You sent a quotation five weeks ago. The client has gone quiet. Your costs have moved since then, you are busier than you were, and you are not sure whether that number still stands or whether you are allowed to say it does not. This is a quotation validity problem, and it is easier to solve before you send than after.
The quick answer
Quotation validity is how long you are holding the quoted price open. State it as a date on the quotation itself, not a duration. For most freelance service work in India, 30 days is the sensible default, and shorter than that where your own costs are moving. After the validity date passes, the quote lapses and you are free to requote at a different price without it being a price increase, because there is no longer a live price to increase.
Why an open ended quote costs you money
A quotation with no validity date leaves the number hanging with no agreed end. If a client comes back four months later and says yes, you are in an awkward position: either you honour a number you set under different circumstances, or you explain why your price went up, which sounds like opportunism even when it is arithmetic.
Setting a validity date moves that conversation from personal to procedural. "That quote lapsed on 30 September, so here is a fresh one" is a neutral sentence. "My rates have gone up since then" is a negotiation you did not need to have.
It also does something subtler. A date is a mild, non pushy reason for the client to decide. You are not chasing them. The document has a deadline in it, and the deadline is doing the asking.
How long should quotation validity be
No law sets the number of days for you, so the window is yours to choose. These are the ones that work in practice:
| Type of work | Suggested validity |
|---|---|
| Standard project work, stable costs | 30 days |
| Work with bought in costs, print, travel, or third party licences | 7 to 15 days |
| Work priced against a rate you expect to raise | 15 days |
Shorter than 7 days reads as pressure and clients push back on it. Longer than 45 days and you are effectively writing a blank cheque against your own future availability.
If your quote includes anything you buy from someone else, tie your validity to theirs. If a printer has quoted you a rate good for ten days, your quotation cannot responsibly stay open for thirty.
Write it as a date, not a duration
"Valid for 30 days" requires the reader to know when you sent it, find that date, and do arithmetic. Nobody does the arithmetic. They guess, and they guess in their favour.
Write "Valid until 5 October 2026". One line, no ambiguity, and it survives being forwarded to a third person who was not in the original thread.
Put it near the total, not buried in terms at the bottom. The two numbers a client reads are the amount and the date, and they should be close enough to read together.
What to say when it expires
Three situations, three scripts.
They come back inside the window. Nothing to do. Honour it, convert it to an invoice, get started.
They come back a little after the window. If your costs have not moved and you want the job, honour it anyway and say so explicitly: "That quote lapsed on the 5th, but the pricing still works for me, so let us go ahead on the same numbers." You get the goodwill of a concession that costs you nothing, and you have reinforced that the date was real.
They come back well after, or your costs moved. Requote. Keep it short and unapologetic:
"Thanks for coming back. That quotation was valid until 5 October so it has lapsed. Here is a current one for the same scope. The total has moved to ₹94,000, mainly because the print costs I had quoted against have changed."
Give one reason. Do not give four, because four reasons sounds like justification and invites negotiation on each.
Following up before it expires
The follow up that works is a reminder about the date, not a question about the decision.
Three to four days before the validity date, send one message:
"Hi Meera, just a note that the quotation for the brand identity work is valid until Monday the 5th. Happy to extend it if you need more time, just let me know."
That message does three things. It reminds them a decision is pending, it does not ask them to justify the delay, and the offer to extend removes any sense that you are squeezing them. Roughly half the time, the reply is either a yes or a real reason for the hold up, and both are more useful than silence.
If they ask for an extension, give it and reissue the quote with a new validity date. An extended quotation is a live quotation. A verbally extended one that still says 5 October on the PDF is a document that contradicts itself.
Set a validity date on the quote, extend it in one edit when the client asks, and turn the accepted version into an invoice without retyping the line items.Try Riffit freeWhen the scope changes instead of the date
Sometimes the client does not go quiet. They come back inside the window asking for a slightly different thing. That is not an extension, it is a new version.
Do not edit the original and resend it with the same number. Issue a revised quotation, keep the same quotation number with a version marker, and let the original stand as the record of what was originally offered. It matters more often than you expect: six months into a project, "what did we actually agree" is answered by the version history, not by memory. The mechanics of that are in how to send a revised quotation.
The validity date resets with the new version. A revision starts the clock again.
What goes on the quotation besides the date
Validity is one field on a document that needs several. The full structure, with sample line items, is in quotation format for Indian freelancers, and there is a worked vertical example in the interior design quotation format if you want to see how it looks with real scope lines.
The short version: your details, client details, quotation number, issue date, validity date, itemised scope with prices, total in rupees, payment terms, and what happens next if they accept.
Making acceptance easy
The most common reason a quotation expires is not rejection. It is that saying yes required effort: printing, signing, scanning, or writing an email that felt like it needed composing.
Reduce that to a tap. With Riffit you build the quotation on the dashboard or in WhatsApp and send the client a link. They open it and accept in one tap, with no OTP and no account to create, or they use the same screen to request changes in plain text. If you need to push the validity date out, you change the date and the live link updates. When they accept, that quotation converts into an invoice carrying the same line items, so you are not retyping a scope you already wrote twice. Quotations are unlimited on both the free and Pro plans; sending the quote link over WhatsApp rather than email is a Pro feature at ₹249 a month, or ₹199 a month billed annually.
FAQ
No fixed number of days is set anywhere, so the period is whatever date you print on the document. Thirty days is the usual default for service work, and shorter where your own costs are moving. A quotation with no validity date does not stay open forever, but neither of you can say when it stopped, and that ambiguity is the reason to print a date.