The customer has the quote, has opened it, and now wants something changed. The quick fix looks obvious: open the file, change the figures, send it again. Do that a few times and you end up with “final”, “final-v2” and “final-v3-REALLY” in the same folder, two prices in the customer's inbox and nobody sure which one was accepted. Search for how to edit a quote after it has been sent and you mostly find software help pages, each describing its own button. What they skip is the part that actually matters: why a sent quote should not be edited in place, which number the new version should carry, and what has to happen to the version the customer is still holding.
The short answer: once a quote has gone out, you don't edit it, you revise it. The quote number stays the one the customer knows, the revision number goes up by one, and the old version is kept but can no longer be accepted. If anyone later asks which version the customer saw, the answer is not in a file name. It is in the record kept against each revision: the document that was actually sent, when it went out, when it was opened and what the answer was.
The customer opened the quote and asked for a change
The scenario in the video is the kind a sales desk sees every week. A kitchen equipment dealer sent a quote a week ago. The customer opened the link, went through the lines and, before accepting, asked for two things: one more fryer and a better price on the work tables. So the fryers go from two to three, and the work tables get a 10% discount.
The change itself is easy. The hard part is making sure both versions end up in the right place afterwards: the customer is holding a PDF and an open link, and you are holding the new price. Every section below is about keeping those two apart. The video shows the revision step by step on screen; this article explains why each step is there.
Watch how it works
Real screens, start to finish.
How to Revise a Sales Quote and Keep Every Version | Smartifie Quote
How to change a quote the customer already has: create a new revision in Smartifie Quote, keep the earlier version, and withdraw the old link.
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Correct it or revise it? It depends on whether the document has left
Not every change needs a revision. You saved the quote, spotted a typo, and nothing has gone anywhere yet: just correct it, nobody needs to know. The line is not drawn by the status label on the quote but by whether a document has left your hands. Was a PDF downloaded, a proforma issued, the lines exported to Excel, a customer link handed out, or that link opened? If none of that happened, the quote goes back to draft and you fix it in place. If any of it happened, the customer may be holding that document, and the change goes into a new revision.
Why isn't the status enough? Because “Sent” sometimes gets clicked by mistake, with nothing actually leaving the building. Revising a quote like that creates a pointless revision 1, and the customer sees a number suggesting there was an earlier version they never received. The test is not what the label says but what the customer might be holding.
Editing a sent quote in place feels harmless because the damage doesn't show up straight away. It shows up months later, when the PDF in the customer's inbox and the record in your system carry the same number and different figures. On that day there is no answer to “which one is right?”, because both claim to be the same document. A revision avoids that by design: the sent version is frozen, and anything new gets a new revision number next to the same quote number.
Why the quote number stays and the revision number goes up
The customer knows your quote by its number. It's what they search their inbox for, what goes into their purchasing record, what they read out when they call you. Answer a change request with a newly numbered quote and the thread breaks: the customer now has two separate quotes and has to work out for themselves which one replaces which. A revision number keeps the thread intact: the number stays, and a revision is added next to it.
The first version is revision 0 and carries no suffix on the document. When the customer asks for changes, “Rev 1” appears next to the number, then “Rev 2” on the next round. The customer can tell at a glance whether they are looking at the original quote or a revision. We don't present this as a standard, just as a habit with a reason behind it: the number the customer knows should not change.
How the number itself is built (prefix, year, counter) is a separate topic: how a quote number is issued.
The new version's date: the trap of copying the old one
The easiest way to prepare a revision is to copy the old quote, and the field people forget most often on that copy is the date. If the negotiation took three weeks and the quote is valid for 30 days, a revision copied with the old date reaches the customer with most of its validity already gone. Let the back-and-forth run a little longer and the new version is out of date the day it is born: the customer says yes to the new price, and the valid-until date printed on it was yesterday.
The right way: the new revision takes today's date and the same validity period. A revision of a quote valid for 30 days is valid for 30 days from today. A quote with no validity date gets a revision with no validity date either; a revision doesn't invent new terms.
The old version is kept, but it must not be acceptable
Opening a revision creates two needs for the old version, and at first sight they pull in opposite directions. The first is to keep it: the old version is the evidence of what was offered to the customer. Delete it or write over it, and in a dispute nobody can answer “what did the first quote say?”. The second is to stop it being accepted: if the old version can still be answered, the customer can accept the old price after the new one has gone out. Usually not out of bad faith, simply because they clicked the first link they found in their inbox.
Both are met like this: the old version is not deleted; it is marked as superseded and becomes read-only. It can no longer be changed, sent or answered, and any links the customer was given are withdrawn at the same moment. “At the same moment” matters: there should be no window between opening the revision and closing the old link in which the old price can still be accepted.
What the customer sees on the old link
In the cloud edition the customer opens the quote from a link and accepts or declines it there. Once a revision has been opened, a customer who clicks the old link doesn't see the quote; they see “The sender has withdrawn this link.” The message is in the quote's language, so a Spanish customer reads it in Spanish. There is no accept button left under the old price; the customer uses the new link or asks you. The desktop edition has no customer link; there the old version is locked read-only, and the document the customer holds is told apart from the new one by the revision suffix next to the number.
“Which version did the customer see?” A file name can't answer it
The question usually comes months later: when the order arrives, when the invoice is being raised, when someone disputes an amount. A file name can't answer it. “final_v2” tells you where the file sits in your folder, not whether it went to the customer, when it went, or whether they opened it. What can answer it is four records kept against each revision:
- The document that was sent. Not a copy printed again today, but the file produced on the day.
- When it was sent, and by whom.
- When it was opened. When the customer opens the link, that lands on that revision's record.
- The answer. Accepted or declined, and on which revision.
The first one is the most often skipped, because people assume “we can always print it again from the system”. A document printed again is not evidence. Since that day the template, the logo, the bank details or a line of the terms may have changed; today's copy may not match what went out, and nobody can show where they differ. The evidence is the file produced on the day, which is why every PDF that is sent should be kept next to the revision it belongs to.
A revision changes more than the price: rate, discount approval, proforma number
Exchange rate. On a quote in a foreign currency, the rate is frozen onto the quote. The new revision carries the previous revision's frozen rate, so every price doesn't quietly drift to a new rate just because the customer asked for one more fryer. Re-pricing at a new rate is possible, but it is a deliberate decision taken in the draft and a change worth telling the customer about. More on freezing the exchange rate onto the quote.
Discount approval. If the customer asked for a better price, the revision raises the discount, and a bigger discount can cross your company's approval threshold. The first version may have gone straight out because it stayed under the limit; the revision can now land with a manager for approval. The threshold applies again to every revision; it isn't skipped because “this quote already went out”. How the threshold works is covered in a quote held for internal approval.
Proforma number. A proforma number belongs to a revision. If a proforma was issued for Rev 0, Rev 1 does not inherit it; if the new revision needs a proforma, it gets a new number. Otherwise the customer's bank ends up filing two different documents under one reference.
Can an accepted quote be revised?
Yes, as long as you know what it does. The customer accepted the quote, then wanted to change a line. The acceptance stays on the record of the revision it was given to: “Rev 0 accepted” is a fact and isn't erased. The new revision starts as a draft and waits for an answer again; this time the customer has to accept Rev 1.
This has a side effect on your reports. Figures like the win rate count only the latest revision of each quote, so that a heavily negotiated quote doesn't look like five separate opportunities. Revise an accepted quote and it moves out of “won” and shows as open until the new revision is answered. That isn't a glitch; it's an accurate picture: the deal is back on the table.
One more limit: once a proforma has been issued against an acceptance, that acceptance can't be taken back. If the order was cancelled, the quote is marked as declined; if the content has to change, a new revision is opened.
We don't go into which price is legally binding; that depends on the country and on your contract with the customer. What this article covers is operational: making sure the old version can't be accepted by mistake.
What Smartifie Quote does here, and what it doesn't
In Smartifie Quote, the rules above are built into the product:
- “New revision” opens a new revision under the same number, dated today with the same validity period. Before it does, a confirmation tells you exactly what will happen, because a revision can't be undone. A revision whose document hasn't been produced yet can instead be reopened as a draft and corrected.
- The previous revision becomes read-only in the same step; in the cloud edition its customer links are withdrawn at the same moment.
- When there is more than one revision, a “Revisions” strip appears above the editor: each revision with its status; hover to see its total, who prepared it and its date; click to open it.
- The quote's history lists each revision's events in order: created, sent, link issued, opened by the customer, accepted or declined, new revision, each with who did it. Every time the quote PDF is downloaded it is kept against its revision, and you can download that exact file again from the history instead of regenerating it. If your file storage quota is full, the copy isn't kept and the screen tells you so.
- By default the quote list shows each quote once, at its latest revision (“Latest revision only”); turn it off to list every revision. Reports count each quote's latest revision, and the dashboard's revisions-per-quote figure shows how many times a quote is rewritten before it is answered.
And, just as plainly, what it doesn't do:
- There is no comparison view highlighting what changed between revisions. Each revision opens on its own; the strip shows each one's status and total.
- There is no field for writing down why a revision was made. For now, the why lives in your correspondence with the customer.
- You can't jump back to an old revision with one click. A new revision is always made from the latest one; if the customer wants the old price back, you enter those values in the new revision by hand.
- A revision can't be deleted. That is deliberate: what was sent has to stay provable.
- The product doesn't issue invoices. A quote and a proforma are not tax documents; invoicing is a separate world.
To close, in one line: a sent quote isn't edited, it's revised, and the proof lives on the revision's record, not in a file name. You can try it on one of your own quotes with the 15-day free trial of the cloud edition.