How to manage quote revisions: which version is valid

Revisions arise for three reasons: the customer changes the scope, there is haggling over price or discount, or delivery and payment terms are discussed again. Each touches a different part of the quote. A scope change rewrites the line items, haggling changes the amount, and a change of terms rewrites the conditions at the foot of the quote.

Not every change is a revision. If the customer asks for a price for another branch or a separate project, that is a new quote with its own number. A revision is the continuing negotiation of the same job with the same customer. Without this distinction, unrelated jobs pile up under one quote number and it becomes unclear which job a won quote belongs to.

Preparing the first quote is a separate job; the validity period and the basic fields of a quote are the subject of the article on how to prepare a quote. Revision is the order of the changes that happen during that first quote's life.

Under Article 3 of the Turkish Code of Obligations, a person who proposes a contract and sets a time limit for acceptance is bound by the offer until that time runs out. If no time limit is set, Articles 4 and 5 apply: between parties who are present, an offer not accepted at once does not bind, and between parties who are not present it binds until a reply could be expected to arrive. If you send a revision that raises the price while a quote with a stated validity period is still running, a customer who tries to accept the first quote creates a situation that needs a conversation.

So a revised quote carries one sentence saying which version it replaces and that the earlier one is no longer valid. A record showing that the other side has read this, an email or a message, is kept with the quote. This article is not legal advice; ask your legal adviser about the wording of your quotes.

The simplest scheme keeps the quote number fixed and adds a revision mark at the end: the first send is A, then B, C, and so on. The customer and the salesperson talk about the same job with the same number. Words like final, new, or corrected are not used in file names; they lose their meaning by the third revision.

• Two versions stay open at once and the customer orders against the old one.
• The revision is written in the body of an email and the quote document is not updated.
• The price is lowered without saying which line it came off, so the next round of haggling starts from scratch.
• A salesperson gives a discount above their authority, and it is noticed only on the invoice.
• Revisions stay on different salespeople's computers and disappear with whoever leaves the team.

Example scenario: picture a quote from a furniture maker in Kayseri for a hotel. The hotel first reduces the number of rooms, then changes the fabric, and finally discusses the payment term. If each step goes out as a separate email attachment, on the day of the order the production team searches three documents to find which fabric to use. On a quote that moves forward on one record, with the same number and a revision mark, the latest version is found at a glance.

Putting every revision through approval slows sales down; putting none through leaves the margin to the salesperson's bargaining. The practical answer is to tie the approval rule to the type of change. Corrections such as a typo or a delivery address go straight out; a discount, a payment term, or a change of scope goes through a manager. When the rule is written down, the salesperson knows when they can answer the customer at once.

The value of approval shows when you look back later. A record showing in which revision the discount grew on a low-margin job, who approved it, and what the customer gave in return strengthens the salesperson's hand in the next negotiation. If approval stays only in email, that trail scatters; it should be tied to the quote's own record.

A quote is built from a template on the opportunity card: product, quantity, price list, and terms are the template's fields. If approval is needed, the quote goes through an approval step, and once it is sent to the customer that stage is recorded. A revised quote stays on the record together with the previous version; quote and contract sit side by side on the Quotes and Contracts tabs of the same customer card. You can look at the whole record on the Corex360 CRM page; the article on quote follow-up covers what to do when a sent quote goes unanswered.