sheet is the only part of your line review a buyer can sort and compare line by line against every competitor. Fill it out exactly as issued, in the units requested, with no blank cells. Most rejected submissions fail on format, not on price.
What a bid sheet actually is and why it outranks your deck
A bid sheet, also called a cost template, item template, or line review workbook, is the standardized spreadsheet a retailer issues to every vendor competing in a category review. It collects item identity, cost, pack configuration, dimensions, and program terms in fixed columns.
The fixed columns are the whole point. Your deck gets read once, in a room, by people who already liked you enough to schedule the meeting. Your bid sheet gets pasted into a master workbook next to every other submission in the category and then sorted by delivered cost, by gross margin, by cube, and by whatever else the category team is grading on that cycle.
The Auto SKUS Group has completed these templates across every major automotive retailer, and the pattern holds everywhere: the buyer rarely opens your file directly. An analyst consolidates. If your file breaks the consolidation, your items do not appear in the comparison, and an item that does not appear in the comparison cannot win. The full submission sequence sits in The Manufacturer's Complete Guide to Selling Automotive Products to US Retail.
The fields that quietly disqualify you
UPC and GTIN. Excel converts a twelve digit number to 8.85E+11 the moment the cell is formatted as a number. Format the column as text before you paste. A dropped leading zero is the single most common reason a submission bounces back, and it is invisible to you because your own file looks correct on screen.
Pack configuration. Inner pack, master case, pallet Ti and Hi, and cases per pallet have to reconcile with each other and with your dimensions. If your master case is 12 units and your stated pallet quantity is 170, an analyst catches it in a formula. Reconcile the arithmetic yourself first.
Dimensions and weight. These have to match what your distribution center actually ships, not what the engineering drawing says. Space planning builds the shelf set from these numbers and transportation prices the freight from them.
Cost basis. Delivered versus FOB origin is not a detail. A vendor quoting FOB origin into a delivered column looks 4 to 7 percent cheaper than reality and gets repriced in front of the same team deciding whether to trust anything else you submitted.
Effective dates. Leave the cost open ended and you have agreed to hold it indefinitely. State a firm period, typically 12 months from first ship, and name the commodity or freight index that would trigger a review.
Pricing the sheet when you do not control the rounding
You enter cost. The retailer enters retail. What happens in between is a margin target you usually cannot see.
Work it backward. If the category runs a 42 percent gross margin target and you submit a delivered cost of $3.62, the sheet prices to $6.24. No automotive buyer puts $6.24 on a shelf. They either round to $6.49, which makes you the expensive item in a price sensitive set, or they come back and ask for $3.47 so the item lands at $5.99. Either way that conversation happens without you in the room.
So do the math before you submit and choose the price point deliberately. Submit the cost that lands on a real shelf price at the retailer's stated margin. If you cannot get there, say so in the notes column and name the volume that would change the answer. A cost that arrives already reconciled to a price point signals that you understand how the category is actually managed.
What goes alongside the sheet
Three things, and nothing else.
- A short note listing every assumption behind your cost: freight basis, order minimum, payment terms, and the volume tier the cost assumes.
- A change log if you are resubmitting, stating which cells moved and why. Analysts compare versions. Make it easy or make it suspicious.
- A clean spec page per SKU that matches the workbook exactly.
Do not send a reformatted version of the template. Do not add columns, merge cells, hide rows, or drop a logo into row 1. Every one of those breaks a consolidation macro. If a field genuinely does not apply, write NA rather than leaving the cell blank, because a blank cell is indistinguishable from an oversight.
The check before you hit send
Open the file on a different machine than the one you built it on and read it cold. Confirm every UPC displays in full. Confirm cost, pack, and dimensions reconcile across tabs. Confirm the file name follows whatever convention the retailer specified, because a file named final_v4_REVISED.xlsx sorts badly in an inbox holding 60 submissions. Confirm you submitted before the deadline hour in the retailer's time zone, not yours.
Then assume the sheet is the only thing that survives the meeting, because for most of the people who will decide your item, it is. Manufacturers preparing a first submission will find the rest of the sequence in the manufacturer hub.
What is a line review bid sheet?
A bid sheet is the standardized cost and item template a retailer issues to every vendor in a category review. It captures UPC, pack configuration, dimensions, cost, and terms in fixed columns so the category team can compare every submission inside one workbook.
Why do bid sheets get rejected?
Most rejections are format failures, not price failures. Common causes are UPCs converted to scientific notation, blank cells, added or renamed columns, pack and pallet math that does not reconcile, and cost quoted on a different basis than the column requested.
Should I quote delivered cost or FOB origin?
Quote the basis the column specifies. Mixing them makes you look cheaper than you are and gets corrected publicly in front of the decision makers. If the template is ambiguous, ask before submitting and state your basis in the notes column.
How long should I hold a quoted cost?
Twelve months from first ship is a common standard in automotive retail. Name the period explicitly and identify the resin, metal, or freight index that would justify a review, rather than leaving the cost open ended.
Can I send my own version of the template?
No. Retailers consolidate submissions using formulas built around the exact file they issued. Any structural change risks dropping your items from the comparison entirely. Put commentary in a separate note, never inside the workbook.
We represent automotive manufacturers in line reviews at the retailers that matter.
The Auto SKUS Group has driven hundreds of line review wins at Walmart, AutoZone, O'Reilly, and Advance. If you're preparing a pitch or need a partner who has been in the room, let's talk.
Talk to Us About Representation →