A quote without an expiry date is a liability. The client can come back three months later, accept your price, and expect you to honor it — regardless of what’s changed on your end. An expiration date solves that problem before it starts.
Adding an expiry date to your quotes is one of the simplest things you can do to protect your business and move clients toward faster decisions. Here’s how to do it right.
Why quote expiry matters
There are three reasons to include an expiry date on every quote:
1. Your costs can change. Subcontractor rates, software costs, and your own rates don’t stay fixed. If a client accepts a quote you wrote eight months ago at last year’s prices, you’re eating the difference.
2. Your availability changes. You quoted a project starting in April. If the client accepts in August, you may not have availability. An expiry date means you’re not locked into a delivery timeline that no longer works.
3. It creates a decision deadline. Clients with no deadline have no urgency. A 30-day expiry date gives them a concrete reason to decide within the month rather than leaving the quote open indefinitely. This is a legitimate business reason, not a pressure tactic.
What expiry period to use
The right validity period depends on your service type:
14 days: Appropriate for highly custom work where scoping is intensive, projects involving subcontractors whose rates can change, or rush work where your availability is explicitly time-limited.
30 days: The standard for most freelance services — design, development, copywriting, consulting. Long enough for the client to get internal approval. Short enough to protect you from major changes.
60 days: Reasonable for commodity services with stable costs and no subcontractors, or for clients who are known to have long internal approval processes (large companies with procurement departments).
When in doubt, use 30 days.
How to word the expiry clause
Keep the language simple and professional. There are two places to put it: in the quote header and in the terms section.
In the header (brief):
Quote valid through [date]
Or:
This quote expires on [date]
In the terms section (more formal):
Pricing is valid for 30 days from the date of issue. After [expiry date], revised pricing may apply. Please contact us to reissue the quote if you need to extend the validity period.
The second version is clearer because it tells the client what to do if they need more time — which prevents the awkward situation of a client trying to accept an expired quote and not knowing what happens next.
Using expiry dates in follow-ups
An expiry date gives your follow-up messages a natural, non-pushy reason to reach out:
“Just a quick note — the quote I sent is valid through [date]. Happy to extend it if you need more time, but wanted to flag it before it expires.”
This is more useful than “just checking in” because it gives the client something concrete to act on. Waco3 lets you set expiry dates on quotes when you build them, so you can reference the exact date in your follow-ups without digging through your files.
What to do when a client accepts an expired quote
If a client comes back after your quote has expired:
- Don’t silently accept the old price if anything has changed.
- Thank them for getting back to you and note that the quote has expired.
- Review whether your availability, costs, or scope understanding has changed.
- Reissue a new quote at the current price. If nothing has changed, the new quote will match the old one — but you’ve protected yourself from having to honor a commitment you made under different circumstances.
Most clients accept this without issue. The ones who push back on an expired quote being reissued at a higher price would have been difficult to work with regardless.
Ready to send stronger proposals?
Build, send, and track proposals in one place so follow-up is easier.
Start your free trial →
