# Getting started with RFP Responses

**Category:** [RFP Responses](https://help.totalctrl.app/hc/totalctrl/totalctrl-help-center/en-US/categories/rfp-responses-1)
**Updated:** 2026-10-04

## What it is for

Answering the long questionnaires that arrive with a deal — an RFP, an RFI, a security questionnaire, a due-diligence pack. It keeps the questions, who owes which answer, what was said last time, and it writes the finished answers back into the buyer's own file.
## The shape of it

- A **pursuit** is the deal — the customer, the dates, who owns it.
- A pursuit holds one or more **responses**: one per document the buyer sent.
- A response holds the **questions** pulled out of that document.

Most deals are one pursuit and one response. A pursuit takes several when a buyer sends a commercial questionnaire and a security one, and you want them tracked together.
## Four steps

- Create the pursuit and add the buyer's document.
- Check the columns we found, then **Confirm** the questions.
- Assign them, draft them, review them.
- Export — back into the buyer's own file wherever possible.

## Two screens per response, on purpose

**Manage questions** owns the documents and the import. **Answering** is where the work happens. They are separate because they are different jobs done by different people — the person importing a spreadsheet is rarely the engineer answering question 47.

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## Related Articles

- [Reminders and daily reports](https://help.totalctrl.app/en-US/articles/rfp-reminders)
- [Adding a questionnaire](https://help.totalctrl.app/en-US/articles/rfp-importing)
- [Answering questions](https://help.totalctrl.app/en-US/articles/rfp-answering)
- [Exporting a finished response](https://help.totalctrl.app/en-US/articles/rfp-export-1)
- [Working with people outside your team](https://help.totalctrl.app/en-US/articles/rfp-guests)

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