Quotation Validity

Quotation validity is the period during which a quoted price is guaranteed. Once a quote is issued, the validity period defines how long the customer can accept it at the stated price before the supplier has the right to revise or withdraw the offer. Setting a clear validity period on every quote is a standard commercial practice that protects both parties from price changes after the quote is issued.

Why Validity Periods Matter for Project-Based Businesses

Material and labor costs in project-based industries are not fixed. Copper cable prices move with commodity markets. Timber and panel product costs shift with supply chain conditions. Subcontractor day rates change with demand. When a contractor issues a quote without a validity period, they are implicitly guaranteeing prices indefinitely - meaning a customer who accepts six months later can hold the contractor to a price that may now be loss-making.

Standard validity periods vary by industry and job type. For straightforward service jobs with minimal materials, 14 to 30 days is common. For construction projects where material procurement has longer lead times, 60 to 90 days is typical. The longer the project or the more materials-intensive the job, the shorter the validity window should be - because exposure to price movement increases with time.

What Happens When a Quote Expires

An expired quote is not automatically re-priced. Most suppliers will honor a recently expired quote if market conditions have not changed significantly - but that is a commercial decision, not an obligation. When costs have moved, re-quoting gives the supplier the chance to correct pricing before a loss-making order is placed.

The re-quoting process should be straightforward: check current supplier prices against the original BOM, recalculate if any lines have moved, issue a revised quote with a new validity date, and notify the customer of any price changes with a brief explanation. A transparent note - "material costs for cable have increased 8% since the original quote" - is easier for customers to accept than a revised number with no explanation.

Where quote expiry is not actively tracked, businesses run two risks. The first is accepting an order on an expired quote without checking whether prices still hold, building in a margin loss before the job starts. The second is issuing a quote that sits with a customer for months and being unable to re-price it because the validity period was never stated. Both are avoidable with a simple system: every quote carries a validity date, and a reminder fires when that date approaches.

Zigaflow's quote management includes versioning so that if a quote needs to be re-issued after expiry, the original version is preserved and the revised quote is sent as a new version. That creates a clear record of what was quoted when and at what price.