How long should a quote be valid for?
Thirty days is the usual validity for a trade quote in the UK, and the right default if you have no reason to pick another. Go shorter — seven or fourteen days — when a big part of the price is a material whose cost is moving; go longer only for a customer who has already decided and is waiting on something else. Whatever the number, write the date on the quote: a quote with no expiry is an open offer at today’s prices for as long as the customer likes.
Why a quote needs an expiry at all
A quote is a fixed price for a defined job (the quote vs estimate guide covers what that means). Fixed against what, though? Against the day you priced it. The cable, the boiler, the timber, your own availability — all of those move, and a customer who comes back in November to accept a price you gave in May is asking you to absorb six months of movement. The valid-until date is what makes the offer time-limited, so that after it passes you can re-quote without an argument about whether you are “going back on your word”.
It also does a quieter job: it gives the customer a reason to decide. A quote that stands forever is easy to leave in the drawer. One that says “valid until 10 October” gets an answer before 10 October, more often than not.
Thirty days: the default, and why
Thirty days is long enough for a homeowner to get the other two quotes they were always going to get, talk it over, and come back — and short enough that material prices and your diary are still roughly where they were. It is the figure most trades use, which means customers expect it; a quote that stands for ninety days looks either very confident or slightly careless, and a quote valid for three days looks like pressure.
When to go shorter
- A large material with a moving price. A boiler, a consumer unit, a kitchen's worth of copper, structural steel. If the merchant's price could change before the customer decides, quote for seven or fourteen days and say why on the document — “Boiler price held for 14 days” reads as honest, not pushy.
- A supplier quote you are passing on. If your own price depends on a supplier's quote that expires on a date, your quote cannot outlive it.
- A diary that fills fast. If accepting the quote also books a start date, and your next free slot is what the price assumes, a long validity lets a customer accept into a diary that no longer has room.
When to go longer
Rarely, and only on purpose. A customer waiting on a mortgage release, a landlord waiting for a tenancy to end, a planning decision — those are reasons to write sixty or ninety days on a specific quote, with the reason in the notes so you remember why when it comes back. Even then, consider quoting for thirty days and saying in the covering message that you will happily re-confirm the price when they are ready. That keeps the option to re-price without making the customer feel the ground has moved.
What to do when a quote expires
Re-quote, do not just re-send. Look at the material lines and your rate, adjust what has changed, issue a new quote number with a new date. Most of the time the price is the same and the customer notices nothing but a fresh date; occasionally it is not, and the new number is the reason you had the date on it in the first place.
What you should not do is quietly honour an expired price because raising it feels awkward. If the boiler has gone up £150 since May, the choice is between an awkward sentence now and £150 of your own money later. The date on the quote is what lets you have the sentence.
How to word it
One line, near the top with the quote number and date, in plain words: “Valid until 10 October 2026.” Not “valid for 30 days” — that makes the customer do arithmetic from a date they have to find — and not “prices subject to change without notice”, which is the kind of small print that makes a quote feel less fixed than it is. Speak to Quote works out the date from the validity period you set once in Business details (thirty days unless you change it) and prints it on every quote it builds, so the line is there without you typing it. The electrician page shows where it sits on the finished document.
Estimates are different
An estimate does not commit you to a price, so an expiry on it is doing less work — but it still helps, because an estimate from last winter is not a useful basis for a conversation this summer. Date it the same way. When the customer is ready, you visit, and the quote you write afterwards gets its own thirty days.