Thanks for explaining. That's not fully explained in the rules, though I imagine it will be soon.
Yeah it does say the highest total contract amount:
Item AX B(1)-2.0
Bids are in format of total contract value. Note that the number of years does not need to be listed until the bid is won. The resulting salary will be the final bid divided by number of years, rounded to the nearest $500k.
The winning bid will be the highest total contract amount. If the bid is less than $20m then contract can be valued in multiples of $500k. If it is $20m or more then it must be in multiples of $1m.
I also summarized it on both Fantrax and here in Transactions for the new guys. Still seems to be an ongoing problem