PLATFORM · CAPABILITY
Needs and offers
EveryonePlans includes a board where a need is posted and people respond to it — which serves as a request-for-quote process for a business, a service-request queue for members, a volunteer sign-up for a group, or a wishlist for a household, depending on who is using it.
01THE PROBLEM
Why this is worth having
Matching a need to whoever can meet it is normally done by broadcast: an email to everybody, a message in a group chat, a call round. The responses arrive in different places, nobody can see what has already been offered, and the person coordinating becomes the bottleneck.
02HOW IT WORKS
The mechanism
- A need is a record with what, when and any constraints attached — not a message that scrolls away.
- Responses attach to the need, so everybody involved can see what has already been offered.
- Connecting with a responder is a deliberate step, not an automatic match — you see what came in, then choose. A need can also be withdrawn, which closes it rather than leaving it open forever.
- It is permissioned, so a need can be visible to the whole organization, to one group, or to an external network.
- The same surface reads as an RFQ, a service request, a volunteer ask or a wishlist depending on the words the organization uses — the terminology follows the mode.
02bWITHOUT SIGNING IN
What it looks like.
SC-needs-and-offers · TO BE SUPPLIEDSTILL · 16:9
Needs and offers — screenshot
REAL SCREEN CAPTURE, NOT GENERATED. The needs board with three open needs and one showing two responses attached. Capture at 1600x900 with believable seeded data — real-looking names, dates within the next two weeks, non-round money amounts — and blur anything identifying a real customer.
DROP AT
/art/screens/needs-and-offers.png03WORKED EXAMPLE
Somebody has to bring the tables
- The need is posted: eight trestle tables, the 14th, at the hall.
- Two people respond, one with four and one with six.
- The coordinator accepts one, and it stops being an open need.
- Nobody had to hold the state of it in a group chat.
04QUESTIONS
About needs and offers
Can members request things from the organization?
Yes — a member can post a need and whoever handles that kind of request picks it up, with the whole exchange kept against the record. It works the same way for a business collecting quotes from suppliers.
05READ NEXT
Workflows and rulesWhen this happens, do that — enrolment, waiting, branching, human approval steps. Automation a person can read back a month later.Messaging and notificationsEmail and SMS that come from your brand, are logged against the record, and can be reviewed before they go out.Contacts and pipelineLeads, customers, organizations and the relationships between them — with the history kept against the record rather than in somebody’s inbox.
TRY IT
Reading about it only gets you so far.
Create an account and use it. It costs nothing to look, and you will learn more in twenty minutes of clicking than in any amount of this page.