How to fill the NUPCO bid response file (the Excel you upload)

The NUPCO bid response file is the Excel workbook you download from a tender on the NUPCO supplier portal, fill for the items you are bidding on, and upload back. NUPCO pre-fills the item columns; you fill the price, VAT, Change Option and product columns, and the file must keep its original structure.

Updated 11 September 2026Published 11 September 2026ProcDuck

A NUPCO bid is, at its core, two files: the bid response file (Excel) carrying your prices and product data, and the attachments file (tab-delimited text) tying each item to its PDF files. This page explains the first column by column, then the second, then the rules that get a file rejected.

What the bid response file is

Every tender on the NUPCO portal has its own Excel file, downloaded from the tender page. It holds one row per item, columns NUPCO pre-fills (the system document number, item number, material code, description, quantity, unit and medical group) and columns the supplier fills. The file is not a generic template: its document number ties it to the tender, so one tender's file does not serve another, and neither does a file you created yourself.

The columns you fill

The column headers are in English and may be cut at 20 characters (such as MDMA/SFDA Expiry Dat), and their order differs between versions of the file, so go by the header, not the position. Every value is written as text in the format the template itself uses.

Column	What you write
Change Option	`C` on every item you bid on. An item without `C` is invisible to the portal.
Unit Price	Unit price in SAR before VAT, with four decimals as in the template (`12.5000`).
VAT %	`15.00` for taxable items, `0.00` for medicines and medical equipment that qualify for zero-rating under the ZATCA lists.
Trade Name	The product's trade name as the file's own registry spells it where it exists, else your trade name for it.
Manufacturer / Country	Manufacturer and country of origin. Often pre-filled by NUPCO; never blank them.
Is it Medical Product / Is MDMA/SFDA Valid?	`X` if the product is a medical device, then the registration state: authorized with a valid MDMA, or under registration. Non-medical products get `NOT MEDICAL` in the MDMA comments column.
MDMA/SFDA Certificate / SFDA Number / Expiry	The MDMA number, the product's SFDA listing number and the authorization expiry as `DD.MM.YYYY`. For products under registration the expiry stays empty.
Catalog Number	The manufacturer's catalog number. Nothing substitutes for it; if it is missing from your data, complete it before uploading.
MOQ / Item Validity / Package Size / Volume	Minimum order quantity, shelf life (such as `3Y`), package size (such as `100.000 Box`) and volume.
Lead Time	Delivery lead time in days, three digits (`045`).
Official Agent / Temperature / LocalContent Cert / Manfact.Proce.Local%	Whether you are the official agent, the storage-condition code, the local-content certificate reference (or `NA`), and the local manufacturing share. Copy the convention NUPCO accepted in your previous bids.

Rules the file is not accepted without

Fill the original file in place. Do not copy the columns into a new workbook, add sheets or columns, rename or reorder columns, or delete rows.
Never blank what NUPCO filled. Manufacturer, country, MDMA certificate, SFDA number and package size may be pre-filled; if they differ from your data, keep them and explain in the quotation.
Every bid item carries a `C` and a price. A price without C is not read, and a C without a price is an incomplete offer.
The material code is the row's identity. If one code appears on more than one row, review each row by hand; do not assume they are the same product.
Values are text in the template's format. Four decimals for a price, two for a percentage, DD.MM.YYYY for a date, three digits for the lead time.
Save the file in its own format (`.xlsx`) from Excel. A file rebuilt by another program can look fine and import as zero items, because SAP reads the workbook's shared-string table, not what appears on screen.

Warning:"It opens fine in Excel" proves nothing about NUPCO's reader. The only test is the item count the portal shows after the upload: if it is zero or lower than the number of items you priced, the file was not read in full, whatever it looks like.

The second file: the attachments list and the PDFs

Beside the bid file NUPCO asks for an attachments list: a tab-delimited text file (.txt) with a header row, a head line for the bid, and one line per item naming the tender response number and the PDF file names in four columns: Catalog, SFDA Certificates, MDMA Annex and Quotation. The PDFs are uploaded beside the list under exactly those names. Short names in Latin letters and digits only avoid most errors, and one quotation per item matches more easily than one for the whole tender.

How ProcDuck fills both files

In ProcDuck you price the tender's items on its page and link each item to a product from your catalog carrying the trade name, manufacturer, country, SFDA numbers, catalog number and lead time. Then you upload the bid file you downloaded from the portal, and ProcDuck fills it cell by cell inside the original file, for the bid items only, in the formats SAP expects, and hands it back with a report of every incomplete or duplicated item. One more click generates the attachments list and the PDFs it cites, under their cited names, as one ZIP ready to upload. Details in the tender page of the manual.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use my own Excel file instead of NUPCO's?

No. The file you download from the tender carries the system document number and the column structure SAP reads; any other file is rejected or imports empty.

What does Change Option C mean in the NUPCO file?

A flag telling the system that this row carries an offer. Write C on every item you bid on and only those; the rest stay without it and are not read.

Which VAT rate do I enter for medicines?

Qualifying medicines and medical equipment are zero-rated in Saudi Arabia, so enter 0.00; other items take 15.00. Check each product's classification against the ZATCA lists.

Why did my file show zero items after uploading?

Either the Change Option column is empty, or the file was rebuilt by a program that does not write values the way SAP reads them. Fill the tender's original file in place from Excel and write C on every bid item.

What are the MDMA annex and the SFDA certificates required?

The Medical Device Marketing Authorization (MDMA) issued by the SFDA, or proof that the product is under registration, as a PDF per item. The file name goes in both the SFDA Certificates and the MDMA Annex columns of the attachments list.